Too much to write; too much to do

December 24th, 2008 The author

I have been on radio silence for quite sometime for a good reason. Yes it is indeed the holiday season and I was on leave for the entire last week. Despite the 1 week “holiday”, I have been pretty much busy being a tour guide and a driver to my relatives who have come down from Canada. In fact I have been quite busy for the whole of last week I didn’t even get time to do my own work.

Nothing at all. Zip. Nada

No time to even catch up on my readings, let alone time to blog. In some ways it has been great to spend the entire week with my uncle and his family. I’ve never done such a thing like this before (i.e - spend the entire week doing nothing but taking them around day after day to visit places).

I have thought up quite a number of ideas to write for my blog, alas, I have much to write, and much to do. It also doesn’t help that the internet has been fairly poor over the last couple of days. I’ve not been able to log into my dashboard properly and frankly, everything seems just slow on the net. I don’t know whether it has anything to do with the cable disruption in europe, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it is so. With major cables
being affected, most traffic will be routed through other networks, thus causing heavy traffic and bottlenecks at some important locations.

Oh well, that’s what happens when you depend on technology abit too much at times.

Posted in Life, People, Relationships, me | 1 Comment »

Why Does “Management Crap” Happen? Part III

December 8th, 2008 The author

Pride is the mask of one own’s faults 

Jewish Proverb

In my last entry, I mentioned that politics is one of the culprits behind management crap. Too often time politics get in the way, and we often see the “fruits” of it within a short period of time : unqualified executives warming the seats of important poisitions and making poor decision choices.

Now as humans, granted one of the attributes that we all share in common is our need to learn. And part of learning requires making mistakes, that’s a natural byproduct of our lifelong learning process. And of course, they higher we go up in life, making mistakes naturally becomes costlier.

But another thing I have observed is, the higher we go up, be it whether it’s in our careers or our own lives, the harder it gets for us to admit our faults. I have seen this happen too many times in my workplace, especially among my supervisor and managers.

I have always wondered -

Why is it so hard for someone to say sorry for something?

Why is it so difficult to admit it was your mistake?

Is there some unwritten rule that says apologizing makes you look weaker?  Okay maybe you might hang you head low in shame for a couple of days, but so what? Humbly accepting your mistake with sincere humility actually can help improve the situation because people have already AKNOWLEDGED the problem and it’s time to move beyond the issue and concerntrate on finding what to do next.

I say this method works because I’ve gone through it myself. I remember being a project manager for one of my IT network projects, we had done a fanstastic job with implementing the network system, but we missed out on a small part, the installation of the network printers. Rather than pointing who is to be blame for it, I immediately took up to responsibility and told my management “okay so we made a mistake, we overlooked the printer, what do we do now? How do we recitify this?… How do we move forward from here?”

Although management was a little unhappy about that incident, coming clean with the error and pressing to move on really helped the whole project. Admitting to the client we overlooked the printer and promising to rectifiy it immediately helped pacify the client and we could move on. 

Sadly, most executives are too proud to admit their mistakes. They’re too proud to say “okay we messed up, what do we do from here, what contigency plans can we take?”  

Rather what do most executive do? They look for scapegoats, someone to shoulder the blame for them. They complain about how the other party has not been working properly with the team, or they complain about the individual not pulling his weight blah blah blah.

Someone else, just not me is their attitude

True, there are instances where it’s really the other party’s mistake, but most often than not, whether it’s someone else’s mistake or fault, very few will actually own up and try to stir the team. In a crude way, when shit hits the fan, no one wants to be near it.

Instead who’s to shoulder all this? Indirectly it’ll be the lowly powerless employees. Suddenly just because of somebody else’s error and refusal to bite the bullet, lowly employees get pressed to the wall ; they’re forced to complete their deadlines, they’re forced to stay back late, they’re forced to produce flawless work in a ridicioulous time frame. 

Management’s mistake, no one takes the blame, lowly employees take the shit.

If only we had senior managers who had the balls to admit where they’ve gone wrong and just carry the team back to the original goal, now that would truly be a real leader…

Posted in Life, People, Uncanny Philosophy, Uncategorized, work | No Comments »

Why Does Management Crap Happen? Part II

December 6th, 2008 The author

It is no use saying “we are doing our best”. You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary

Winston Churchill

That quote above sums up a great deal what most management don’t do.

Doing what is necessary

I left off my last post with the thought that the reason management crap happens is simply because it’s seats are occupied by crappy people.

I’m learning this new term about client defination at my company. I don’t know whether it’s a coined or generic term, but consultants generally prefer to work with people whom are identified as drivers. This exclusive term is usually reserved for project sponsors, typically those who are sitting in upper management who have a considerable amount of influence on a project. Working with management drivers can really assist in ensuring a successful project delivery.

However not everyone is a driver, and definitely not everyone operates on such principles.  If you ask me, most management crap stems from a very simple cause, lack of the right people on top. In his book, Good to Great, Jim Collins addresses this clearly. In order to build a great company, Collins asserts that top management should “get the right people on the bus to sit at the right places”, meaning getting the right people to do the right things.

It’s a rudimentary concept to be honest, it’s definitely not something novel or wrapped with an shroud of complexity.  Get the right people to do the right things. But too often that doesn’t happen now does it?

Why?

Well because of something which I’ve always loathed ever since I entered the corporate world : Politics.

If I could some up office politics in a sentence it would be this : It’s good (assuming it favours you) for you , it’s bad for the business.

We all know it, yet it’s so rampant in our working cultures today. We end up hiring 2nd grade executives because of preferential treatment, and ignoring the 1st class well-suited-for-the-position individual. I can never understand exactly why management does this, (hire somebody less qualified for the job), except maybe the only justification they can offer is “I am comfortable working with him”. So instead of getting the right people on the right bus to sit in the right seats, we end up getting wrong people to sit in seats not meant for them.

And so the bus journey goes on.  Using the analogy of the stinking flower I mentioned in Part I, the foul scent is not detected until the bus is well down the road. By then, problems are already cracking up and staring to show around, yet due to pride and ego, top management refuses to admit and be humble about it.

Which brings us to Part III of Why Management Crap Happens.

More humility, pride and ego in Part III.

Posted in Life, People, Uncanny Philosophy, work | No Comments »