Heart Space #56: End of Bahamas II
I am almost done with yet another posting and I have some time on hand to pen this long blog.
This time is a tad different from the previous ones that I had mainly because I had the luxury of having my family here with me throughout. It is their 2nd time back in Bahamas, the first being way back in late 2010. Having the wife and kid around definitely has its plus points as we managed to go on some getaways and holidays, not forgetting the those weekend grocery trips. Thankfully, there have been influx of different personnel from my company or Ecquaria's (especially Didi) to keep my wife and kid company. I am also glad that everything turned out fine and that the ladies of my house made some good friends too. (WanSie, Michelle, Georgin, Summer etc)
This assignment initially was for 9 months and thankfully (or not), the project timeline was shortened to 6. The project itself has it whole suite of issues and problems. The arrangement itself was difficult as me being the overall programme office, we (or rather I) do not have absolute control of the vendor (IBM) scope of work, which covered the infrastructure, portal and the horizontal services. We had a back to back agreement with Ecquaria who are developing the e-Services. 95% of my time are spent on sorting out the issues between design and implementation differences between these 2 vendors. At the same time, I have to manage client's expectations and ensuring that all the teams are working towards the common goal. With the successful launch of the portal and e-Services, I must admit that it was a great achievement not just for me personally, but the teams who have been involved from day 1.
Having said that, there are always folks who wants to steal someone's else thunder, maybe to compliment what they lack in their own department. Through the course of this assignment, I have seen my colleague, go against almost all I stood for, personally and professionally so that she could please the customer or get her way. The background of her work (and her teammate) is to start a new organisation and transit some of the existing resources into their new job or positions. Along with these, assessments and interviews are required in order to assess the suitability of the candidates in order to place them into the relevant job functions. However, based on what I have learnt and found out, the tests and assessment are not conducted in a transparent or fair manner. There were personnel who have not taken the tests and yet be placed into positions. In the end, there are some disgruntled government employees who questioned the integrity of the assessment and the impartiality of our company. Unfortunately, HQ could not do much about it, even though some of our folks have already feedback to them. As usual, HQ only knows as much as what is being updated to them, so to them things are often rosy.
Personally, she is absolutely hideous. I seldom (if not never) use this on anyone before. One example was how she made noise about having to tag along our trip to Miami to some of my other colleagues. We have never requested that she follows our itinerary, in fact, probably it is better for us that it is a family trip. I did even offer that she can take the car and drive to Florida Keys if that's was what she wanted, but she didn't take up the offer. Since she is already aware of what we wanted to do, why follow through the trip? What made it worse was that she kept telling me and my wife that she had enjoyed the trip tremendously.
One of the most despicable thing was that she complained to my HQ requesting that my extra fly-backs be removed as a result of my shortened posting. In her email that I was kindly kept in the bcc loop by the project director, she even said that she is not trying to remove my fly-back, but merely questioning the HR policies however, the email was never sent to HR. To top it all off like what she always does, she requested that her email be kept confidential and not be shared with me or my other colleagues as she is "a good friend and colleague" of me. My wife and me simply were flabbergasted. We wondered what else have been going on behind our backs and how HQ perceived our work overseas. (Note. also she told HQ that I do not like long haul flights... Bleah)
I could go on and on... but I just want to share one last one. Her track has 2 resources including herself. Yet this time, she is not actually doing any real deliverable. They were done by her teammate, but herself went on to do other "client pleasing" activities such as supervising renovation work, preparing for the launch (not even her track) and preparing a self gratification presentation for the client. I wonder just how many of the clients actually like her, considering how messy our office is now, and that their jobs are in limbo without knowing truly what had happened. In my opinion, there are so much work to be done; developing governance processes, helping with the transition, ensuring that all the employee grievances are addressed, unions are happy etc. This should be what her track truly entails. Finally, to top it all off, her team mate was only asked to attend the appreciation luncheon at the last minute.
While we need to constantly balance the company's bottom line versus the true meaning of a piece of good work, this seems to be a little over-stretched. In my view, when you talk about mentoring, a good indicator of a good well done could be that they no longer need you to be around to guide them and that they should feel confident enough in their new job functions.We should stop blaming our clients for being slow, unwilling to move for these are the constraints we know, especially we have been here before.
Before we point the finger at others, let's examine ourselves...
I am almost done with yet another posting and I have some time on hand to pen this long blog.
This time is a tad different from the previous ones that I had mainly because I had the luxury of having my family here with me throughout. It is their 2nd time back in Bahamas, the first being way back in late 2010. Having the wife and kid around definitely has its plus points as we managed to go on some getaways and holidays, not forgetting the those weekend grocery trips. Thankfully, there have been influx of different personnel from my company or Ecquaria's (especially Didi) to keep my wife and kid company. I am also glad that everything turned out fine and that the ladies of my house made some good friends too. (WanSie, Michelle, Georgin, Summer etc)
This assignment initially was for 9 months and thankfully (or not), the project timeline was shortened to 6. The project itself has it whole suite of issues and problems. The arrangement itself was difficult as me being the overall programme office, we (or rather I) do not have absolute control of the vendor (IBM) scope of work, which covered the infrastructure, portal and the horizontal services. We had a back to back agreement with Ecquaria who are developing the e-Services. 95% of my time are spent on sorting out the issues between design and implementation differences between these 2 vendors. At the same time, I have to manage client's expectations and ensuring that all the teams are working towards the common goal. With the successful launch of the portal and e-Services, I must admit that it was a great achievement not just for me personally, but the teams who have been involved from day 1.
Having said that, there are always folks who wants to steal someone's else thunder, maybe to compliment what they lack in their own department. Through the course of this assignment, I have seen my colleague, go against almost all I stood for, personally and professionally so that she could please the customer or get her way. The background of her work (and her teammate) is to start a new organisation and transit some of the existing resources into their new job or positions. Along with these, assessments and interviews are required in order to assess the suitability of the candidates in order to place them into the relevant job functions. However, based on what I have learnt and found out, the tests and assessment are not conducted in a transparent or fair manner. There were personnel who have not taken the tests and yet be placed into positions. In the end, there are some disgruntled government employees who questioned the integrity of the assessment and the impartiality of our company. Unfortunately, HQ could not do much about it, even though some of our folks have already feedback to them. As usual, HQ only knows as much as what is being updated to them, so to them things are often rosy.
Personally, she is absolutely hideous. I seldom (if not never) use this on anyone before. One example was how she made noise about having to tag along our trip to Miami to some of my other colleagues. We have never requested that she follows our itinerary, in fact, probably it is better for us that it is a family trip. I did even offer that she can take the car and drive to Florida Keys if that's was what she wanted, but she didn't take up the offer. Since she is already aware of what we wanted to do, why follow through the trip? What made it worse was that she kept telling me and my wife that she had enjoyed the trip tremendously.
One of the most despicable thing was that she complained to my HQ requesting that my extra fly-backs be removed as a result of my shortened posting. In her email that I was kindly kept in the bcc loop by the project director, she even said that she is not trying to remove my fly-back, but merely questioning the HR policies however, the email was never sent to HR. To top it all off like what she always does, she requested that her email be kept confidential and not be shared with me or my other colleagues as she is "a good friend and colleague" of me. My wife and me simply were flabbergasted. We wondered what else have been going on behind our backs and how HQ perceived our work overseas. (Note. also she told HQ that I do not like long haul flights... Bleah)
I could go on and on... but I just want to share one last one. Her track has 2 resources including herself. Yet this time, she is not actually doing any real deliverable. They were done by her teammate, but herself went on to do other "client pleasing" activities such as supervising renovation work, preparing for the launch (not even her track) and preparing a self gratification presentation for the client. I wonder just how many of the clients actually like her, considering how messy our office is now, and that their jobs are in limbo without knowing truly what had happened. In my opinion, there are so much work to be done; developing governance processes, helping with the transition, ensuring that all the employee grievances are addressed, unions are happy etc. This should be what her track truly entails. Finally, to top it all off, her team mate was only asked to attend the appreciation luncheon at the last minute.
While we need to constantly balance the company's bottom line versus the true meaning of a piece of good work, this seems to be a little over-stretched. In my view, when you talk about mentoring, a good indicator of a good well done could be that they no longer need you to be around to guide them and that they should feel confident enough in their new job functions.We should stop blaming our clients for being slow, unwilling to move for these are the constraints we know, especially we have been here before.
Before we point the finger at others, let's examine ourselves...
No comments:
Post a Comment