Managing and Developing

I'm less than 200 days away from retirement. What happened last week? Well, for some unknown reasons, my left wrist was hurting sometime on Saturday. Ignored it for awhile, hoping that it will go away by the time I have to go to work (which is on Tuesday; Monday was a public holiday). By Monday evening, the pain worsened and told my wife that I can't drive in this condition and probably need doctor's attention to see if it will go away anytime soon. First suspicion, was gout, but the private hospital doctor suspected bacterial infection since my wrist is all red and a little swelling. He recommended me to do blood tests for both gout and bacterial infections. The answer was the latter. So I was given a three-day leave with antibiotics, anti-swelling pills and pain killers (tramadol+paracetamol). Tramadol essentially knocks me out for the whole of Tuesday and in part Wednesday (got a class and postgraduate seminar conducted online that day in my half-conscious state). I stopped taking the pain killer by Wednesday morning to make sure I can drive to campus on Thursday to conduct a test (while on medical leave). Knowing that I will still be groggy, I took leave on Friday to rest. In fact, my son drove me to Sri Sendayan mosque that Friday for Friday prayers.

In my last post about academic commitments, I wrote how I spent a substantial amount of money on journals, which is supposed to show how serious I was. I also mentioned about subscribing to Science when I was part of a management team (for scientific matters). Thought I should share here that even in management, I took it seriously despite what others might think of my management skills. My first exposure to management was through the relatively smaller departmental committees. At the time, there is this tendency of putting everything in a positive light, which at the time to me, sounded really pretentious. It is always the case that no matter how positive one is, there will always be negativity in one's midst and one needs to learn how to cope with this. Always unseen, one could try to be positive but one's superior has a negative image of you. Just like administrators tend to say that some people always complain, but usually unseen is that the administrators themselves are already complaining. This is why this 'all-positive' attitude is not authentic and the main gist behind all these are our difference of opinions on how things should be. This is why I appreciated the approach of Covey of the 7-habit fame: a principled approach. One should start correctly of what we think we are. First, us an academic in a university whose main role is teaching and research. We should have always this perspective in mind: our true appointment in the university is an academic first. (I recall in one event with people from industries, the speaker even told us we should not operate like industrial or business entities, but rather like a community of 'wise people' that sees in a different light, often with a vision of depth and long-term). Whatever administrative role we are landed with is really a secondary appointment and is not a permanent post. Being a leader in the administration does not mean one is boss and others are being subjects. As an academic, one should be considered equal to one another; the administrative position is temporary and is meant to help decision-making processes smoothly (and a responsible one), for otherwise one could end up with endless debate. Being part of an academic organization, one should realize that the main activities are really creativity-driven and such activities are highly-valued. The tendency to put constraints (or controls) run counter to this view.

When I was given an administrative role, I begin reading up management books e.g. 1-minute manager, Covey-related books, leadership, body languages, images that one carry etc. Below are some books that are in my possession.

I remembered once, I was given the task of speaking on work ethics in INSPEM, that had me brooding for days. I wanted to be able convey the idea of shifting perspectives and where we start on our outlook is an important one. This led me to refer to religious texts on what is essentially a wholistic human being - not just thought as a social and political animal, which are just partial. Below is a pic of the presentation I made.

Not sure how well it went but I dedicated one section on dealing with negativities and office politics, which are ordinary parts of life. Took some ideas from the book on the right shown above.

One must be made aware of these 'characters', not only in others but also in ourselves (no exception). I also borrowed from someone I wrote to and got a copyrighted document (the person is from abroad, and I can't find it while writing this post), on what constitutes to be a 'modern worker' (see below).

The point here is to highlight working as developing one's own self, not just 'servicing the boss'. Reflect on the Muslim belief of man as servant of God but whatever services rendered is for our own benefit, knowing well all the attributes of God. One must also take note that 'bosses' are not perfect; as humans we have impaired or limited sense of justice and moral compass,, incomplete knowledge and one's own base desires that tend to mislead us. There should always be an open platform over which workers and bosses can discuss work matters in amicable manner. Often today, we get 'unfriendly' e-mails or messages instead (doing things behind the screen is easier, right?). We also heard horrible stories (elsewhere) that authoritarian bosses resorting to bullying and worse playing revenge. To me, this type of bosses should not be there in the first place and if they realise themselves doing these, they should just resign. Again, I would highlight the fact that we are in an academic organization that has very little place for regimented management (usually this is reserved for areas of safety, security and time-criticality). So I tend to adopt a very flexible management style, encouraging creativity wherever possible. But this is me and I have seen many different styles of management. 

The other area of concern is the adoption of mechanistic management that seems not to care the actual human natural response. Sometimes we are asked to adopt a culture in a short period of time, with evidence-demanding style (without caring efforts made and that not all circumstances are within control). For instance, the adoption of ranking has always been debated and one has never really discussed the necessary (natural) dynamics to be a good top-tier university (almost always demanding good scientific culture). I believe everyone in the management now knows about Goodhart's law but yet we follow fixed KPIs almost blanketly throughout different disciplines. Once, I was told off by a senior management member to take this up with the Ministry and I was taken aback. The question is what and how to proceed? Lately, I have been interested in Snowden's dynamical systems approach, which is more open and perhaps a more natural evolution. I have yet to see any local organization taking this up. Somebody told me that it won't work in our environment. Perhaps, but then we ought to ask the question what drives this 'impossibility' and can we change the dynamics? Recently,  I have posted some document related to Snowden's work on Sensemaking which is made available free online - https://practicalactionpublishing.com/book/2622/the-learning-power-of-listening. I have yet to study this properly and hope someone is interested to see how this works.

Let me just stop here (need to prepare for my lectures) and end with this remark. I do see some younger leaders being very abrasive and very harsh in judgement. One can also see this in the social media, writing away as if everyone else is not doing enough thinking. It seems gone are the days that we have used to learn about diplomacy and more humanly concern about others. Perhaps they should reconsider their position?