hectic week (again)

looks like the title of my blog is gonna look the same every week. but hey, it's hectic in different sense. this week was a little more productive. productive in that i got my hands dirty and took control of some issues. but this cannot go on indefinitely or i'll get totally burned out. here're some of my thoughts.

i have a very hardworking team. but alas, when it comes to planning, there was a lot left to be desired. previously, i attended several meetings and during those meetings, i got other hods telling my staff off in front of me that they were useless and that they (the hods themselves or their staff) were doing their (my staff) work for them. it didn't feel good to have people scold my staff like that. and this week, a meeting was convened to discuss some manpower build-up plan to support a project that has a 3-5 year timeline. in anticipation of something like this happening again, i decided to deep dive and get my hands dirty. i instructed my staff to work out a plan and to discuss it with me. but when she came back with the plan, i flipped. she simply called the line to get the numbers they need to the next 1 year and presented these numbers to me. this was not acceptable! i wondered if she really understood the requirement! anyway, i got into my coaching mode and explained how things should be done but she stared at me with a blank face and insisted that what she did was what was required as that was what the line gave her. i decided i will do the framing after a few failed attempts to explain to her about the requirements. i concluded it would be too much for her in the end. 

and that was when i realised what the other hods meant. quite a few of my staff are incapable of doing future planning. they could only collate data for the immediate one year and execute it. what this also meant is that their thought processes are very short term. and as a result, they were highly reactive to demands. to me, this is very scary, considering these people are senior managers! i do expect senior managers to be able to do strategic planning and to develop future plans easily. i personally do not think this is difficult. all one needs to do is to adopt a project management approach to manpower planning, state the assumptions and then project the needs according to the business plan timeline. looks like there's a lot to be done moving ahead. my colleagues came to me and told me that some of my people have been like that for many years. it got me wondering why the management had not done anything about it. if they are really incompetent, they should have been managed out early. but well, since i've inherited such a team, i'll just give everyone a chance. coach as much as i can, and if they really cannot deliver, i'll just have to manage them out in time to come.

arghhh...