Friday, October 16, 2009
Blog #2 from Lau
While dealing with work related matters and also e-mails and assignments, I come across an interesting article posted by a NSN country manager on leadership and training and development. It was an article by Keith McFarland - The Right People vs. Getting the People Right. The article was about business leaders of large and small companies complaining the people they hired or their teams are not up to task to deal with the problem entailed from the economic downturn. However, he mentioned, what management really needs to do is put less emphasis on getting the "right people" and more on getting the "people right.". The article emphasized very much on training and development of employees in an organization to develop their competencies to deal with the challenges in front of us. However, if still not performing, he or she will be made available to the industry.
In the article, the words “Getting the People Right” is really close to my heart and very much appropriate to describe the situation of our team at least for the first 2 weeks after the training. What we need is to communicate as a team to proceed to the right direction in this AACE journey.
But the situation seems to be turning around starting from Tuesday, particularly with Thao’s e-mail responding to Paul’s comment which was sent on Sunday. Thao has demonstrated the leadership style, which was a bit of autocratic and also a little bit of task-oriented style, but with choices given to choose and respond within time limit. I believe that was appropriate to the team situation that we were in at that moment. At that point of time, the team was very much disoriented and in storming stage, and wondering on how to proceed. At this point, while I am writing this blog, I have a strong sense that the team has passed through the storming stage. Nevertheless, autocratic/task-oriented style may still be needed if we are in crisis again.
On training related matters, I was using EVM to analyze a project that was reported with some issues. I spent a bit of time to dig into the details, together with information as well as assumptions I have and come out with simulation of the project status. I simulated the project as in the exercise we did on day 5 of our training with the information and assumptions that I have and managed to calculate the SPI and CPI of the project. Both CPI and SPI are below 1 and project progress is lagging behind. Of course, this is just a simulation and is a good start for me to get into EVM technique to analyze project health. I still need to drill down further and to share with the PM together and the project controller who currently working on the project with more details to show it to him with the analysis I did.
In the article, the words “Getting the People Right” is really close to my heart and very much appropriate to describe the situation of our team at least for the first 2 weeks after the training. What we need is to communicate as a team to proceed to the right direction in this AACE journey.
But the situation seems to be turning around starting from Tuesday, particularly with Thao’s e-mail responding to Paul’s comment which was sent on Sunday. Thao has demonstrated the leadership style, which was a bit of autocratic and also a little bit of task-oriented style, but with choices given to choose and respond within time limit. I believe that was appropriate to the team situation that we were in at that moment. At that point of time, the team was very much disoriented and in storming stage, and wondering on how to proceed. At this point, while I am writing this blog, I have a strong sense that the team has passed through the storming stage. Nevertheless, autocratic/task-oriented style may still be needed if we are in crisis again.
On training related matters, I was using EVM to analyze a project that was reported with some issues. I spent a bit of time to dig into the details, together with information as well as assumptions I have and come out with simulation of the project status. I simulated the project as in the exercise we did on day 5 of our training with the information and assumptions that I have and managed to calculate the SPI and CPI of the project. Both CPI and SPI are below 1 and project progress is lagging behind. Of course, this is just a simulation and is a good start for me to get into EVM technique to analyze project health. I still need to drill down further and to share with the PM together and the project controller who currently working on the project with more details to show it to him with the analysis I did.
# posted by Lau @ 10/16/2009 03:24:00 PM 
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Very nicely written, Lau!!
You reflected on what was happening, you analyzed it and you related it to your day to day working environment, which is exactly what I am hoping to see in this blog.
I am very keen to see more on your assessment of the "natural" leaders in the class....... People who are able to "lead by example" and are willing to take charge, whether they have the formal authority or not..... Any further comments or views on that? Can you elaborate a bit more?
Keep up the good work and looking forward to reading other postings from you in the coming weeks.
BR
Dr. PDG, Boston
You reflected on what was happening, you analyzed it and you related it to your day to day working environment, which is exactly what I am hoping to see in this blog.
I am very keen to see more on your assessment of the "natural" leaders in the class....... People who are able to "lead by example" and are willing to take charge, whether they have the formal authority or not..... Any further comments or views on that? Can you elaborate a bit more?
Keep up the good work and looking forward to reading other postings from you in the coming weeks.
BR
Dr. PDG, Boston
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