23 April 2006

Internal Execution

I joined PCCW Limited on 06 February 2006 as a Training Consultant, and on 20 April 2006, I was assigned to act on behalf of the Training and Development Manager since he would be away for a business meeting in the United States for about 2 weeks.

How long have I been with PCCW? We can get the number of days by writing a simple formula in Excel.

=2006/04/20-2006/02/06

The answer is 73 days.

However, the number above includes Saturdays and Sundays. In order to calculate only the weekdays, or my actual give-and-take, we need to install the Analysis ToolPak add-in and apply this formula =networkdays(2006/02/06, 2006/04/20) to get a more accurate result, which is then 54 days.

54 days of on-the-job training, and then I was the Acting Training and Development Manager for 2 weeks. "Wow" was my immediate reaction when I was told to take up the role temporarily. This wow is different from the Wow! by Tom Peters. My "Wow" was an astonishment. Peters' "Wow" is an exceptionally enjoyable adventure.

The first project, and I hope this would be the only project, was to prepare a presentation on staff appraisal for a business unit of PCCW. I knew nothing about staff appraisal, though I did that for my staff in the past. The process was mostly enjoyable but not necessarily serious, because I always have a tendency to make everything formal informal. Formal is tense, and tense implies pressure. How could positive touchpoint experience be delivered if both parties are in a state of mental or nervous tension?

The big boss returned from his vacation, and I needed to brief him on the process, and also the presentation materials already prepared by the manager. After all, he would do the presentation.

People use Information to produce Deliverables. I was the one who needed to use the already provided Information to work out the presentation for my big boss.

Since I was just playing an acting role, and all the materials were already prepared by the manager, I didn't really pay heed to the deliverables, or what the big boss really needed. I just passed the presentation materials for his review and comments.

The result? Disastrous! The big boss basically rejected everything, and I had to redo from scratch. I was so upset because I just delivered negative touchpoint experience during the execution process.

I repented of my "sins", and it was all my problem. It's the ATTITUDE issue.

I wasn't serious about the task, because I ain't interested in it. Besides, the manager has already prepared everything, and I didn't spend enough time understanding the expectations of the deliverables.

Negative touchpoint experience in this case is caused by my inappropriate attitude - lack of eagerness to obtain a thorough understanding of the task.

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