John Linton .....the second major requirement of any manager's job - much easier said than done in my personal experience.
The first day of the SL Company review was not as productive as I had hoped for - mainly my fault and certainly my expectations were too optimistic. However there were some productive outcomes and I did get a better idea of how some of the supervisors view their abilities to do their jobs and what they can do better in the future. It did also underline my simplistic view that after being managed so rigidly over these start up years one of the key changes we need to get to happen is to provide, and have exercised, more 'local' decision making and encouraging more 'initiative' from more people in Sri Lanka. That is straight out of page one, paragraph one, sentence one of management for the under 5's but ......and I have to say this one more time......there are 'cultural' differences that make that a little more difficult than you might, at first, think.
The only 'concrete' things we accomplished yesterday were to put in place the revised sales targets and commission plans for the inbound sales people and to present the sapphires to the four sales people who had made their first 500 residential sales and to the two sales people who had made their first 1,000 residential sales. The other interesting part of the day was to listen to five of the team leaders present on what they had accomplished over the past six months and how they were aiming to improve their team's performance over the coming six months. I found them interesting because at least two of the presentations were quite different to what I had anticipated - which is always a chastening experience.
It will be quite a challenge over the coming three days to make the amount of progress in changing the current methodologies that are in danger of becoming 'entrenched' in the SL operations and to encourage more confidence in doing things differently to the "way we have always done this or that". I think I will have trouble containing my irritation if I hear that particular phrase one more time......though it does emphasise the dangers of 'command management' especially when it is exercised from 8,000 kilometers away. It also demonstrates how quickly things change when a company grows fro a handful of people to over 50 in less than three years during times when the base precepts of the overall company are going through radical changes imposed partly by the market places in Australia and then compounded by the changes the Australian company has to go through to deal with those changes.
Whether I have the ability to convey the necessary scope and level of change that has to happen in SL over the coming months is yet to be seen. After the first day it looks like being more of a 'challenge' than I had anticipated - but then, from the first day of first visit to this country to begin the set up of a company here (and every subsequent visit) I have always felt the same way...with subsequent days gradually dispelling that first evening 'despair'. This is a very different place. However it's a bit after 6 am here and the Stygian darkness of an equatorial night is beginning to lighten so hopefully that is a metaphor of my situation.
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