John Linton ....in developing a Sri Lankan operation since we first hired two work from home support engineers in February 2006.
I spent much of yesterday talking with our Sri Lankan operation General Manager who will turn 25 in a few weeks time. This was our first face to face conversation since I asked her if she would consider taking on much more responsibility in April this year (at the time she was managing the billing query resolution process of five people). So almost four months in to her 'tenure' as the manager of our 80 or so Sri Lankan based personnel - what did I find? Firstly a quite obviously slightly happier group of people and secondly a group of people now embracing the freedom to make the changes they see as necessary to improve aspects of the business across a wide range of areas. So the initial impression is that I waited far too long to replace the original Sri lankan appointee to the position who was more and more obviously doing a poorer and poorer job - at least from Exetel's point of view. I guess even an old fool eventually can eventually come to admit his more obvious mistakes.
Why do I get the impression that I have made less of a mistake this time? Well, there is one very, very obvious difference. Rukshani argued, politely but firmly, on two occasions that what I wanted to do was wrong and even when I persisted in pushing my point of view she continued to attempt to persuade me that it would be wrong to pursue my requested actions and she persisted in holding to her views until I relented. It was very impressive. The first view I put forward was genuinely believed by me and I did 'argue the point strongly' until eventually conceding I was wrong. The second point I didn't believe in at all but wanted to verify that she would persist in attempting to persuade me of the error in my thinking and I was left in no doubt that was the case and was likely to continue to be the case in any such future circumstances. It was a starkly contrasting situation to the grovelling and always immediate unconsidered agreement of her predecessor.
The rest of the day was spent adjusting the concepts for the '100% of all support calls solved within the first contact time" and fixing up the final processes to allow an additional 13 Sri Lankan based sales people to begin business/corporate sales activities today. Clare and Clarissa have done an excellent job over the past 12 months to make this concept a reality and I will be very eager to see how the next few months turn out. As with all longer term planning you initially have time in which you don't have to produce too many real sales but as time goes on actual target measurement becomes the only indication of real progress. So far all the, pretty easy, targets have been met and now we will begin to see whether the real targets can be achieved on a regular basis.
One thing is very obvious - especially to someone who has never contemplated setting up a seriously complex operation in a not so developed country some 10,000 kilometers away with a completely different culture. It's a very difficult thing to do and you need a great deal of mental toughness and clear thinking to make it happen.
PS: I read this article with increasing disgust and feel dirty by giving such dross the mistaken 'exposure' I have played an unintentional part in doing for which I sincerely apologise:
http://www.theage.com.au/technology/technology-news/playing-dirty-20111017-1ltam.html
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