When I was Organizing

Managing organization process takes time and careful analysis. One step and you’ll go back to check the first few steps of what you have missed and plot it there.

When creating a new organization, a core group must be created whose main concern is on building structures, department policies, manpower handling, etc. We have an executive team as the highest department in the organization. They have the highest power to dictate policies and make sure information between departments flow smoothly.

When I was tasked to take over a new responsibility that has not been existing then, it was a challenging job for me. I get no reference on how to start. All I know is that I will be taking over management responsibilities of a technical team leader so he can be 100% doing programming.

Structure wise, it was not difficult for me to step in the team as I was already acquainted with them when I was still working on a different task. I had to monitor the team progress weekly, or sometimes daily if I need to. Not only the team I monitor but the overall project status, it’s feasibility of release date and make sure it is not delayed. Project includes the planning, programming, testing and migration. Organizing really took me time. And well, add to that the bigger responsibility that I was carrying.

So when I started to work on this team, I had to create the schedule of deadlines for each modules handled by specific programmers based on the release date of the whole system I got from the Executive Team. The CEO is a part of the executive team and I report directly to him for the advancement of the team I am responsible with. Secondly, I meet the team every week to check on their progress and ask for concerns that might affect the development stage and the release schedule. If there are, I coordinate with other departments (planning, systems administration, testing) that may help their concerns. It is important that the team knows whom they are reporting to and follow orders just like I am following orders from the Executive Team.

When I was again given a new responsibility to take over a team specific to testing, I was in the challenging position to take care of a new group of people. This time it was different since I have to meet different staff from different regions I have not met in person. This new responsibility is more challenging because I had to create the policies of the division, the protocols, rates, structures, and many more, like a mini-manual of the organization. Since this division already exists but no formal policies and procedures were made yet, analysis was not really deep but that I had to be careful of writing down them down based on what is current and possibly patch things that creates issues or that have been a problem in the past. Protocols for them to be able to work effectively within rules of testing. Then inform or orient the team about the policies, new or updated, so they know how it works in the division. After which, comes the implementation. The most important thing for me in organizing is for the people to accept and follow the process. Else, it will just be a plan floating with barely noticing it was there.

Transforming You in the Organization

Sometimes it makes me wonder what is easier, starting a new or changing something? But I think like for many other cases, starting a new will be easier. But would be easier to transform an existing organization into something you want it to happen? Like leading the company into a new direction, could be leaving some and changing some.

Transformation could either be difficult or easy depending on the current situation and for what purpose they are transforming. It could either transform its institution to something fit in their budget, like having crisis on financial stability, or the foreseeing of the growth of the organization.

On a negative note, there was a time when I encountered a little difficulty in the company, although the team is not directly affected, we felt that we might. There came a moment when there was crisis in the human resources, that I felt have in some way, created a silent conflict between people in the technical department from two different countries and the management was about to lose the people in one country. Later on, it did. A technical team from one region of the country slowly loses their interest in the organization and finally got dissolved later on. There came a time that I need not only get people from the locality I am a part of but in the locality that new technical group was created. It is now a division of people in two countries, apart from the fact that there are others in different regions of the country. The team not only comprised of regions from the Philippines but now also expands to other country. Although I have to admit that I am still trying to get better the policies between the scopes of both in the department. Transformation is difficult for me as I am still doing staff works or duties. But truthfully is, I have all the time to work on the transformation of the department but I always fail to do so. Maybe this part I need to work on too, the inner transformation.

When that crisis came, the management tried to save the different web applications the dissolved team handled. It was a sure difficulty for the management having to replaced the senior people with junior ones, who were then still on their learning stages. Seniors were pulled from other teams to help on juniors. Included in the dissolved team are also a number of QA’s that were slowly expressing disinterest in the organization. They were being passive and I can tell they already lose zest in their work. That is because the office was also dissolved in the region making them work in a special case in their homes online.

I can say that after that crisis we had, I think people are more open to transformation. But the feeling I had was that, is it just because they are afraid that they will lose their job if they go against the new management’s policies? Or are they just being passive-aggressive employees? I actually don’t know because truthfully, I am being cooperative with the management changes for the improvement of the company because of two reasons. First, I wanted to be involved. Secondly, I am a little concern I might not hold my position or I may lose my job if I go against the will.

I once heard someone in the past who shared about transformation in the organization he was working. He was a part of the management team and said that transforming an organization is actually an internal transformation. The transformation depends on the willingness of the people to accept the new goals and objectives of the company they are working. And this applies to me. I need to accept change but at the same time make sure that I am making a good move for my team.

Edge Over the Others

I have not witnessed the growth of the organization and the stories it went through. But the length it stayed in the business I know for sure it had undergone waves and calmness.

For more than 20 years, the company had survived the trials and celebrated triumphs. Of what I knew, it had a different name in the past. It could have been that the company failed in some ways, be it the competition in the market or internal sustainability in the financial crisis and human resources. True, competing in the U.S market is a great challenge.

But what makes a company survive for long? Is it profitability? I thought so, until I heard about core competencies during the report. I said, yes that was logical. The company may be gaining a lot in years but this doesn’t mean that it will survive for long for as long as there is competition, management should not just wait and receive, but to constantly strive for survival.
“Uhmm, what are the core competencies I think we have in the company?”, I asked. I do not know if these should be formally written for the employees to know what they are working for but I think it should. Well anyway, we had not defined this in the company. But I know that we are striving to have these.

First and foremost, a company in business should have strong knowledge and specialization of the business it is offering. Who would want to go into business, invests money, and doesn’t even know how to work on it? It is always basic and general to open a business that is of interest to you, fits your budget, and sure hit in the market. If you are the owner, and you have no skills on the business but you know someone with the great skills that you trusted and you know well the market, this is possible.
The owner of the company is not an IT professional but has been in a network of educators. He saw the need and created the business. He knows the market very well and hired skilled people to work for him. I know that it was tough to start the business and I am pretty sure that the owner has encountered different trials, ups and downs. But these difficulties, as we all know, are just helping tools to make better or fix the business.

The company went through creating web applications but gradually, found the product that had lifted the company, a suite of web applications used by the academe. Clients have more options which product can fit their needs and they can use from the suite the company offers. Or better yet, they can have the whole suite and other 3rd party integrations. Knowing this is the right product, the company hired more people to create and maintain it. This is one of the core competencies that I think we have.
Another core that I think made us on the edge is the great customer service we have. I always hear from our clients that we have the best service over their old system vendors. Clients are given utmost care, attention and accommodation. Support people are pushy on clients’ issues and concerns that are submitted to the technical team for fixing and testing. Sometimes we are overwhelmed with reports from them but we try to always give them the fastest response and service. This is a standard operational procedure in every company I believe and we always make sure to live to this.

It is advisable that in each unit of the company there are core competencies and work together with the company’s core. Right now, we don’t have any in our own department but I will try to create one to bring one goal and good coordination with the team.

Competition in the Market, how to keep up?

Staying up in the competition is tough especially when the market demand is high and the number of competitors is also high. Do we have a chance to compete? This may be one question when cowardice sets in. But in business, there is no such word as cowardice. Once you entered the business, you know that one half of your investment is at stake. Business is always paired with risk.

So what happens when you go into business? You should be armed of the necessary information of the market you are in. And I always believe in the advantage side of the trainings and education of management for it is here that you get more theories that will help you on applying strategically all of the lessons and techniques.

And since I have not been able to educate myself with more of the management stuffs and learning, it was not familiar to me the Porter’s Five Forces until being discussed in the group. It was an interesting topic I say, as it discusses the survival techniques in the business. Did our company able to apply these in reality? Uhmmm let us check and evaluate.

First stop is the bargaining power of buyers. They said that the buyer has more power than the company if the company is new, has greater number of competitors for the same products or services, and the high significance of the clients to them. Having been in the business for more than twenty years and has a number of existing clients, I say that the company has power over the new clients. Offering them our products and services may not let them bargain over us. Although I can sense that the more significant our existing clients are, they can have the power to bargain. Significant clients, for we know are those that give us higher profits and so we don’t want to lose them. And yes, sometimes when our systems suddenly don’t work as they were supposed to be and that they get disappointed or frustrated over us, the sales and support team will bargain over them.

Second stop is the threat of new entrants. This is an exciting part of the threat, I guess. Putting ourselves as clients, this is an advantage to us. We get to receive freebies, lower rates, new services or products offered, and many more from a new business sprout against the existing ones. This is because the new entrants will always want to get the attention of their target audience and may steal the customers of their competitors. Switching this back as an organization, how should we able to counteract this competition? I have been in a project for an integration with a 3rd party software vendor and I heard that they were creating a program just like ours. This is a big company too we are integrating but once they launch the software like we have, we may lose a bunch of clients. So in this case, our company created a system similar to theirs to counteract their plan.

Third stop is the power of suppliers. In this case I don’t know what suppliers do we have. For office equipments and any others, I think the company has no suppliers to choose from since we are small in different geographic locations. But I guess on buying domain and servers, the company has greater selection of suppliers that can cater huge number of requests.
Fourth is the threat to substitute products or services. I know we have a lot of competitors offering the same products and there might be others out there too with lesser features at a lower cost. This is a threat for us if our clients are not using the full features of the system. They can actually move to other vendors with just the functions they have at a reasonable price. But for those clients that have fully used the features, especially purchased the suite, I think we still have edge on this.

Lastly is the rivalry amongst existing firms. This may be the most difficult threat that should be handled and planned well. Competitors are always on the lookout to steal clients. And so, other than increasing the kind of customer services we are offering, we participate in fairs to advertise products. Right now, I heard that the company is offering one product (system) for free if they purchase one big product we have.

Motivating Employees

When I was on my entry-level job, I was contented with what I had then. Maybe this is a normal course for a fresh graduate when the only short-term goal is to land for a job no matter what. I had no rants or whatsoever then. A couple of years went by and I get to be more concerned of what I am being paid over what I have done for the company. Co-workers expressing more dismay of the company somehow influenced me. I once asked, why is this company not mindful of their workers? Didn’t the management know that if not for the effort of everyone, the company won’t succeed? I told myself that the management should know how to handle their employees to make them work harder and do their responsibilities better.

An opportunity knocked and I had to step on a different responsibility on a new company. Like any other starting employees, I had to work hard and earn for recognition. I was under supervision and monitored always. I was transferred to different teams until I had the responsibility to managing people. Now it was my time to be in the shoes of and be a part of the management team.

I didn’t realize that managing people is not an easy task. You have to make sure that you maintain good rapport with your people without sacrificing your responsibility of supervising their tasks, progress and accomplishments. Playing between being strict and lenient is a challenge on my part. Different personality I will witness and handle in the team, and I need to balance them to make it harmonious. And I think I will find it hard to handle conflicts with those that are really good in their responsibilities, fear that I may lose them in the team.

All these hesitations and concerns fall back again to the question of how to motivate employees. I have been there on my first years of working. Which reminds me now the reasons why I moved out to search for something better.

Promotion. The very first reason is promotion. It is very hard to get a promotion on a rank or was there really any position you would want to apply for promotion? I meant no offense for people who are contented with what they have until the end but it is challenging to work for something new and get reward for what you have accomplished more than what was expected of you. Isn’t this always the case?

Authority over work. Again, I meant no dismay to people who just wanted to take and take and take tasks and follow instructions how they do it. But for me, I am motivated if I am empowered. Being able to work on your own and be responsible over it is fulfilling. A supervisor may annoy me if I am always monitored daily, well of course if I am still a trainee this should be.

Trainings/Seminars. This is still a part of empowering an employee but still is a part of motivating. These I do not get from any of the companies I have been but I wanted to get some of these. It does not only adds new information and skills but also boosts an employees confidence over work, thus, making him more productive and efficient.

Incentive and Bonus. Productivity bonus, performance evaluation bonus and the like are definitely a motivating factor for me. Rewarding a staff in tangible things, money or trips, will make him love his work and company more. The drive to keep working is high. All because he wanted to be recognized and rewarded. The last time I had in the company we had our quarterly productivity bonus that we get every end of the year. But this was changed and so all increase will only depend on performance evaluation and promotion. I don’t mind the change but it would have been better if the company gives both bonuses. But it draws back to the financial capability of the company.

Praises. I always believe that recognizing employees gives them more morale over their work. I never fail to say “Thank you”, “Good job!”, “Perfect!”, “Keep it up!”, or any motivating statements to my team. For I know that beyond imperfections, they did their best and have worked very hard for any project. Intangible rewards are important too. It may not be as big as tangible ones but it is always best to keep the spirits of all workers up all the time.

There are still a lot of factors and ways to motivate employees but in so far I have experienced, these are the ones that let me see and think in and out of the box.

Was it Passive-Aggressive?

Passive or aggressive? Which of the two do you belong to? Let’s first define both terms so to categorize one’s personality. Passive is defined as “not reacting visibly to something that might be expected to product manifestations of an emotion or feeling”. Aggressive, on the other hand, is “characterized by or tending toward unprovoked offensives, attacks, invasions, or the like; militantly forward or menacing.

I have introduced the definition so to understand the next thing about one of the types of organization, the passive-aggressive organization. When an organization is healthy and resilient, communications and information cross in the organization smoothly where all teams work efficiently with managers and supervisors are strong at their responsibilities. Why strong? Because these managers receive good amount of incentives and rewards to act in behalf of the organization and carries out plans well in their respective areas of responsibilities. On a passive-aggressive organization, “everyone agrees, but nothing changes.” Which now belongs to a not healthy type of the organization.

Every employee would love to belong to a resilient organization where everything is “as good as it gets”. I have been to a passive-aggressive type of the organization but all along we are trying to get out of this state to make everything work well in the organization.
I believe communication is one of the significant keys to make this happen. Why? In an organization with staff over different countries, like I have, it takes good communication for everyone to coordinate and cooperate. Without such, we assume that everyone is doing their job and everything is handled properly. We have meetings, yes, but we cannot guarantee that people involved will really work for what has been tasked of them.

Just for example when we had a meeting with all leaders in technical department to plan and prepare for a possible increase in our clients. Increase is good news for the company of course because that means that our software will have more users. Increase in investment from the company too will be needed. So we foresee the possible days this surge increase will happen. We need to increase the number of our servers and add more human resources such as programmers, system administrators, testers, account managers and customer support. The discussion went well. Deadlines were set and everybody was expected of their responsibilities. I sent all information to my team leader handling a small group of the department. I entrust her the responsibility since it is her coverage and told her if she has something needed, I will help. Entrusting to her means that she will handle everything. Then days after, there came a concern from migration team that needs more fixing on the script. This is important as fixing them will lessen testing tasks and fixing bugs. Here comes the nearing deadline and I was asked of the progress from testing. Seemingly pointing the bottleneck on the part of the plan. Programming and migration teams did extra hours to beat deadline, and asked when the testing part came in and the progress. I was a bit off-guarded when told that 100+ schools, web applications, are ready for migration testing. Here, comes two loopholes on my part, first is assuming that the concern of migration team extends the deadline and second is not being able to coordinate efficiently with the team leader for the progress. Or say when having to meet the team, they will report that everything is in proper order or that no concerns are raised but in reality there were.

If there is no proper communication, we assume something is working or not working. In this case, I assumed that the deadline was extended and got relaxed with the needed resources (staff) I should have prepared. And I assumed that the team leader I entrusted the management has strongly carried out the distribution of staff and monitoring progress.

There are three points that made this part of the organization a passive-aggressive one: unclear scope of authority, misleading goals, and agreement without cooperation.

I believe that the success of the organization depends on what type of people it has. Resilient or passive-aggressive, the claim is from the behavior one acts for the organization. And in this case, I was party being a passive-aggressive employee.

How Do We Empower?

Did it ever come into your mind that if only you were given the chance to be in authority, you will give your employees or subordinates what’s due to them? Which led me to ask, how do we keep an employee motivated, anyway?

To organize is to properly setup a structure and allocate human resources to achieve objectives. As structure is to organizational design decisions and human resources to jobs design decisions. While organizational design involves creating departments, jobs design involves creating jobs to effectively use human resources. And where can we find the context of motivating employees? Yes, on jobs design decisions.

I say, employee empowerment is employee motivation. We may have different motivations to work. It may be the pay, the learning, the experience, the society we are moving in, etc. These are factors that management needs to consider from the starting stage of organizing.

Aside from pay (which of course is the basic reason I work), I am more motivated when I am given flexible authority over my responsibilities. Have you ever experienced working within a system or procedure you are forced to follow when you can just perform well with your own procedures but still arriving at the same result? I bet you hate the feeling. Furthermore when it is a routine job. It bores you and makes you ineffective.

Empowerment in the organization allows every individual to take initiative of their own work and review them accordingly if they have improved the services of the company. This is an empowerment that is job enrichment. It gives each employee an “autonomy, and control over the way the job is accomplished”. And I am glad that the company I am working with is giving me this kind of privilege. I am too with my subordinates. It makes each staff, not only in the supervisory level, become leaders of their own.

For example, the QA team I am handling. I set deadlines, assign them tasks and give them general instructions. Within the project production stage, I expect that they provide reports (bug reporting) no matter how they do it in detail or how they do it to beat the deadline. They may seek the help of other staffs, communicate with the Product Planners for behavior and closely coordinate with the programmers. I give them the control over the procedures they will take as long as they know exactly what they are doing. An empowered employee should hold two major aspects of empowerment that are inseparable: direction and capability. The team may know what they need to accomplish, but if their capability (knowledge and skills) are not enough, the project will fail.

Another type of empowerment in our company is team building which “involves settling conflicts, sharing team success, and assign tasks that use team members’ strengths“. I see our programming team as best example for this area. I have witnessed this when I was working with them on a rewrite project where the Perl version system was rewritten to PHP. The Supervisor assigns modules to his team members depending on the depth of knowledge and the experience they have in their previous employment. Like for example, the accounting modules go to the one with more experience in accounting software. Then they do code reviews where they can give suggestions and advices on what is best approach or function to use.

Other empowerment activities we have are training and seminars, meetings, and presentations.

Employees are empowered when they have the following: knowledge and skills, information, material resources, and the authority to make decisions. If each employee is empowered, there is no doubt that the organization is moving toward its goals.

“Empowerment is the capability to make a difference in the attainment of individual, team, and organizational goals” (Oden, 1999).

What made us changed?

There are two major reasons why I think a change in the organization is made, expansion and contraction. But for the case of IT, let’s add constant technological advancement as reason.

Whichever the reasons are, the company should be careful about carrying out a new plan to keep up with the challenge. But I should say that this is a more challenging move for the management than building a new organization from nothing. Considering that you have to retain some of what you have (procedure, people, etc.) while moving them up to a higher level, which could either make or break the company.

I have witnessed the growth of the organization for quite some time. And every year, there is a change in management, new departments, new divisions, new positions, people coming and leaving, new procedures, etc. We change because of expansion and competition, which is a good thing than witnessing laying off staffs.

In a software development industry like ours, applications, technologies and tools improve over time. People need to upgrade their knowledge and skills. Competition in the market gets tougher because everyone introduces new and interesting technologies and systems. This also means for the company to invest in the newest technologies to provide better and more efficient service to our clients. Investments were made to purchasing powerful computers, expansion of servers from other states, hiring more senior programmers, customer support, quality control, etc, even if it means getting a loan to provide the needs of market. If the company stays stalled and do not dance with the change, it will never survive. To change is to take a risk. And to change is to fight for existence.

In our case, the company sees survival in the competition, thus it needs to change. I asked myself upon writing this, “How did the company started the change?” I am not sure if I know exactly but I tried to recall the presentations and meetings we had with our COO.

There are a lot of theories how to do change but citing in Kotter’s 8-step model, let me review and check it against my knowledge of the organization.

Establishing a sense of urgency. On this step includes examining the current market against the company’s standing in the competition. And yes, this has been the very reason why the company made and is making a change. The people wanting the change identified the risks against opportunities, loss over gain.

Creating the coalition. The core group that initialized the change is the Executive Department. This department actually existed on the course of changing because previously, the top management only has the CEO and COO in it. Later on, I think, they realized that it will be more helpful if someone from the employed section will be part of them, thus this new department was born. Members are the CEO, COO, Technical Director, Executive Director, Human Resources, and all other top-level supervisory positions. This company’s coalition made up of caliber people who see the external and internal factors of the company’s existence. And it is just proper to have a powerful set of people to make the change viral.

Developing a Change Vision. Why is there a need to change? The coalition must be able to put a vision on what they want to be and what they want to have on their target date after having the change. How should this be achieved? It should always be clear and feasible so that lower-level managements are able to deliver what they ought to deliver. I have witnessed this on our meetings.

Communicating the vision for buy-in. When a vision is made from the top-level, this should now be disseminated to everyone in the company. All possible ways to communicate it should be made. And yes, we had annual presentation, semi-annual meetings with the COO, biweekly meeting with the Technical Department, biweekly meeting with QA, and etc.

Empowering broad-based action. This is I think one of the most difficult steps when making a change because this is where you get to eliminate obstacles from making it possible. It could be people who are not cooperative, or an old system or culture. I remembered one critical issue we had when I was still starting. It was about a change in the pay scale where senior programmers felt that juniors surpassed their pay. This made the management to do some restructuring of the department. Some got replaced, some were transferred, and others opted to leave.

Generating short-term wins. It is always best that employees are properly taken cared of. For a change to be successful, the employees should be motivated and persuaded. How? Give incentives and rewards. If the staff needs to work more than his current responsibilities and expected to perform more than his average, then there’s a need to increase pay. And so far, this has been always a practice for the company.

Never letting up. On this step involves hiring, promoting and developing employees who can implement the vision. I remember the time when the management called me that I am needed by another department to do project management for a system that needs to be critically released to clients, as it was overdue. So I worked for both departments.

Incorporating changes into the culture. Planning is only the start, but it is strong implementation that measures success. It is not easy to inject change in the culture and system of what we are used to, but constant practice and monitoring of the vision will help the change to be felt by the members. I admit that we are always struggling with the changes, but with our coalition, we are always brought back to the vision to hit our target.

Am I a Leader or a Manager?

“Are you a Manager or a Leader?” One of the most interesting topics discussed during our organization analysis class. These two words may sound very common but they are usually used interchangeably in the organization. Managers and Leaders have distinct traits but they said that the two are inseparable, complementary. Too much leaders is not healthy and it should be balanced by manager’s organizing ability.

A question popped from the crowd, if we are to choose between leaders or managers to be employed in the company, who would it be? I thought and told myself that it actually depends on the size of the company. If it is still starting, they can just have a Manager that can both work as Manager and Leader. This is where we once were until the company grows and need more people who can lead their people to the company’s goals. Then a flash of the Support Department from our company suddenly came to me, which I consider the best example to get me to understanding. This department has a Manager; with teams each led by Team Leaders. Their Manager acts as problem-solver and a planner. She checks the department’s human resources, sees any problems and seeks solutions, plans and envisions future growth, and coordinates efficiently with the top-level management. Team Leaders on the other hand, I noticed, are charismatic and proactive. They are more socially inclined to their members while at the same time maintaining a balance of their seniority. From our reporting tools, CMS and Bugzilla, I can see their drive and excitement with their work. They closely assist their team members on their tasks and make them more at ease with work.

At the time I throw the question to myself, I asked, yes, what am I? Manager or Leader? At some point I get to ask, I have the position of a Manager but do I act like I am? Or am I more of a Leader? So I need to evaluate some characteristics for both before I can finally say, I am either or both.

Of the many characteristics, I picked six (6) that I think have stronger distinction for both.

Focus. Leader is focused on leading people while Manager is focused on managing work. But honestly I’m torn between the two. I can sometimes be focused on motivating and persuading staffs to do their best, asked them if there is anything I can do to help them, or get their concerns so I can guide them to do better and hit our schedules. And I can work as Manager where I need to manage everything in the department, reassign workloads for balancing and scheduling, and make sure that the team is leading to where it should suppose to go.

Dynamic. Leader is proactive while Manager is reactive. Let’s try first to define both of these terms. Proactive is “acting in advance to deal with an expected difficulty” while reactive is “tending to be responsive or to react to a stimulus.” Where do I fit in? At times I am proactive but when there is more idleness, I am reactive. Proactive in the sense that when there are projects (systems) to develop and needing scheduling, I am a critical thinker, all possible cases that may happen in the future I lay down on cards. For the past six (6) months I have been proactive since there are three (3) big products under PHP rewrite. And with the current manpower, I have to build strong and determined team members. And with lesser “idle” times in the company, I am a less “reactive” person.

Decision. Leaders are open to their followers and let them help in the decision-making process. Managers on the other hand make decisions by themselves. So between the two, I am more of a Manager. I find it time consuming to include the group in the decision-making process. What I usually do is write down the plan and present it to them. It’s no longer interactive, but a one-way communication.

Exchange. Leaders have excitement for work while Managers do work for money. Managers get the position usually with the appointment from higher authority. They are paid more to higher responsibilities and this is their drive. Leaders on the other hand are innately work-driven by their passion for work.

Wants. Leaders want achievement. Managers want results. And I am a result-oriented person. I believe that there is improvement in one’s responsibilities if they are able to get results done in a timely manner. Achievement, like increase in the learning curve, like for QA procedures, is good but it is more important for me to have results done.

Conflicts. Leaders are open to conflicts and consider them challenges for a more efficient workforce. Managers on the other hand avoid them. They always want everything to go smoothly which sometimes bring them in mediocrity.

Now going back to the question, “Are you a Manager or a Leader?”. I can be both when circumstances need me to act to. But to be honest, having been placed as Manager is a difficult task. You do not only act as Manager, but you need to act as a Leader to get your subordinates be your followers, especially when finding leaders at your own department is hard to do. Now I agree that both manager and leader are inseparable, likewise for policies and human resources.

Starting a Plan

The moment I stepped in the room for my Organization Analysis class, I was half aware what was going on. (Do I need to disclose that I was a little late? Okay, I won’t :D ) An introductory discussion was made then we came to the question, “What is the equation for IT?” The professor asked. IT = Hardware + Software. IS? IS = IT + Peopleware. And I was like, wow! I didn’t know that! Or at least remember. Where was I during my college years? My classmates were good at their profession, mostly are working at the academe so they answered in chorus. Discussion went on and finally we get to the first topic Strategic Planning.

I was then anxious how this topic will start because at the first place, I didn’t know exactly what Strategic Planning was, or if I did on my previous Management class, I must have forgotten totally what it was, or that I didn’t get too interested about it. I heard of it from friends sharing about their strategic planning meetings and activities but I didn’t bother asking its objectives.
Here are some points that I learned upon discussing strategic planning.

It is a short-term plan to cope with changes within the organization. It is a plan that has a maximum of 3years of envisioning, laying down goals to achieve, and setting priorities to follow. Why 3 years, you may ask. Because this duration allows you to see the baseline of your plan against the inevitable changes within the organization and outside factors, like competition, in a short but reasonable amount of time. Thinking about and applying this on IT, I think even lesser duration can be applied depending, I think, on the nature of the company and the services or products they offer.

Like in the organization I am a part of, although I have not been directly involved in the core planning, I noticed that the top-level management is making a target within 6 months to 2 years. (Wow, now some things are getting to my memories while writing this). Why six (6) months? I noticed this whenever there are features that are requested by clients and being added to the system. It should be within or less than the duration, or else, it will become obsolete and another software company may offer them the system with even greater features. So management in this case needs to plan ahead the manpower and the target release date to make sure that it is getting profit, else loss. I also remembered when our COO, during his presentation, showed us around twenty (20) new applications or systems that are to be developed in the next 2 years. Gearing away with the competition in the market and wanting to make a lead from all other competing companies. This is a presentation where the top management extends to their staff the plan they want and make it happen with everyone’s effort and contribution. This is another attribute of strategic planning; it “pulls the entire organization together around a single game plan for execution”.

I don’t exactly know this “single game plan” of the company. But one thing I know is that they are focused in two words: SALES and PROFIT. And it is bringing the whole organization there. Every year (so I believed when I joined), this boss meets the staff in all regions to present the company’s current status and its year’s plans and goals, where are we now and where are we heading. It’s not a workshop or a brainstorming event, only a presentation of what the top-level management has planned beforehand. This then allows managers from different departments to plan for their designated sections and responsibilities, check current resources, set new baseline and request for more manpower when needed. The good thing of this presentation is that not only managers are informed, but staffs under them too. That time I think it was unnecessary for this activity to include the staffs until this time that I realized that having everyone know the goals will let everyone work hard on it.

“If you fail to plan, you plan to fail.” An organization wanting to stay long in the business should take planning as bread for their existence. But of course in the end, a good manifestation justifies it all.