“Urgh! Why won’t they take that suggestion?” Rothman rolled his eyes and smack his bite pad rather forcefully onto his table. He just had a weekly meeting with the operation team. He was annoyed by Tom, the general manager of the company. (He holds the decision-making role, yet, can’t be more decisive and give instructions right away?).
Every week, the whole team spent nearly two hours for this meeting. (TWO HOURS!) Just to go through all the action items and or any new concerns that happened during the past week. Some action items have some progress updates while some has been stagnant for weeks. (That’s just a waste of time! Everyone’s time.) He walked out from his office towards the warehouse. He really needed some fresh air, to stop his grumpiness and release the unseen mental stress in him.
There was a long-stretch of green bamboo trees growing along the fence of the company compound. Rothman stood in front of the warehouse entrance, starred at the green bamboo leaves that swayed lightly to the afternoon breeze.
“Whooh…” He took a deep breath and released a heavy sigh. The views calmed him down.
He carried out his monitoring and checking work to ensure those safety measures that has been put in place were actually practiced by the warehouse team.
‘Ting. Ting.’ He then peeked at his incoming message. It was from Julian. ‘Time for lunch. Join us?’ She wrote.
Rothman returned her a call. “Hey, Yes, I’m joining. Is Ken joining as well?” He asked. “Yes, he is.” Julian replied. “I’d drive then.” Rothman replied and walked towards car park to get his car. “Cool, see you at entrance.” She then hung up the call.
Rothman picked up his usual lunchmates. Both Julian and Ken were waiting at the glaze door, in front of the receptionist desk. They went for the Nasi Kandar (i.e. Muslim food) restaurant. That restaurant wasn’t too far from the company, and on top of everything else, they served good food at reasonable price.
“You okay?” Julian asked Rothman. They were waiting for their food to be served. (Rothman was rather quiet today. I can tell, something is bothering him.) Julian looked at her colleague that has lesser smiles on this face today. (So unlike him.)
“Thanks, Ken. Well… Nothing new.” Rothman received his drink from Ken, who came back with three glasses of drink in a tray on his hand. Ken then put back the tray to the tray area. Juliana waited patiently for Rothman’s reply.
“The Ops. Meeting?” Julian ask with what just came up on her mind. “Yeah…” Another sigh from Rothman.
“More tasks on you?” Ken asked next. “Not about that.” Rothman replied after taking a sip of his coke. “It’s about the speed of handling things. It, it just pissed me off somehow… Looking at the way they do things. We can do it more efficiently.” He continued.
“Something that can be solved or not?” The analysis mind in Julian triggered and she asked. “Yes. For instance, the company uniforms.” Rothman looked at both of his colleagues.
“Uniforms? Wasn’t that topic floating around for month already?” Ken quickly added. All staff in office floor were aware that management has in plan to provide uniforms to each of them.
“Precisely!” Rothman couldn’t agree more.
“What stage is it now? Sourcing around suppliers?” Julian asked.
“I don’t even know if HR has already started to source or not. They just skip that action item, just light that.” He flicked his fingers and made a click sound.
Julian shook her head; she looked down and tasted her iced coffee.
“HR said they have no budget.” Rothman added.
“Well, you see… Budgeted or not, still a decision has to be made.” Julian, being the finance manager tried to share with her colleagues how ‘budget’ works. “If something has been budgeted in the first place, then good. Just try to get it done within the budget. If it’s not, then management needs to decide if they could get more sales to cover those unbudgeted expenses. If they have the confidence of getting more sales to cover those expenses, then just give an amount to HR – how much they should spend on the uniforms. As simple as that.”
“But is HR supposed to mention about budget? Shouldn’t that come from finance’s mouth instead?” Rothman shot his doubts to Julian. These three lunchmates has been open-minded in their conversations; and no hard feelings or bias on each other’s question. They demonstrated mature professionals in them, on every work day of their life.
“Well, HR needs to be aware of the budget they have. Each department have been given a budget each can spend in a year. Any over-spent, they have to explain themselves to the management. Or, they could get approval before spending any unbudgeted item, that’d be better.” Business Analyst, Ken explained to Rothman.
“But… To me… HR shouldn’t mention that during the meeting with the whole team. The ‘no budget’ topic should be discussed separately or 1:1 between HR and Management team. That gives a bad impression to the rest of the team. ‘What now? Are we broke? Is the company no money now?’ You know, people might get panic.” Julian even mimicked the expression that common staff might have when they heard about the words – ‘no budget’.
“Agree, I agree. The rest of the people went silence and was looking at each other during the meeting when HR said that.” Rothman added.
“Oh no… That’s not good. People might get anxiety and worry.” Julian said.
“Budget doesn’t seem to be Tom’s priority. That’s the impression I get from him.” Ken said this after a few seconds of silence thought.
“He has to. He is the GM. If he is not controlling the budget then who would? He prepared the budget for the company. Was the budget numbers just submitted for the sake of report? Once submitted, close the file and that’s it? Come on…” Julian couldn’t agree to such way of doing thing.
“Finance can assist but it has to be led by GM. Each department head is liable to monitor their department’s target and budget. She added.
“Was department head being notified about their budget?” Rothman posted his doubts.
“We did share the finalized budget to Tom. He has to share or escalate the info to his team. Not from us.” Ken recalled and rest assured that he has done the needed in notifying Tom.
“We can be in the meeting when Tom conveys the budget numbers to the department heads. But for finance to lead this topic… We can do that, in fact. But Tom doesn’t seem to have much involvement from finance on his operation meetings. We weren’t being invited so far.” Julian considered what she can do from finance’s perspective. (But if Tom doesn’t welcome finance’s help, then nothing much we can do. Let Tom go his way then.)
“Man… Why can’t they see a bigger picture? We are all on the same boat. We’re trying to help and keep things moving.” Rothman pointed out the issue behind all these slowness in work progress.
“Relax… Let’s have our lunch first.” Ken was happy to see his Mutton Briyani meal being served. “Yeah, Bon Appetite!” Rothman cheered.
On their way back to office, Ken asked them, in the car. “Seems like three of us, we have the ‘can do’ attitude, we could see several ways of doing things and getting things done. It’s hard for us work with ‘reluctant-to-change’ people.”
“Yeah, only if they could see and be more opened minded to the suggestion we shared. We could definitely be able to overcome the issue or at least work around it. No need to spend so much time in meetings that have no outcome from it.” Rothman drove steadily while sharing his points.
“Hmm… Do you think that if we were all practicing ‘Can Do’ attitude, would the situation be getting any better? The saying of ‘Grass is greener on the other side’. But is it really better to have a ‘Can Do’ attitude team?”
Julian shot a rather weird question to the gentlemen. She has this lingered in her mind, on this topic.
“That’d be fantastic! Every would be on the ‘Go-Go’ mode and no more dragging in work progress.” Ken’s excited tone echoed from the back seat. Julian took the assistant seat at the front.
“I think that’d be a perfect world then. A dream team! Everyone has the same direction.” Rothman added next.
Juliana gave it a thought and then said “… Well… Only if every ‘can do’ attitude team member can somewhat be opened-minded.”
“What’s that, Julian? I’m interested to hear more from you.” Rothman looked her way for a second, and then paid his attention back onto the road; he asked.
Actually both gentlemen in the car were enjoying those questions that Julian often came up, out of nowhere. Most of them were views that none of them ever thought of. Rothman was looking forward for what she was going to say next.
“Just a piece of my thought. The so-called dream team. Each members need to be open-minded to adopt one optimum solution from all the ‘Can Do’ options that were being laid on the table. If any of them was stubborn and only wanted to do things his or her own way. Then, that won’t work too. Dream team also requires team work and cooperation.”
Julian started to elaborate her thoughts.
“From what I observed, on myself, whenever people can’t see a bigger picture that I was trying to convey, I would be annoyed and wanted them to just follow and ‘DO IT’! You know.” She added.
“Ha-ha… That’s so like you.” Ken chuckled.
Julian looked at Ken through the reverse mirror; she sent him a side-eye look and then continued.
“At that moment, I just wanted them to do as I suggested, since they can’t think of any better solutions. I would become somewhat arrogant there. I don’t know about you but I did find myself a little nasty there. As if I was the smart one in a room. I don’t like that kind of me. I don’t.” Two seconds of silence, then Julian continued “That’d be another life lesson that I still need to improve on, for myself.”
“Hmm… I think, I too, was like that. I was so pissed off just now and you know what? I thought of go getting my own uniform embroidery work done with my own money.” Rothman shared the decision he had just now, right after that Ops. meeting.
“Are you too rich? I can help you to spend.” Ken teased him.
“Yeah, are you crazy or what? Get the company uniform with own pocket money? Get lost! I’d better embroider my own name on the Polo-T then. ‘JULIAN’.” She shared her choice instead.
“Ha-ha…! I get your point. But it was like… a spur of the moment. Huh… Let me tell you, when I felt all that ‘let’s sweep it under the carpet’ vibes in the meeting room, I just couldn’t help it… That feels terrible. The me now can tell that I wasn’t quite rational back then. My bad. I’m back to self now.” Rothman reflected on himself and laughed it off.
“Welcome back, Rothman.” Ken tried to cheer him up. Rothman chuckled.
“So, ‘Can Do’ attitude people also needs some positive mindset in place, then only we all can move in the same direction and get things done in the most efficient way, in the shortest timeline.”
Julian made a quick wrap up on her thoughts.
“Interesting discussion we have here… Yupe. Agree. I think, the readiness to compromise is needed too. When the time comes where we really have a room full of all ‘can do’ attitude team, we could see what we are lacking of then… So, when can we have our dream team?” Ken asked, with a smirk on his face.
“Soon, in near future, I hope!” Rothman replied.
“Till then. We do what we could for now. At least, I have you guys in the team now. Positive energy people will bring in more same vibe members. Stay positive!” Julian added.
They reached office and headed back to their respective workplace, to complete their tasks.
(Let’s get things done, one by one. Even though, ‘work’ is never ending. Do it efficiently, so that we all can leave at 5:30pm, sharp.) Julian said to herself, in her monkey mind, in her office that was loaded with bulky files and numbers, everywhere.
