Thoughts On A Job

My work week ends a day early today. After a closing meeting with the division's management, we will be rushing back to Bob Hope Airport later this evening for our flight back East.

It was a busy week at work. Meetings, interviews, and hours spent observing the division's operations made it quite a hectic one. But all throughout, our contacts managed to remain very friendly and cooperative in spite of weaknesses and areas for improvement we found and identified with their processes.

A lot of times, one has to destroy in order to build. My job facilitates the process of destroying procedural and operational weaknesses in order to help our divisions run better.

In some ways, I'm glad that I do what I do where I'm at. This country has a strong culture of professionalism at work. People remain very civil and professional even when they disagree with another individual's opinion. In my situation, they understand that I'm simply doing my job when I inform them of areas they need to improve on, things that I know they sometimes don't like to hear. People take a lot of pride in their work and it could be quite a delicate matter when I'm dealing with someone who was the brains behind a particular process or procedure. It is critical for me to manage to retain their support and cooperation because I will certainly need such when I ask them to implement my recommendations.

I make sure to give the people credit where credit is due. I give people credit for what they've accomplished before discussing the areas for improvement. In a lot of situations, people work with whatever resources are available to them. They certainly deserve credit for making the best out of difficult situations. One aspect of my job that I really like is that my findings help shed light on areas that need improvement. And once that light shines on a problem, it often forces a division's management to pour the resources needed to fix it.

On the human side of things, I appreciate the fact that in this country, people can disagree with each other without becoming disagreeable. In the years that I've done this job over here, I haven't come across someone who has taken my findings as a personal attack. They all know and understand that we all have a job to do and that we all aim for what's good for the company and for everyone.

Thinking about the whole thing reminds me of some sad experiences I had when I was still back in the Philippines. For doing the exact same job I'm doing now, I received a death threat from a client whose selfish interests drove his opposition to my recommendations; I had seen our team's findings and recommendations distorted by another client's management to pursue an agenda against their laborers; and I had also witnessed how one client's management twisted and bent our recommendations to continue their corrupt practices. Although I had also seen several instances where our recommendations were implemented to the letter, it is sad to note that such instances did not make up the majority of what I saw. Is it any wonder then that our country is in the state that it is in?

At the end of the day, I am the type of person who just wants to do his job in the way it was meant to be done. The professional idealism I had from my youth has managed to remain with me in a lot of ways. Sometimes office politics do come into play but such things are unavoidable in human organizations. However, as long as the areas that need improvement are addressed to everyone's satisfaction, that's all I care about.