Middle Managers Forum

Remember my previous blog entry on this species of staff in my organization. Yes, the issues have not settled yet. The upper management still focuses on what they do miserably rather than their strenghts. All middle managers met at the 5-star hotel in Kuala Lumpur to discuss on middle managers' roles in achieving the Group Corporate Agenda. An old leader presented on leadership and his expectatio. He said if the middle managers could do this two things, the entire company will be better off. They are: MANAGE THEIR STAFF WORK PERFORMANCE and START DEVELOPING THEIR YOUNG EXECUTIVES. Well, it is easier said than done.

Assessment again – for panelmen this time!!!

In this organization, assessment is the most important tool in people development. Why assessment? Staff is assessed to check their current competency level and secondly and in fact more importantly is for promotion to the higher job grade. Passing judgement and making decision are part of HR Manager’s life, again I say. They are people assessors. They must observe people. They must listen to their stories actively. Stories about how they solve problems at work. Stories about how they manage difficult subordinates. Stories about how they react during plant emergency. Stories about how they react when their ideas are rejected. So on and so forth. HR Managers must listen to all this before determining their competency level.

Today I flew 1600 km from KLIA to another sister company who is running a methanol plant with the capacity of about 2000 metric tonnes per day, to listen to more stories, more than I could put in this blog.

Today’s assessees should have been senior plant operators and technicians, as I was informed initially by the organizer at the HQ. However, but those turning up for the interview was from all level of job grades – from the most junior to most senior and also couple of executives performance shift superintendent function. Another sin committed by HR peoples --- miscommunication ! Nevertheless I obediently did what I am supposed to do.

Most of our senior operators are performing panelmen function. They operate the process units (DEF: many process units make up a plant) by making changes and monitoring a computerized system called DCS (Distributed Control System). Data on plant performance are available to panelmen via DCS screens. If they need to physically check on something on site, they will radio the field operator who will go to the site and gather the data. SO you see panelmen are the most sought after people in oil and gas industry.

Operators and technicians are backbone to our operation and are trained to perform multi-tasks, vis-à-vis they are doing other task besides their core task. For example, an operator who does field work (or field operator) is also required to take samples for testing by laboratory technician. Samples are taken from products tank and tested for compliance to certain parameters before they (products) can be released to customers. Another example is mechanical technician. He also must know some aspect of electrical or instrument of the key equipments.

Back to my interview session. It is a competency-based interview where candidates must cite examples of actual experience to support the competency level achieved. Most senior operators had many evidences to share but not so for the junior ones. It is understood as experiences come with time. One senior operator, when asked “what is his biggest achievement this year”, said it was when he completed Company-sanctioned supervisory program which is mandatory for him to complete in order to get promoted to the higher grade. I was quite surprised by the response as I was expecting something technical and plant-related. So now I knew why operators are not good at paperwork. Everything on plant matters are all on their heads, rarely got documented elsewhere. But one thing for sure is that all my operators are very skillful and passionate about their job.

KPI Setting and Cascading

In this organization, every single move is driven by key performance indicator or popularly known by its acronym, KPI. KPI is so sacred, that new entrants could be forgiven for thinking that KPI is next to the Holy Koran. Everything you do here should draw you closer to your work or personal goals, which make up your KPIs. CEO keeps reminding all executives at every opportunity to avoid 'rocking-chair' syndrome. He says we might be embroiled in day-to-day activities that we cannot see the forest for the trees. But never lose sight of where are you going. The importance of KPI is very obvious and known to all. During year-end performance apprisal, superior will review the agreed KPI of their and asign the performance rating. The magnitude of rewards will solely be determined by the rating. Very obvious indeed.
KPI must be set and later cascaded. These are done in a series of workshops at Company level followed by Department or Section levels. CEO will cascade down his KPIs to his direct report.for instance, CEO holds the Net Profit KPI. Upon cascading down, one of his direct reports Operation Manager holds the Production Volume KPI. Another direct Engineering Manager carries Plant Reliability KPI. You see KPI cascading is very crucial in realizing the top-most business objectives.
In the workshops, KPIs are cascaded and owned. Targets are agreed. Duplication and ambiguity are removed. Priority is set. The agreed KPIs are then documented in a so-called Individual Performance Contract or IPC. Eventually all CEO direct reports will have one IPC each. IPC, as the name implies, is a contract or a promise to your superior that you'll deliver what have been agreed. These contract is then signed off between CEO and his direct ports in a ceremony attended by all staff. We called it a KPI Signing Off ceremony, celebrated with lavish food and drink, to mark that responsibilities and accountabilities have been accepted and promises are to be delivered.
I'll more about this later, God willing.

Doa (Invocation)

There are many God-fearing & pious workers in this
organization. They perform their duties as if they will
live for the next 1000 years and they pray to God as if
they will die tomorrow. What the extremes you may think,
but that is the teaching of the Prophet Mohammad, peace
be upon him.
Every morning at 8am, an assigned staff will read a doa
(an invocation to God Almighty) over public address
system. The PA system is well connected through out the
entire plant covering every single building where there
is a workplace.
The message in the doa is quite simple. May God bless our
operation for the day. Make us better as days go by, in
term of performance and behavior.
The recital of the doa is a form of surrender to Allah
Almighty that men alone cannot ensure safety to this
extremely hazardous petrochemical plant, despite all the
safety measures taken, despite that SAFETY, SAFETY and
SAFETY are the top three priorities by the management.
And it reminds me that the biggest safety is when one is
saved from the Hell Fire.

Exit Interview to find out why people leave

In this organization, exit interview is conducted to

employees who are about to leave the organization by

means of resigning. We do not do it for retirees or those

terminated on disciplinary grounds. As the name implies,

the primary intent is to find out why they leave this

'great' organization, what they dislike about the

organization -- be it management style, company policies,

low salary, no progression, et cetra. The management

wants to know the whys so that they can improve. We do

not make an attempt to persuade the staff to stay.

All this while exit interview is conducted by HR

executive in charge of employee relation alone. She is a

young lady who does it because she has to do it, I think.

Last 2 weeks in the monthly people planning meting, CEO

asks line managers to also get involved in the exit

interview. He was alarmed by the high attrition rate got

reported in that meeting. He also stressed that those

interviewers must be well-prepared and well-equipped. So

from now on, exit interview will be conducted by HR

person and one line department manager (from different

department than that of interviewee).

So I stepped up to this challenge on one busy morning

prior to the weekend in the month of July 2007. The

subject is a senior operator in an operation department

who is leaving for Qatar to join a company called RasGas.

He is 35 years old. I've seen him before but cannot

recalled his name. My first impression of him is that of

a cool person. He listens more than he talks and it is

very rare to find such a person these days. And when he

opens the mouth, the word coming out is very structured

and planned and carries confidence too. Nothing adhoc and

vague. Yes, he is full of wisdom. He says he leaves this

organization because of many things he is not satisfied.

Salary is the main one. He said he earns RM3000 now and

that will be four times higher come next month. His main

job is to start up and operate the gas processing plant

in Qatar. He needs to work only every alternate month,

which is only 6 months in a year. At the end of the

working month, he will be given a flight return ticket

home. At the end of rest month he will fly back to Qatar

to work for another month before going home again in the

following month. So the cycle continues. He also mentions

about people issues in his current department. He said

one of the manager practises favoritism amongs operators.

He runs the department like the police state. He appoints

spies to spy on his enemies. I am quite surprised. I know

my CEO does not like to know this, so I won't mention it

to him. How come the middle managers do such a thing? It

is all but confirms the front-line survey result on

managers in this organization. (Refer to previous blog).

Too bad.

Another thing worth mentioning is the many type of

assessments he has to go thru before he can be promoted

to higher position. That really turns him off.

He also mentioned some trainings he requested but denied

due to favoritism.

When I questioned his loyalty to this organization, one

of our shared values, he simply said, "I am professional,

my loyalty is only to the employer of the day".

At the end of the interview, I wished him all the best

and whispered to him if I could get the contact number of

his recruiter in Qatar. He looked taken aback but

willingly obliged to my request.

Lesson Learnt: MONEY is always the number one pull factor for people to leave the organization. Bad managers could be the number one push factor.

Jakarta - human resource is plenty here

I have an Indonesian maid to help with home chores. My wife is a teacher, a real committed primary school teacher who pays more attention to her students than her kids. We let the maid go back to West Java, Indonesia for a short holiday to visit her ailing father late last year. It was a difficult decision. We were warned about strict immigration requirement on part of Indonesian government. But being a caring employer, we let her go.

The reality set in, and it was a nightmare. She could not return as scheduled. She was stranded at the Jakarta airport. With no employer's leave approval endorsed by the Indonesian Embassy in KL, she could not board the Air Asia flight to KL. She didn't carry much cash either.

The turn of the event saw us me and my wife in the city of Jakarta for the first time. Jakarta is a city of people. People are everywhere. On the road. On the microbus. On the bajaj. Under the bridges. On the train. I was thinking it must be easy to do recruitment here to fill up vacancies in my organization.

ex-IT people bring innovations to HR

I bumped into Murad, another ex-IT Manager who is now doing procurement for international operation. He was then a UNIX server specialist - we were using a number of Sun servers for some of the technical applications - and he was the system administrator. He took care of the server maintenance including capacity planning and he enjoyed the work so much, eventhough having to be in the "engine room" (what we called our data center) all the times. With him was a young ex-IT executive who is now Murad's subordinate. She was complaining about how some old-style bosses hate ex-IT people and looked at them suspiciously. She said these old-style bosses - whose authority only exists on memos and circulars circulated to line departments - are very slow. Their workstyle is paper-based. They feared IT things like XP, PowerPoints slides, emails and anything electronic. They feel threatened by the speed of how ex-IT people get things done. They feared some day they will lose their jobs to these innovated Generation X people. I must admit the truth in what she said. They are two ex-IT staff in my HR Department and they were doing very well. They moved faster than others.

"Ms Reed's favorite student is in town"

The other day I flew into KL International Airport having to attend a performance appraisal higher committee meeting. On the train into downtown KL, I sms-ed an old friend during university days in Canada. We were so close then so much so that we shared personal things together. It has been a year or two since we last met. He seemed to forget my number and was asking who was me. I sms-ed in return writing "Ms Reed's favorite student" and he instantly recognized me. We met in the IT area of KL after my meeting. We talked about life of students overseas, about high school in Guelph near Toronto in Ontario, about our English teacher Ms Reed, about Thunder Bay and Lakehead University, about Winnipeg and Brandon, about good bachelor days, about old friends, about families and works.

It was after the meeting another great encounter happened. I was speaking at the lobby of our HQ with friends when a lady asked to confirm my name. She turned out to be my study mate at the University of Manitoba and I have not met her for a long long long time. The last time I heard she was divorced with her husband, my another friend. We could not talk long as she seemed to be rushing to a something may be a lunch meeting. She asked about my wife.

Rationale: Friendship never dies. Old memories make you happier and younger.

"Middle managers did not coach enough"

This time, not over the BBQ at CEO's residence like last time they did, but they met at office, to discuss about the thing they were supposed to do well but did not do it quite well, at least as alleged by executives under them. Yes, organizational improvement people came up with the latest front line survey result. Front line survey is a quarterly survey responded by junior executives and non-executives including operators and technicians. It is a tool used by the management to check the middle and upper management's effectiveness. As expected the result was not as expected, low and not even meeting the Company's target. Middle managers were blamed again for not doing enough coaching to their staff, for not providing effective feedback to their staff. On question no. 12, "In the past month, you have been provided feedback on your performance by your superior. (Yes/No)", the score was the lowest. A couple of upper management members were present at the auditorium and all agreed it was a shared issue and something must be done in order to get good score in the next survey. Laboratory manager thought that respondents did not understand the question and they must be "guided to answer the way we want it", whatever it means. Procurement manager argued that survey result was not a big deal, why make a fuss when the business is good and Company is making tons of money. Bottomline should matter most, and not what the so-called "front line staff " said. Couple of unhappy staff do not break this organization of 500, so he said. Identify them and have a session to with them. The problem was that it was not a couple of them, it could be even more and nobody knew exactly as the survey was done online. Survey result was also reported by department, and some department managers were screaming, some leaving hall early citing he got more important meeting to attend. OI people got solution already and the mini-workshop they conducted confirmed that. In this so-called "mini-workshop" we were divided into group of four or five. Each was given a piece of yellow paper to write one suggestion on how to improve coaching in their department. Only one best solution was selected from each group, and pasted to the wall for challenge by others. Feedbacks were aplenty, among others, intensify coaching program, let the junior executives coach non-executives freeing managers to only coach executives, managers don't have skill to coach - send them to classroom first, coaching already happens at workplace but not documented, staff meeting is equivalent to coaching already - what more do you expect, executives too dependant now - let them find solutions themselves rather than being spoon-fed all the times, and many more. At the end of the workshop, nobody agreed on anything. Time was running out. Then OI people came in. We were all given a new KPI and must be included in our individual performance contract, which is going to be signed off soon in front of our CEO and of course those front line people. The ultimatum is COACHING MUST BE DONE AT LEAST ONCE A MONTH TO THEIR DIRECT REPORTS. On top of that, managers must conduct quarterly staff engagement session in their department.
OI people had already come up with a new coaching form and everytime a coaching happens it must be documented. Instrument manager complained he has eight direct staff and for him too many already. I had two, thanks God.

Performance Appraisal

In this organization, performance management is a serious matter. Employee is given a set of work objectives at the beginning of the financial year, agreed between him and his superior. Each objective is measured by a performance indicator with set target. Targets are further broken down to base and stretch. If you achieve the base target, you meet the work requirement. If you achieve the stretch target, you exceed the work requirement. Targets change every year to become more and more challenging year after year so that you will improve your performance. The pursuit to achieve stretch target is very rigorous as it ties with better monetary reward, even much better compared to meeting the requirement only. Performance management exercise begins with setting the KPIs at all level.

Sajak “SARAPAN KUASA”

Ratusan juadah berbaris.
Pulau bulat di tengah-tengah.
Seluruh dunia berkumpul di sini.
Lelaki barat dan timur.
Perempuan barat dan timur.
Kanak-kanak bermata biru dan coklat.
Wanita Arab berjilbab membawa setimbun roti dan croissants
Sup meiso dan dim sum dan roti canai.
Sosej, hash potato, tomato yang dibakar.
Salad dan buah buahan dalam dan luar.Lima jenis jus.
Kepingan daging nipis bernama seakan-akan tidak halal.
Perempuan Melayu bertudung membawa nasi lemak sambal udang.
Dan orang seperti aku yang campur semua.

Kolam renang yang tiada perenang.
KLCC yang malu-malu di celahan hutan batu.

Kutanya penuang kopi bernama Patrick berbaju maroon
RM40 satu kepala.
Aku teringat kanak-kanak bermata hitam dari Sik.
Mampukah ke sini?



Abu Adam
Planter’s Inn, Crowne Plaza Mutiara, KL
4/4/2007

Middle Managers caugh in the middle.

In this organization, there are 30 to 40 middle managers, defined as those sitting in between junior executives and senior management teams. They are normally heading a section or a small department less than 20 people or so. The internal survey done has indicated middle managers are a trouble lot. Their subordinates labeled them as selfish, work-centered and spend less or no time in providing direction and guidance to juniors. CEO was upset and wanted the root cause be identified. He invited them to his Company-provided sprawling house for a barbeque. Being one of the troubled lot, I was there too.
Foods were lavish from eastern fried noodle to western tender juicy steak. After that, everybody was seated around the big rectangular-shaped table. A small presentation from organization development department manager followed, on definitions from wikipedia and survey results. We debated quite intensely on who middle managers really were. Then CEO asked what did we think about the issues facing us. Every was made to speak their mind out. Ideas flowed like water. Most believed middle managers are trapped between delivering results and developing young executives. Their experienced staff are taken away due to downsizing. They are overworked. They have to guide and coach new entrants. It is their KPI now, part of their performance contract. They have datelines to meet. Their superiors keep saying they are slow in delivering results., Opportunities at the top are limited. A manager from project engineering department said his 2 experienced project engineers were moved to HQ for promotion, and he was doing everything from writing status report to chairing progress meetings with contractors. And even worst, he blamed HR people, which is me, for not acting fast enough to find replacements. I got the heat. I listened without a word. Yes I am a good listener now.

I talked about an arsenal of tool HR has got. We had the best consultants hired by the HQ working for us. The problem with us is the implementation. Even though the intention is good, how we deliver the initiative can make or break the organization. Take one example – performance appraisal. We’ll talk about this monster later.

You’re closer to God up there in the cloud!

My duty as a HR Manager takes me almost weekly to our world headquarters some 45 minutes by air from the plant. A day’s meeting at the HQ warrants for a day trip which I go early in the morning and returns late in the afternoon, on a relatively small fixedwing aircraft. It is a Beechcraft 1900D, 10 times smaller compared to familiar Boeing 737 or 747 or Airbus. The chartered aircraft seats 19 persons in two rows of 8 seats each row. The backseat seats 3 persons horizontally, just like seats in a bus, I mean land bus. There is only only entrance which is in the front.
The cockpit is visible from the passengers at the back in the cabin. No curtain or door. You could see clearly activities in the cockpit. I used to wish how someday I would be in there, but my time has passed I guess.

For those who have never flown in the small aircraft, the feeling is just being in the confined space such as manhole or elevator. You are cramped with a little window with dull view. At the check-in counter, after they check your identity, they take your weight plus your stuff. Earmuff is provided. No refreshment onboard. No welcoming onboard greeting. Only a brief safety briefing on the location of the emergency exit and how to wear the oxygen mask, should it falls from above you.

When it hits the cloud, the aircraft swayed to the left and right and left. You remember God and read all verses from Koran you know so that you will be safe. You remember death and your wife and your kids. You forgot God once it is back on the ground, safely. Well, that’s human.