Category / Job

by Eileen 配仪

Sound of Working

I am sure we have all seen situations when people on a team don’t get along. Maybe they compete with each other, vying for the boss’s favor, and in …

When the management team is not a real team

From Norman who writes an audit and risk blog. To be heard and to be seen is encouraged as part of “getting ahead”. A team that is actually working well will just be working without fanfare. Sort of like an experienced artisan just being extremely excellent in their jobs.

Just like end customers, as employees we tend to see management as a single body, working in an orderly manner towards goals they have promised to deliver. That is not the norm really – not even in family business where one might imagine the whole family is working towards more revenue and wealth.

The norm is some volume of “being unsettled” – it could be louder in some places. A management team that is not a real team is the norm because within a team there will be competition to be heard, to be seen. That said, I won’t go so far as to label healthy competition – it’s just the sound energy from working.

Does it ever become dysfunctional? It could when executives try hard at sabotaging each other to the extent that they undermine the firms results as a whole. Yet most firms with a proper scorecard structure can withstand this. A small firm (eg family business) who has less or no support will dragged to a standstill by dysfunction but most founder leaders at this point will sort it out before it goes further by calling it out.

by Eileen 配仪

At 48

I updated the front of my blog with the pictures I painted. It feels fancy – as if I am artistic. My daughter has been very kind, saying that I am so cool, that I can paint so prettily. It feels funny hearing her say that. I immediately deny it, insisting I don’t have any talent. 

When I imagine being 48, I imagine myself single, mostly pay check to pay check in a spartan home. I imagine myself a lousy writer whose always blocked but writing bad novels about Singapore and stuck, not knowing where to sell my book. I imagine that my job requires me to look at data and never talk to anyone. 

At 48, my life is not what I imagined myself to me. I am now squarely stuck in Operational Risk. I might have a called a couple of locations in the past to help them with their troubles. My calls are now daily, clarifying, educating, organising. I am writing a lot more PPT and being “gifted feedback” about my bad PPT.   I can’t imagine myself now – having the kind of immense difficulties with my son. The kind of difficulties that makes me suspect some level of  disorder. That the view from my home begs to be painted. (It’s a Housing Board flat.) That I have learnt to save money. That I have learnt how to do art. That I have a post grad in Finance – astounding, really. I also never thought that my actual friends will be in my office. Just yesterday, I sat with V. at work; the week before I was in the same call as Z.      

It feels like a giant leap for me. No way I would have been able to imagine enough to write this in my 5 year / 10 year / 15 year plan. In case you imagine that I have landed in a place of incredible, eye searing success. Just a leap into a different universe. Strange and amazing. 

I hope this will be for my kids.  The kind amazing giant leaps that makes life interesting.  Hard but not boring.

by Eileen 配仪

I was at a do yesterday. (I can’t think of how to call it other than a do. It’s a casual work related event that requires me to look not too far away from my work self. )

The Very Important Person At the Pinnacle of Our Food Chain came out from some hidden place. He stood and waved at the proletariats hoping perhaps for a roar of approval. Just before he had to go and deliver his speech, he walked over and grabbed a child for a photoshoot. The child did a sad emoticon and reached out for the mom at once.

He returned this child and took another nearby for his shoot. That kid did not cry. I will not be able to just grab and do it. I will have a long conversation of nonsense words with the baby to arrive at some understanding that he or she was amenable to being picked up. I will then cautiously pick the child up while continuing that goobly gook conversation.

It must be the aura of being Very Important.

by Eileen 配仪

挤眉弄眼

On a whim I recorded myself on a call. I imagined myself a dull stone faced worker droning on in rapid mode. I tend to speed along in chaired meetings because I don’t like having meetings but being sandwiched between a rock and a difficult place I have to communicate.

I played back and found everything about myself strange. The way I pulled down on the corners of my mouth to the multitude of facial expressions I pull.

I started my working life as a call centre worker and it is almost as if I never left that first job. Still in a head set after 27 years.

by Eileen 配仪

I just happen to know the answer to this trivia.

Are you superstitious?

Superstition developed as a form of risk mitigation practice. It helps us deal with the unknown & unforeseeable in our daily lives. The rituals are more detailed & elaborate as the sense of risk increases.

Details could be read here and this article describes superstitious  in football.

It is going to be difficult for anyone to denounce superstition totally given most societies have some form of superstitious beliefs. What doesn’t help: our pattern finding brains have a preference for pattern finding.

This means it can be as silly as “making it rain by washing my car ” or as elabourate as a ritual for ancestral worship codified by a Chinese emperor from ancient past.

I’m in risk management. Of course I’m going to veer towards superstitions. As with any other average persons, I will not rank very high, nor very low on such practices. I do have an odd one, due mainly to my scatterbrain than anything else. When I travel, if I missed out packing a minor thing, for instance, floss,  or face wash, it means no bad horrifying thing will happen to me.       

by Eileen 配仪

Work rant

I logged into a free risk seminar on the 2023 systemic risk landscape. The call sounded like a 2023 news events roundup. I logged off soon after – it was not very useful or interesting.

Systemic risk group is an oddity. At the point of a systemic risk event occurring, it will always appear idiosyncratic until it is not. It is also mixed up with potential risk events that might affect the organisation that other organisations face. But that isn’t systemic. Rounding up news events and pointing out this might affect your organisation is not that useful without identifying the kind of organisation that will most likely be impacted.

by Eileen 配仪

借题发挥

A few weeks a go I had a massive and awful telling off at work.  Sometimes, it is clear what needs to be done.  The kind of telling to I got was more of the Wong Kar Wai type – where he keeps asking the actors to repeat the scene until the actors think they don’t know how to act anymore.   

This, my mom’s cancer, my husband’s trip to the A&E，my daughter’s trip to the A&E, they all add up to really want to push me over into the territory of I need a break from work. This is sometimes not real – it is a fantasy, an escapism that makes me think that life is better on the other side of work. I don’t particularly want to find another place to work because the shit is only different in shape, size, smell and place. Plus, my workplace is not toxic, the location risk colleagues are really the best people to work with and there is no mean spirited people in my day to day interactions. My manager + higher ups will walk me through how to handle minefields. Yet corporate life is not a walk in the park because such is the nature of the beast. 

Taking a break might result in a permanent retirement. The concerning thing is that I have seen around those close to me, plus read it that who leave work permanently fall easily  into depression or at best feel unhappy during transition. They don’t feel happier or more relaxed and this could go on for ages. As a worker, one can use work as an excuse for the negative feelings. When there is no excuse, when one discovers life is suffering then there is only religion that can solve it. I am not well prepared to fix it currently. I don’t have a good daily practice.  

LivingaFI updated about retirement post his and his wife’s retirement. It made me wonder if they became depressed when there was nothing in their lives to provide external validation. The freedom in retirement means freedom from comparison, freedom from the need to escape. Not on the way that   freedom traditionally means and feels – I have left something to reach the shores of my dreams. Freedom  becomes like a version of emptiness that is beyond simple appreciation. It becomes full of everything we ever are happy or unhappy about life. That can be extremely overwhelming because there is no longer have distractions to tune out all the everything.  That can be quite terrifying.     

To continue to get a paycheck is not an easy path either. However, it has security – not just from money but also medical coverage,   dental subsidy, insurance and so on – normal everyday things that I take for granted and forgot they exist because I occassionally use them. 

发挥了这么多，还是没有结论。只能高唱，我问天。