Ellery's Essays

Burning Platforms and How to Prevent Them

A proprietor who sells electrical products was experiencing a dramatic drop in sales. He hires a consultant who comes from a large multinational corporation and asks him what can be done.

The consultant suggests that the proprietor develop a vision, mission, objectives, and strategies (VMOS) for his business. The consultant conducts a team-building session with the proprietor and his staff and for several days, they draft and formulate a VMOS. When they finally finish with a fancy-worded VMOS, the consultant presents the VMOS to all the employees and stakeholders. When the consultant went to collect his fee, the proprietor asks the consultant, “so when are we going to talk about my falling sales?”

The phrase, “burning platform” takes its origin from a story about three (3) men on a North Sea oil rig that was on fire. Two (2) men decided to jump into the icy waters while one (1) man opted to stay. The two (2) men who jumped were badly injured from their fall but rescuers were able to save them. The man who stayed on the platform died. Management consultants have cited this story as a lesson that when faced with an urgent crisis, one should take risks and go for deliberate change. Otherwise, if one does nothing, the business dies.

The proprietor of electric relays was on a burning platform; his business was on fire in the form of falling sales. The clueless consultant he hired didn’t address the urgency of the problem. The consultant focused more on what he was good at from being an executive at a multinational. He ignored the crisis happening to the proprietor.

Many managers complain about frequent “fires” that disrupt their daily routines and preoccupy their time and resources. Some executives cite a variety of reasons for these “fires,” from lack of leadership to poor discipline. The executives would form committees, hold strategy meetings, scold managers for poor judgment, or blame poor discipline among rank-and-file employees. Whatever they prescribe, these executives would miss the point that there’s a crisis that urgently needs to be addressed.

Crises, like burning oil platforms, don’t just go away. True, a fire may burn itself out, but even if they did, they’d leave a lot of damage. When there’s a fire, everyone either runs to put it out or runs away. No person in his right mind would just sit there idly by and get himself burned.

Unfortunately, many executives don’t know a crisis even if it’s raging in front of them. It’s what we would call denial, a reaction inherent in human nature. We deny and ignore a crisis to believe it is not happening, that there can’t be a threat.

Most of the client firms I’ve diagnosed have burning platforms. Some are big, some are small; but urgent crises nonetheless that disrupt operations, reduce sales, increase costs, and cause other problems. Burning platforms are often fast-moving fires that eat away the insides of a business and challenge the cores of an organisation.

Managers of course need to address burning platforms. The key is to know that there is one. Sometimes, managers, especially high-level executives, don’t realise they have one. The following are situational examples of burning platforms that executives sometimes ignore until it’s too late:

Treasury managers pointing out critical cash-flow balances and immediately urging field sales personnel to collect receivables from customers;
Manufacturing managers alerting purchasing executives that their raw materials are running out because vendors didn’t deliver as scheduled;
Logistics managers facing a shortage of trucks as senior marketing executives complain of empty supermarket shelves where new products are supposed to be;
Information system contractors alerting the firm’s chief information officer (CIO) that the company’s data centre’s room’s air-conditioning has broken down and the IT system is in danger of shutting down.

What should an enterprise do about burning platforms? Put them out, of course. What would it take to do it? Everything that one can muster. It is a fire!

One does not ignore a fire. One works to put it out now and until it’s out;
And when we say out, we should mean really out, to the extent that whatever caused it won’t ignite again.

The best solution against burning platforms is preventing them in the first place. The means to do that is usually via having relevant and effective monitoring systems and risk management measures.

It starts with having plans and policies that consider potential risks and include contingencies.

These plans and policies should answer questions like:

What to do when customer collections are falling behind?
What’s the inventory policy when raw material stocks are running low?
What’s the plan when projections show not enough trucks next week to deliver orders?
What’s the backup plan in case the Internet server crashes?
Who will take over, work from home, or substitute when members of staff are found to be infected with the CoVid-19 virus?

Any plan or policy should have pre-approved procedures against pre-defined crises such that the organisation can immediately take action without having to go through time-consuming justifications to top management. Of course, managers should always notify executives when a crisis is imminent and action should be taken.

Common sense dictates that when there’s a burning platform, we either try putting it out or run for safety. Sometimes, however, we deny there’s a burning platform crisis and we go about our business until we and our enterprises are consumed.

Recognising the existence of a crisis is important but prevention is key to avoiding any crisis. Plans and policies that take into account potential risks, build in contingencies, and allow immediate pre-approved action would help a lot in keeping any new crisis from getting too big if not stifling them at the start.

We should never sit idly by when there’s a crisis and even if there isn’t one.

About Overtimers Anonymous

Building Track Records of Trust

My mechanic, Diony, recommended I change the power steering fluid of my car. I use automatic transmission fluid (ATF) for the power steering because another mechanic said it was okay. But when Diony checked my car the other day, he said I shouldn’t use ATF for power steering. ATF is for automatic transmissions; power steering fluid is what’s needed for power steering. Duh!

I have trusted previous mechanics for their opinions and recommendations. I trust Diony when he fixes my car. But if Diony says the ones before him were wrong with the power steering fluid, how do I know if he is right versus the ones before him?

When we consult mechanics, plumbers, and technicians to fix issues with our cars, appliances, and equipment, we do so on the assumption they are the most qualified for the jobs. We’d rely on their credentials and build our confidence from our experiences with them.

Managers of enterprises engage contractors often by bidding the jobs to candidates. Bidding, however, skews more towards price than to value. Bidding also is typically based on a pre-defined scope of work, also known as the terms of reference (ToR), which practically defines a solution for a problem even if one isn’t found yet.

It makes sense to bid out work when a solution is known. But it won’t be if we don’t have an idea what we need to do. More often than not, we seek expert help to solve problems in which we have no outright answer.

We don’t do a bidding process when we consult medical doctors. We first find one we can trust to give us a diagnosis. When the doctor recommends a treatment, we then find what we would believe would provide the best value even if the doctor may already recommend a provider for the treatment. If we’re not comfortable with the diagnosis and recommended treatment, we’d get a second opinion. We would only look at our treatment options once we agree with the diagnosis which we believe is the right one.

The same logic applies when we manage our assets. We would first get an engineer or technician to assess our assets and we only would bid jobs only when we are confident that we have found the best solution.

Some managers short-cut jobs by bucking this logic. Managers would ask contractors to bid for jobs with vague terms of references. Technicians would repair machines that end up more broken than fixed. Engineers would bill additional costs because managers would make last-minute changes to scopes of work that weren’t very clear in the first place. Worst of all, managers would hire contractors who weren’t really qualified, offered wrong solutions, or just did the work wrong.

When they go against common sense, enterprises end up paying more what they should due to shoddy work that was done for a solution to a problem that wasn’t well-defined.

My mechanic, Diony, has a good track record of successful maintenance jobs so I can trust him for his diagnosis and good work. And it does make sense in the first place to use power-steering fluid for the power-steering system than to use any other fluid (duh!).

For enterprises who are seeking experts, it’s always best to check the credentials, ask for referrals, and interview them. Getting experts on board that are trustworthy over the long run to consult with will benefit the enterprise. It’s just plain sensible that we need experts to assist in assessing the issues, defining the problems, and finding the best solutions. Bidding becomes straightforward as scopes of work become clear.

Every enterprise would do well to have experts to consult with to help diagnose problems and recommend solutions. Over time, the experts and the enterprise would build track records of trust that would reap mutual benefits for both parties.

About Overtimers Anonymous

Non-Moving Inventories: The Supply Chain’s Elephant in the Room

The phrase, “elephant in the room,” is said to have originated from a fable by Ivan Krylov that tells about “a man who goes to a museum and notices all sorts of tiny things, but fails to notice an elephant.” It has become a favourite expression for an obvious problem or issue that for some reason gets muddled, forgotten, or avoided.

Just about every supply chain has an elephant in its room and in many cases, it’s called non-moving inventory.

Non-moving inventories are items that have ended up idle in storage or on the factory floor for extended periods of time. Non-moving inventories can be raw materials, packaging materials, spare parts, work-in-process, or finished goods. They are merchandise that were acquired or produced at a cost but have become unattractive in value.

Non-moving inventories end up as they are for a variety of reasons:

the enterprise produced more than what could actually be sold;
items are defective, rejections, damaged, or were returned from customers;
items are old, obsolete, expired, or discontinued;

Whatever the reason, enterprise executives would see them as one thing: a nuisance that takes up valuable space and ties up working capital.

But they are more than a nuisance. Non-moving inventories are cash investments that went to naught, as they had lost their selling value. They are blots to marketers who see them not only as visible failures of their promotional strategies but also as barriers to introducing new products. Some enterprises hold their marketing and sales executives accountable for non-moving inventories and would insist they lead in running them out before any new product is introduced.

Non-moving inventories are potential threats. When non-moving inventories grow in size or quantity, they not only become the elephants in the stock-room or storage facility, they also become risks. An extreme example is when non-moving ammonium nitrate fertiliser exploded in a Beirut, Lebanon warehouse in 2020: https://www.theguardian.com/world/2020/aug/04/huge-explosion-beirut-lebanon-shatters-windows-rocks-buildings

The good news is many non-moving inventories don’t end up exploding. The bad news is that even if they don’t explode, they are a potential threat to the enterprise’s balance sheet and to its future growth.

Despite their nuisance and threat, many enterprises take for granted non-moving inventories and instead try to get them away from their sight.

A case in point: a large corporation that makes steel beams and heavy metal parts hired a chief information officer (CIO) to streamline the inventory system. To appreciate the company’s products and materials, the new CIO toured the corporation’s main factory and warehouse which was just outside the city. He noticed a huge pile of rusting steel products at a far side of the facility and asked what they were. The plant manager who was his tour guide said the items were scrap.

The CIO asked how come there’s so much of the “scrap?”

The plant manager said, “I don’t know. They’ve been sitting there for years ever since I was hired.”

When the CIO reported the “scrap” to the Chief Executive Officer, the latter was outraged.

“They [his chief finance officer & chief manufacturing officer] told me that they got rid of that stuff many years ago!”, the CEO exclaimed.

The CEO summoned the CFO and Chief Manufacturing Officer (CMfgO) and ordered a thorough audit.

The CFO and CMfgO were furious at the new CIO for making them look bad for exposing the hidden inventories. Within a few weeks, they drove the CIO to resign after they constantly hurled negative comments about him and refused to cooperate with him in improving the inventory system.

As for the non-moving inventories, they continued to sit in that far corner of the company’s factory, where executives once again forgot about them.

For the steel company, the non-moving inventories would come back to haunt the executives. This is especially true as the non-moving items would multiply in size and take up more space. It would become a problem when the enterprise entered hard times and had difficulty paying debts. Auditors would no doubt point to the non-moving inventories as where the company’s cash is tied up.

How then does one get rid of non-moving inventories? The answers are straightforward but can be controversial:

Sell Them Even at a Loss

Sell non-moving inventories at the best but most attractive price possible. If one can only sell them at scrap value, so be it.

Some finance executives, however, caution against such drastic selling. It’s one thing to convert non-moving inventories to cash; it’s another to sell them very cheaply. Losses in balance sheets attract negative attention especially if an enterprise is publicly listed. But if one wants to once and for all remove the elephant in the room, this is usually the number one solution, whatever the hit it will bring to an enterprise’s financial reputation.

Throw Them Away

This is worse than selling at scrap value but sometimes it’s the next best option if the enterprise needs valuable space and the alternative is to pay dearly for more space.

Throwing stuff away can also be a hassle given all the compliance protocols it might entail (e.g. environmental impact). But if the items are toxic or dangerous to carry for extended periods of time, the enterprise might not have much of a choice.

Salvage Whatever Can Be Recycled or Reused

Some enterprises would invest in salvaging what can be reusable or re-saleable from non-moving inventories. It’s never an attractive option as it will often require significant expense in time, materials, and equipment. But it can be a compromise in that salvaging non-moving stock may not result in a sudden hit to an enterprise’s accounting books. It would also be an opportunity for enterprises to dispose items gradually while getting something back in return.

Process the Work-In-Process (WIP)

Many manufacturing enterprises have work-in-process inventories (WIP). They’re the stuff that lie between production operations, usually waiting their turn for the next step in a manufacturing process.

Some manufacturers, however, keep their WIP waiting too long, sometimes too long that the WIP loses value from deterioration and expiration. This happens when manufacturers don’t follow first-in first-out (FIFO), customers cancel orders while items are in production, or managers allow other orders to “jump the line” or move other WIP ahead of others.

I’ve seen WIP stored in one place for more than three (3) years, hidden away in a dark corner of a factory, their values long written off by auditors who thought they were losses.

Even if written off, WIP takes up space and represent poor management resulting in waste. And even as operations managers may succeed in hiding and getting rid of them, poor manufacturing practices will undoubtedly result in more WIP time to time.

The answer to avoiding non-moving WIP is to process them right away. If they are no longer needed, then either the manufacturing manager should process them anyway, scrap them, or salvage some value from them. Manufacturing managers should also have a policy to always process all the WIP within a maximum number of days, if not hours.

The best way to get rid of non-moving inventories is to avoid having them in the first place. Unfortunately, many enterprises are stuck with them, in one form or another. Eventually, non-moving inventories become easy to spot as an elephant in a room would be. They’d be that pile of junk, that stack of unidentified boxes, that pallet of dusty cartons, those drums behind the building, or that huge tank that managers have no idea what it contains.

Any non-moving inventory will stick out like a sore thumb. We may try to ignore them but they’ll grow into something larger and harder to afford if we let them.

Let’s not let them. Enterprises should get rid of them as fast as possible. Teamwork with financial auditors and accountants would help because when one has to remove an elephant, one needs all the help one can get.

About Overtimers Anonymous

What Organising Really Means

There are four (4) basic functions to management: planning, organising, directing, and controlling.

We can picture what planning, directing, and controlling are. They’re kind of straightforward and self-explanatory. Organising, however, is not.

When we “organise,” what’s the first thing that comes to mind? We perhaps think of putting our stuff in order, like filing away papers and cleaning out the clutter. Maybe we see organising as rearranging the tables of our subordinates, laying out the machinery, and scheduling who’ll work from home versus who’ll be at the office. It can be that we think it is about making an organisational chart that shows the positions of people.

Organising as a management function, however, is more than just all of the above.

The dictionary defines organise as “cause to be structured or ordered or operating according to some principle or idea,” and “arrange by systematic planning and united effort.” The key words are structure, order, and arrange and it is done for a principle or idea via systematic planning and united effort.

https://www.thefreedictionary.com/organise

Organising is therefore not just making things neat. It’s about making things ready for a specific purpose. The “things” in this case are people, assets, resources, and products.

Organising People

Managers organise people to do their jobs efficiently and effectively. Organising is about employing and deploying the people crucial to making the enterprise’s goals into realities. These include those we directly hire, i.e. employees, and those we engage with such as contractors and vendors.

The tasks in organising people include team building, organisational development, training, defining job descriptions or scopes of work, and assignment of duties and responsibilities.

Organising Assets

To get things done, managers need to have their assets in place and ready to be used. These include having enough funds to pay for them and prepping them for operation.

There have been many times I’ve seen managers order equipment and then realising they didn’t set aside enough money to pay the seller, causing delays in installation and start-ups.

Organising assets includes tasks such as allocating cash in conjunction with budgets, setting up work stations, making and doing a checklist for preventive maintenance, calibrating gauges, running diagnostics, preparing storage space, and housekeeping.

Organising Resources

Resources are the materials, supplies, energy, water, and spare parts that we need to get things done.

Managers tend to underestimate the organisation of resources.

Organising resources include preparing purchase orders, putting items in their proper place, checking that item codes are updated in the information system, informing security and receiving clerks what vendors are delivering the next day, clarifying policies such as first-in first-out retrieval, cycle counting of items to reconcile with inventory records, and regular quality inspections of critical components & parts.

Organising Products

Similar to organising resources, we should make sure products are in their proper places, their codes complete in our computers, and delivery documents are arranged visibly for dispatch. Organising products also includes classifying each product’s inventory policy, marshalling finished goods for staging, categorising them by segment, group, family, and stock-keeping unit, and fixing the process descriptions and parameters of each.

Organising products is no less important than organising people, assets, and resources. In many cases, it should be the first to be done before the rest.

Organisation is not the same as organising. The former is about structure; the latter is function. Organising is work we may call mundane but necessary because the devil is in the details. We can plan, direct, and control but if we don’t organise, that is, focus on things, make sure they’re in order, arranged, and ready for the strategies we will execute, then we’ll for sure run into trouble.

Leaders rally people to a cause. Managers organise people, assets, resources, and products to make real the goals of the cause.

About Overtimers Anonymous

Owning versus Managing: What’s the Difference?

Do you own the business or do you manage the business?*

A senior member of the board of trustees of a high-rise building walked into its administration office and asked the accountant there to order parts for a diesel generator set. The senior board member believed that the generator needed a minor repair and not only does he tell the accountant to buy parts, he also tells the building technicians to do the repair the coming weekend. At no time does he talk to the building manager or the engineer both of whom were at the office.

The building manager didn’t agree with the board member. She made that clear in a previous board meeting where the senior member as well as the president and other board trustees were present. The building manager felt that an outside contractor, with special expertise in generator sets, should diagnose and repair the building’s diesel generator. It shouldn’t be entrusted to the building’s technicians who themselves said they were not qualified to do the job.

The senior board member didn’t care for the building manager’s opinion and didn’t bother to talk to the engineer. When asked why, the senior board member said the technicians agreed to do the job and the engineer didn’t seem to be interested.

We can easily see that the board member was wrong for pushing ahead with a job that is the responsibility of the manager. But this kind of thing happens a lot not just in buildings but in businesses. Owners hire managers but take it upon themselves to micro-manage daily activities.

Owners would insist on being part of every daily decision, from approving every petty cash disbursement to studying every project, big or small. Managers end up paralysed; they won’t move until the owners tell them what to do.

Thus, the question to enterprise owners: are you there to own the business or manage the business?

Managing the business is about planning, organising, directing, and controlling the enterprise’s day-to-day activities and projects. It’s about supervising people, procuring resources, budgeting & accounting, and compliance to rules & regulations. Managers make sure goals are met and strategies executed.

Owners set the standards and peg the objectives of the enterprise they have stakes in. They monitor the performance of the enterprise in which management delivers and reports. They listen to management’s recommendations on issues such as budgets, plans, projects, and strategies. It is the owners who decide via their boards or executive committees whether plans push through or not and how much resources will be planned, procured, and given. And of course, it is the owners who hire and fire the managers.

Both managers and owners share the same common interest: make the enterprise prosper. Each just have different roles. But because we are human in which we each have our own opinions, owners sometimes cross the line and interfere with management.

There is nothing wrong when owners complain when they notice employees come in late for work or when they question why customers aren’t receiving their orders quickly. There is nothing wrong when owners suggest ideas to managers whether it be for process improvement or for a new gadget.

It becomes wrong when owners push managers on how to address a complaint or how to adopt whatever idea or suggestion is raised. Managers are there to figure out how to do things. Owners are there to see how managers perform.

Managers represent the owners when they deal with clients, vendors, contractors, community, and government. Managers therefore should make sure their decisions and policies are in line with the owners’ standards and objectives.

Owners lead. Managers execute. Owners set the destinations; managers map the routes. Owners approve the strategies; managers act on them.

There should be no overlap. No crossing over. Owners should know their place as much as managers should too. If owners want to manage, then they should assume the position but be ready for the consequences, one of which is organisational paralysis.

*Thank you to Mr. Jovy Jader of Prosults for coining the question and inspiring this blog.

About Overtimers Anonymous

Management is Not Leading, and It Isn’t Staffing Either

First thing I was taught as a management trainee at a large multinational corporation in 1985 was that there are four (4) basic functions to managing.

These are: Planning, Organising, Directing, Controlling.

In 2021, when I search for “management functions” on the Internet, the results mostly are: Planning. Organising, Leading, Controlling, and Staffing.

Leading had replaced Directing. There’s that additional 5^th function called Staffing.

I see leadership, management, and supervision as three circles, in which one is a subset of another:

Leading or leadership is not management but encompasses it and more. Leadership is about influencing people towards a cause, philosophy, religion, or vision. Management lies within leadership, not the other way around. To call leadership a “function” of management degrades that special talent or gift of charisma and influence not many people have.

Management is about getting and administering the resources that would bring reality to a leader’s cause. Leadership is enrolling people while management is about enrolling resources and doing the details in enrolling people.

And then there’s supervision. Supervision is overseeing people, making sure they are following policies, rules, regulations, and directives laid down by managers and leaders. It falls within the sphere of management but it isn’t management.

Staffing isn’t a function of management. Management plans head counts for staffs, organises the resources for staffing, directs the staffing, and makes sure the staffing activities are under control. But it isn’t a function by itself; it’s one of many activities covered by management.

I wonder if the people who put in Leading and Staffing as management functions have done any actual management at all.

About Overtimers Anonymous

Twenty-Five Questions We May Find Ourselves Asking Everyday

Some of us ask very profound questions when we go to bed at night or wake up in the morning:

“Why are we here?”

“Where are we going?”

“What happens when we die?”

For many who work long hours and experience the daily adventures of hand-to-mouth jobs, however, these questions are quickly overtaken by more mundane ones.

The following are twenty-five (25) sample seemingly trivial questions we may find ourselves asking as we go through our daily lives:

Why does it take so long for the traffic light to change?
Why does the traffic enforcer make me and a hundred drivers wait as long as twenty (20) minutes at an intersection?
Why does my mobile phone conversation keep disconnecting?
Why does it take up to five (5) times to redial and connect a mobile phone call?
Why do some fast-food restaurants reject my credit card while the drug store down the street accepts it?
Why doesn’t the brand-name wrist-watch store have on stock the brand-name wrist-watch strap to replace the one for my brand-name wrist-watch?
Why does it take months for the big hardware store to replace the light bulb I bought but which stopped working after a few days?
Why do many new bridges only have two (2) lanes, one for each way?
Why ban trucks on roads at certain hours of the day?
Why do traffic cops target and stop trucks for alleged violations all the time?
Why put speed bumps (we call them humps) on newly-cemented smooth roads?
Why do some cars not stop when there’s a red traffic light?
Why does the water company dig holes and trenches on newly-built roads?
Why does the power company require so much paperwork and time to change the meter of a house?
Why are there so many fires every March, which every year is fire-prevention month?
How come there’s always an elevator that’s not working?
Why are there never enough parking spaces to park my car at the convenience store or at the bank?
Are Manila’s streets for cars or for basketball courts?
Why do we have to pay the city’s tax-paid garbage truck to haul our trash?
Why do I have to renew my business’s environmental permit when I already have a city hall mayor’s permit?
Why do I have to submit a hundred pages of tax forms when I already had filed it electronically through the tax agency’s website?
Why does the power company give me only a week to pay my electric bill before they threaten disconnection?
Why is the bank’s 24/7 ATM always off-line?
Is it me or is the bread I buy getting smaller?
Why is fish so expensive in a country surrounded by water?

About Overtimers Anonymous

The Case of the Half-Cut Tree; How We View Accountability

There’s a tree across the street from where I live that looks like it’s half of what it should be.

The tree’s trunk is rooted on an empty lot. Its leafy side hangs over a street intersection.

The tree’s leafy branches press down on telephone & internet cables. Over the years, especially when the wind is blowing, the branches force the cables to snap. We’ve lost telephone landline service several times as a result.

One day, a contractor working for the power utility company MERALCO (short for Manila Electric Company), came by and started trimming the tree’s branches. He trimmed the few branches on the side of the tree that didn’t touch the telephone wires. When I asked if he could prune the branches pressing on the telephone wires, he said he couldn’t. His contract with MERALCO covered cutting tree branches touching electric cables but not those belonging to the telecom companies. And since there were no MERALCO cables where the telephone wires were, he had no authority to cut anything there. I should just call the owner of the lot to fix the problem, he said.

The problem was I didn’t know the owner of the empty lot. I haven’t seen anyone on that empty lot for years.

I called the phone company and reported about the tree branches endangering their wires. The man on the other end of the phone said the phone company couldn’t cut the branches. The phone company does not have a permit from the Philippine government’s Department of Environment & Natural Resources (DENR) to cut tree branches. The phone company cannot justify a permit, the man said, because their cables pose no danger to the tree. The MERALCO contractor, the man added, probably has a DENR permit because the electric cables are high-voltage and may pose a risk to the tree.

In other words, I can’t ask either the MERALCO contractor or the phone company to trim the tree and free the telephone wires from the pressing branches. The MERALCO contractor went on to trim the tree from one end but would not cut the tree on the other side. The tree therefore looks cut in half with a leafy side matched by an empty space on the other.

One day a city engineer’s crew in a truck passed by, inspecting the street lights. I approached the crew and asked them if they can do something about the tree branches. The crew chief said he’ll look into it. A few days later he came back and promised to trim the tree. It’s been two (2) weeks and he hasn’t come back.

Who’s accountable for the telephone wires? The phone company owns the wires but they won’t touch the tree. They’ll repair the telephone wires when they snap but they won’t trim the tree to prevent it from happening.

Who should trim the tree branches? Both the MERALCO contractor and the phone company said the owner of the empty lot should be the one responsible to cut the tree. It doesn’t mean though he should be responsible for the telephone wires.

What’s the role of the city government and the DENR? I imagine that the the city hall people do not consider themselves accountable for either the tree or the telephone wires. The city government would be concerned about safety and well-being of residents but they wouldn’t touch the tree if there’s no apparent risk. As for the DENR, they’d rather no one do anything to the tree.

The case of the half-cut tree represents the state of accountability in society today. To put it bluntly, we avoid accountability.

Saying that people avoid accountability is a matter of personal opinion. But from experience and observation, we try as much as we could to not take in added responsibility, unless there’s an incentive or reward to be had.

First reason: it’s human nature. When we were children, most of us would blame someone else for our misbehaviour. This is to evade punishment or to look good. “It’s not our fault, it’s hers!”, we’d exclaim when our parents catch us doing something wrong.

Second reason: We have become more defensive. Thanks to social media and all the finger-pointing, trolling, and blown-up scandals that come with it, we have become more careful about what we say and do. People can see more of what we’re doing and question and criticise us for it. We have seen people’s reputations damaged or their careers side-lined because they said or did something someone didn’t agree with.

We therefore hesitate to accept new challenges, ones that especially bring us out of our comfort zones. We fear criticisms or worse, legal and social consequences for volunteering ideas or joining a cause.

In business, enterprise executives look out for their interests before deciding on an initiative. Executives and managers rather work within their turfs rather than venture with other departments. Employees don’t go beyond their job descriptions, and if they don’t know what their job descriptions are, they’ll demand it be clarified before they proceed to work.

Third Reason: We have become more individualistic. Teamwork should mean people working together. But in the real world, it has become synonymous to delegating and performance evaluation.

We see teamwork in sports such as when basketball players pass the ball and assist one another to score. We see it in religious organisations when we see choirs practice singing together. But we hardly see it in every day work in which managers simply farm out tasks to subordinates and assign them deadlines and criteria for success.

We have become more careful of what we commit as a result. As much as possible, we don’t commit if we could. Better if we don’t join a team. We’d rather work on our own rather than risk getting more to do that we’d be condemned later for if we don’t finish on time or completely.

It’s ironic that enterprises invest in team building workshops in which employees participate in exercises together only for them to go back to their workplaces to toil on individual commitments.

Fourth Reason: Performance management has focused more on individuals than on the teams. We manage performance more on the parts than on the whole.

Management philosophy at the turn of the 21^st century has shifted towards scorecards and metrics. Key performance measurement has become the enterprises’ go-to method to getting things done.

Managers, however, have been emphasising individual performance than team achievement. When an enterprise applies the basic features of a SMART-C performance metric, in which it has to be specific, measurable, show who’s accountable, realistic, time-bound, & challenging, they drop them on the lap of individual employees, not on teams. If teams themselves present scorecards, it’s the team leader who’s usually made accountable. He gets the glory if he makes it; he gets the reprimand if he doesn’t.

Backers of key performance indices, KPI’s, may disagree with what I just said. Scorecards are designed for teams not individuals, they’d say. That is true. But from what I’ve seen, enterprises have remained focused on individuals when it comes to performance evaluation. Hardly does one see an executive evaluate a team together.

And because of this, individuals work on the measures they’re evaluated on than on the overall standards of the organisations they work for. And that’s assuming if they even know what those standards are, or if they care.

It is these four reasons why I believe the tree outside my residence will remain cut in half. One side trimmed and not in any way endangering the electric power cables, the other side left untrimmed with branches ready to snap the service out of my telephone line.

The phone company, the MERALCO contractor, the owner of the empty lot, the city, the DENR, and I will not volunteer to prune the tree. It requires a joint team effort among all the parties. And it looks like it’s not going to happen because of the four (4) reasons stated above.

Accountability has become a bad word for many people. We don’t want more of what we already have and if we can avoid it, we will.

The best solution to reverse the accountability avoidance trend is to bring back old-fashioned team work. You know, the one where people come together and work together as a group? If it can be done in sports and religious organisations, then why not in every day work?

Easier said than done, yeah, especially with a virus forcing people apart. But if we can somehow recognise the need to be together to get something done together, why not indeed?

About Overtimers Anonymous

A Letter to a Life Insurance Company

The following is a letter I want to send to a life insurance company regarding their service. Identities are anonymous to avoid complications.

Dear Chief Executive Officer of Life Insurance Company,

I received your letter dated August 25, 2020 which arrived February 16, 2021. Your letter stated that you did not receive payment for past due premiums for my life insurance policy. Thus, you are notifying me that you have classified my unpaid premiums as a “Premium Loan” and that I owe the balance of PhP 7,415.45 ($USD 148.31) as of June 23, 2020.

You also notified me that the Premium Loan will be charged an interest rate per annum of 9.00%. You urge me to repay the loan at the soonest time to ensure I will enjoy the benefits of my policy.

In response, please be informed that the latest billing statement you sent me (dated June 21, 2020) says I have zero balance to pay. The billing statement said the dividends I had earned from my policy paid for my past due premiums.

I ask, therefore, what do I owe your company? Do I owe PhP 7,415.45 for a “Premium Loan” because you said I haven’t been paying my premiums or do I owe nothing because your latest billing statement says zero balance to pay?

I showed the two (2) letters to one of your agents who is a friend of mine and he said I should call your hotline or visit one of your offices.

Rather than risk getting a CoVid virus infection going to one of your crowded offices, I called your hotline. The very nice call centre agent at the other end of the line said I owed your company for the Premium Loan because I didn’t pay my premiums in 2019. I asked about the billing statement of June 2020 and he just reiterated that I owe your company money.

Fine, I said. I won’t argue. Please tell me how much I owe, I asked the agent. The call centre agent said he will email me an updated statement in one week.

I didn’t get an email. I called again two weeks later.

Another very nice call centre agent answered and he said I owed PhP 12,164.27 ($USD 253.42) for three missed premium payments. I should pay it right away so there’ll be no more interest charges, he added.

Even though I never received the billing statements, the very nice agent said I was just as responsible to know how much I owe as much as the insurance company was in sending me bills.

I decided not to think about that very confusing statement. Instead, I went online and immediately paid the bill. Never mind that the amount owed was much higher than what the letter dated August 25, 2020 said.

To put it bluntly, your company is a mess. Well, at least, it’s a mess for life insurance policy holders like me.

I’ve had my life insurance policy from your company since 1998. When I receive your bills, I pay immediately whatever amount is due. I’ve paid religiously but only didn’t when your bill said I owed nothing.

Your latest bill dated June 21, 2020 said I owed nothing. Therefore, I didn’t pay.

It reflects badly on your company when it says I haven’t been paying my premiums and that I have to pay an interest of 9.00% for the unpaid balance while your billing statement says I don’t owe anything.

Your letter said I should repay the loan to continue enjoying the benefits. What benefits are you talking about? Please note that for me to enjoy my life insurance benefits in full, I would have to die or wait till the policy’s Termination Date, which is sometime in 2062, or a few months before my 100^th birthday. Unless technology by that time succeeds in extending my life span, I doubt I would be able to enjoy any of my life insurance’s benefits whatsoever either in this life or in the after-life.

When I started the life insurance policy, your agent assured me that I will not have to pay for premiums after 10 years. Your company would invest my premiums and the dividends from my life insurance investment would pay for future premiums due.

It therefore came as a surprise that after a few years, your company’s then chairman and CEO wrote that you will be unable to meet that promise because of lower earnings from your company’s investments. Your agent then told me it was in the fine print of the policy that your company can rescind that promise and that I have to continue paying premiums. Too bad for me, in other words.

Your agent handling my policy disappeared a few years after. She vanished one day and I didn’t know who’d replace her. There was no notice. A temporary agent appeared once but she also disappeared. But your company kept sending me bills; that seemed the only thing that remained consistent in the last 23 years.

The latest bill was dated June 21, 2020. I got that bill last September 2020. Whenever I receive a bill that says I owe something, I pay it. The only trouble is your bills arrive late, if they arrive at all.

The bills arrive usually six (6) months after they’re dated which indicate you have a problem with the local post office or with your couriers. Maybe you should try carrier pigeons, they’re probably much faster than what you’re using now to send mail.

You send bills that say I owe nothing but say in separate letters that I do with interest added. If that’s how your accounting department computes bills, heaven forbid how much your actuarial department will calculate my life insurance benefits for my family when I die.

You should avoid making promises you can’t keep. I know you drive your agents to sell, sell, sell as many policies as possible and that you dangle juicy incentives for them so you can meet your revenue targets. But please don’t commit stuff like no-premiums-to-pay after 10 years when in reality that’s not going to happen, never mind if it’s in the fine print. Speaking of fine print, please note I’m not a linguist that can understand the legal gobbledygook which you call English to write your policies with.

I trusted your agent at the beginning. Unfortunately, she vanished into thin air. It would be nice if you can somehow have some sort of succession system for your agents. It would also be nice if you can tell us if and when my agent is going to disappear, that is, if you ever assign me one for my policy. I notice you’ve been pushing your clients to use your web portal. I tried getting into it. It kept giving me an error message so I gave up. My agent friend told me that your website is being repaired. Is it possible your information technology employees can post error messages in plain English? That error message I saw gave me the impression that your IT employees use a language from an alien world. Or maybe your IT department is the same one that writes the fine print in your policies?

error message when trying to register in web portal of insurance company

I like to keep my life insurance policy until I die. But with your kind of billing system that doesn’t tell me what I owe, the promises you don’t keep, agents who vanish, and an IT department that seems to communicate in an alien language, I don’t know if I’ll have a policy that actually pays something when I expire.

Then again, I won’t enjoy the benefits since by then I will be either dead or senile, perhaps indirectly due to the stress your company has caused me.

Sincerely,

E. S. Lim

P.S. I received an email that had an attachment which supposedly is the official receipt for my PhP 12,164.27 online payment. I say “supposedly” because I couldn’t open it; the email server says the attachment is “corrupted,” which can probably be the best one-word description of your company’s services.

About Overtimers Anonymous

We Don’t Need Deep Science to Implement Change

While depositing Philippine coins at the bank one morning, I couldn’t figure out which was which. The 1-peso coin looked like the 5-peso coin which also looked like the 10-peso coin. Each coin was silver in colour and almost the same size. I also had older and much more different 5-peso and 10-peso coins to count and segregate, and it just added to the confusion.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Philippine_peso#

The bank’s counting machine also kept stalling with the Philippine peso bills the teller fed into it. The machine couldn’t distinguish the new bills from the old bills. The teller had to take out the new bills and count them separately.

I was also hearing complaints that the banks’ automated cash machines weren’t accepting peso deposits. The machines too couldn’t distinguish between new and old bills. The machines kept getting stuck and shut down. Stores at malls couldn’t deposit their collections after bank hours. This was a hassle as owners would have to wait for the bank to open in the morning and line up to deposit their previous day’s cash collections. Worse, they would have to keep the cash at home on weekends and holidays when the banks were closed.

The Philippines’ monetary authority, the Bangko Sentral ng Pilipinas, had been rolling out new cash notes since the late 1990’s. The BSP had been replacing the bills and coins with “new generation” currencies, that is, cash notes and coins that had better security features and that were cheaper to procure.

The BSP didn’t take into account the size of the coins and the impact of the new bills on cash machines and bill counters. Consumers couldn’t tell one coin from another and cash machines rejected the new bills. The BSP, however, brushed aside the criticism and urged the public to just get accustomed to the new currency.

There’s a proverb that says the only constant in life is change. Most of us know that. But can’t people make changes that do less harm than good?

Changing currencies to improve security has some logic to it, but couldn’t the BSP at least design the coins to be easily distinguishable? Couldn’t the BSP work with the banks to adapt new cash notes to counting and automated teller machines?

Why ask ordinary people to get “accustomed?” Shouldn’t products be easy to use right away or with least instruction at the shortest time?

One does not need be a scientist to implement change. The principles are elementary:

Get feedback about any upcoming change from stakeholders, i.e., the people who will feel the impact, e.g., customers & vendors
Test any new product not only with end-users but also with the machines and processes that the change will have effects on;
Make sure the resources and assets are all in place when the changes begin;
Keep track of the change, how it’s performing, and how well stakeholders are accepting it;
Tweak as needed, revise if necessary: software developers release new improved versions of apps all the time, so why not for products too?
Learn to accept failure or defeat—better to admit setbacks as soon as possible to avoid further damaging stakeholder relationships.

In other words, put what the stakeholders value first when it comes to change.

People don’t like change for the anxieties they bring. People will welcome change if they see outright the benefits outweighing the negatives. There’s no deep science to it.

We know this and we can get this.

About Overtimers Anonymous