Since I am in-charged of a certain Ministry in the project that I'm involved in right now, a meeting with the KSU is a must in order for us to kick off the project formally in that Ministry. The stories that was fed to us by our project sponsor were somewhat scary... we thought that they were exaggerating. Little that we know that this certain KSU would be our worst nightmare in terms of dealing with high powered people in the government. I have to say that although I've been involved with the Government projects a lot and met with quite a number of KSUs and Ketua Pengarahs, this certain KSU must be the worst among the lot.
Yesterday, we were scheduled for a meeting with him and his team to formally introduce the project to them, at the same time trying to pinch for a kick off. We've been patiently waiting for 2 months for this meeting to happen. Unfortunately, our meeting was conjoined with another project which was already running at that particular Ministry. We were already forewarned by the other project team members of the treatment that they got from that KSU. Even when we met up with some people in one of the departments in the Ministry, we were forewarned of the possible catastrophe that might befall us during the meeting.
So, highly motivated and mentally prepared, and with a couple of rounds of dry-runed presentation with the other team members as well as with the personnel of one of the departments in the Ministry, we thought we were armed and fully prepared.
Round one - the first project team presented their piece. Bang! Bang! Bang! One by one of their slides was shot down by the KSU. Some made sense, while the other comments were just some waste-of-my-time babbling. By the way, the meeting was scheduled at 2.30 pm but started only when the clock almost struck 3. The beating and shooting in round one finished at a little past 6 pm.
Round two - I presented our case. Based on the comments he made in the first round, I had to make a few adjustments to what I wanted to present earlier to minimise the shooting and to ensure that we met his expectations. But after a few slides, the shooting began... started with... "You private sector don't understand our ministry. We are not jakun (out-dated) you know..." and so the lecture began as how his Ministry was ranked among the best, had the best portal, had the best policies, acts and so on...
The mistake was... our slides on the current scenario of what most ministries are facing in terms of their obsolete / unstructured databases to ad-hoc processes within the ministries... of all the 10 situations that we presented, he said we were wrong... how can we possible be wrong (with not even 1 right!) when what we presented was from studies that were done by professionals. Whatever he commented contradicted to what he said in round one. Finding out what the Ministry is doing was an important thing to him for the private sector like us to work hand in hand with them (as what he commented in round one), but when we said that one of the approaches that we would take was to do a study in the Ministry in order to understand their business strategy and processes, we were told off and said to be wasting the staff's precious time. I only got to present our case for 10 minutes and the rest was his time to bla.. bla.. bla.. bla till 7 pm!
Well... what I wanted to say here is that when you are "up" there, a little modesty would take you a long way instead of being arrogance and not admitting it. Listen to people first before you form your own judgment. And if you have any negative thoughts, please keep it to yourself, and be open-minded of what people are offering to you. Being realistic and thinking out of the box help as well. Put whatever negative feelings behind when you have a meeting with outsiders because whatever comment you make will reflect you as an individual, as well as your Ministry as a whole.
If I had the chance to say my piece to him, I would tell him to grow up and take a walk out of his cocoon.
ieja
Yesterday, we were scheduled for a meeting with him and his team to formally introduce the project to them, at the same time trying to pinch for a kick off. We've been patiently waiting for 2 months for this meeting to happen. Unfortunately, our meeting was conjoined with another project which was already running at that particular Ministry. We were already forewarned by the other project team members of the treatment that they got from that KSU. Even when we met up with some people in one of the departments in the Ministry, we were forewarned of the possible catastrophe that might befall us during the meeting.
So, highly motivated and mentally prepared, and with a couple of rounds of dry-runed presentation with the other team members as well as with the personnel of one of the departments in the Ministry, we thought we were armed and fully prepared.
Round one - the first project team presented their piece. Bang! Bang! Bang! One by one of their slides was shot down by the KSU. Some made sense, while the other comments were just some waste-of-my-time babbling. By the way, the meeting was scheduled at 2.30 pm but started only when the clock almost struck 3. The beating and shooting in round one finished at a little past 6 pm.
Round two - I presented our case. Based on the comments he made in the first round, I had to make a few adjustments to what I wanted to present earlier to minimise the shooting and to ensure that we met his expectations. But after a few slides, the shooting began... started with... "You private sector don't understand our ministry. We are not jakun (out-dated) you know..." and so the lecture began as how his Ministry was ranked among the best, had the best portal, had the best policies, acts and so on...
The mistake was... our slides on the current scenario of what most ministries are facing in terms of their obsolete / unstructured databases to ad-hoc processes within the ministries... of all the 10 situations that we presented, he said we were wrong... how can we possible be wrong (with not even 1 right!) when what we presented was from studies that were done by professionals. Whatever he commented contradicted to what he said in round one. Finding out what the Ministry is doing was an important thing to him for the private sector like us to work hand in hand with them (as what he commented in round one), but when we said that one of the approaches that we would take was to do a study in the Ministry in order to understand their business strategy and processes, we were told off and said to be wasting the staff's precious time. I only got to present our case for 10 minutes and the rest was his time to bla.. bla.. bla.. bla till 7 pm!
Well... what I wanted to say here is that when you are "up" there, a little modesty would take you a long way instead of being arrogance and not admitting it. Listen to people first before you form your own judgment. And if you have any negative thoughts, please keep it to yourself, and be open-minded of what people are offering to you. Being realistic and thinking out of the box help as well. Put whatever negative feelings behind when you have a meeting with outsiders because whatever comment you make will reflect you as an individual, as well as your Ministry as a whole.
If I had the chance to say my piece to him, I would tell him to grow up and take a walk out of his cocoon.
ieja
2 comments:
ieja!!
He is very bad!! I mean for everyone who knows him to forewarn other people show that he's ALL the time like that!!
hmm.. kena tukar cepat2 ni!! hahahha!! oopps.. i know you dont like it- politics!!!
heheh!!
-roSSe-
eheh yupp roSSe.. i just hope that we can change the ministry that we work with. but i guess that's a challenge for me... but i foresee that my life would be made difficult by him... oh well...
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