We Are Married

Adam Grant tweeted: And it hit me: If the bosses were being problematic and the toxic culture somehow spilled into my workplace (which is physically not in the same place as the top management office), it is NOT my job to fix it. My job is to protect and support my team, not hope or try to change the bosses' attitude. If the bosses somehow have other (boring) priorities, I can voice out my opinion and just accept it when they denied my request.  I was only 30 when I took up this manager post. I did not have any prior experience as a manager and I always tried my best to please the bosses. I only took the post because I was looking for challenge. I thought that winning each battle was the top priority. I only changed after I enrolled in MBA, especially after learning about organizational behaviour. As fate has it, in this department there was an MBA program for medical officers interested in management. I started my course and fell head over heels in love with it. I graduated with ...

During a recent read, I learned about the Cynefin Framework: (Source: HBR article here ) I think this is an interesting framework. It helps me to categorize each conflict and how best to first approach it. The framework arranges the steps in order of priority for each category.  There are four areas in which I can classify a problem which I am facing: Simple, Chaos, Complicated, Complex and Disorder. In each area, except for Disorder, the responses are arranged in the order in which one we should do first.  Simple problems are problems which we have faced before and we have already formed a strategy to solve previously, which are our "Best Practice". In facing a Simple problem, we first have to sense it, which means recognizing it as a problem that we have a strategy for. We then categorize the problem to respond to it with our Best Practice. For example, in an outpatient clinic, a patient comes with fever and the doctor senses and categorizes the fever and responds with a tr...