We Are Married

I was a boss for five years in a small unit which consisted about 20 staff at a time. I started as a novice and was never provided any training whether in administrations, operations or leadership. My predecessor chose me and she passed over to me without any proper written note. Then, I received a letter and started the work. I always think about this today; how I had to learn everything myself. I decided I was not going to do that to my successor. I spent about one month to complete my task list to pass over to the next boss. I started early because I knew that most of the tasks are done monthly and I wanted to make sure I did not miss anything. A smooth transition is, after all, important as it ensures the continuity of a unit's operations.  But, as I completed my list, I realized that there are things that you cannot really pass over. The intangibilities, such as, your way of thinking and problem-solving, the work culture you cultivated within the unit and your leadership, are ...

I was slacking last month due to emotional and personal reasons; I really wanted to get out of my current workplace and I knew that this month will be hell to go through. So, I let myself dwell in the misery of wondering what hell the month would be. The result was I slacked in the workplace for one whole month. The upside? My subordinates were happy because I was not my usual disciplined self. Yeay for them. Then, July came and it did bring with it the hell that I predicted. And some. Thankfully, I read this in Harvard Business Review's Instagram page  which was adapted from “Emotional Agility,” by Susan David and Christina Congleton : Leaders stumble not because they have undesirable thoughts and feelings - that's inevitable - but because they get hooked by them like fish caught in a line .   I realized that I was being emotionally rigid - I did not allow my emotions to change in order to adapt to the situation I faced. I dwelled on my negative thoughts and emotions because...

This morning as I was leaving for work, I overheard my elder daughter asked Dearest, "Don't you have school holidays?". As I closed the house door, I thought, I WISH we have one, too, dear. Being children of parents who do not have a traditional 8 to 5 with weekends off work schedule, my children usually are not bothered about holidays and weekends. But, as the elder one entered primary school, I think she has developed an understanding about a typical week schedule. She must have found it weird when she had to explain to her friends that she spent the weekend at her grandparents' house because her parents were working. Also, how both she and her brother had to stay at daycare until 9pm some nights because both of her parents were working a PM shift.  I do think about the impact that this disorganised daily / weekly schedule has on my children. I recently read Angela Duckworth's Grit  and...it is not entering my favourite books list. This is mainly because her wri...

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...

After you got married and met with each other's families, you may notice huge differences between the both of you. As time goes by, you begin to understand where each other came from and what shaped this person who you fell in love with. Some may be easily understood while others you may not be able to fathom until the end. Some traditions  may be so different from yours, it ends up being pet peeves. But, ultimately, those matters should not make you love the person any lesser. Adapting with each other is always a challenge. I think it is especially important that you truly adapt to living with one another before you decide to have children. I am lucky that between my husband and me, we can truly talk about anything. We even discussed when we plan to have children before we got married (We're both doctors, remember? So we are control freak professionals). I can ask him anything about everything.  Dearest grew up in different places even before we met in 2002, when we were both...

 One of my good friend at work lost her husband one month ago. It was so sudden, unexpected. They were married for 5 years. She had him for 5 good years. She came back to work today and we talked about her. I let her talk about anything she wanted. I only answered if she asked. For the rest of the time, I just let her talk. She talked about those last few days of his life, the moment she knew he was gone and all other things. She asked me, "What is the reason for all this? Why did he have to die?" ...she asked, so I had to answer. I thought about it for awhile. I answered  that in our religion, we do not focus on the why. We do not dwell to search for the reason why it happened. But, we focus on the things that happen after a bad event. We try to find...I could not find the correct word. I said "benefit" but I meant "hikmah". So, what is hikmah? I went back home and kept thinking about it; how to explain "hikmah" to a person with another religion...