Solutions needed please!

(This is based on a true story)

John (not his real name) was one of my closest friends. He was the main person I turned to when I needed a listening ear. However, this relationship turned for the worse when the 2 of us decided to join a planning committee together.

Despite the many ideas we shared in common, I realized that there was one huge difference between the two of us – work ethics. John was the person who would want to start and end the meeting punctually. Therefore, if there were still items in the agenda that has yet to be covered, he would rush through them and often try to haphazardly decide on a solution without further discussion. More often than not, his opinions became a disruption to our meetings. On the contrary, I am one who would almost never end a meeting unless all the items in the agenda have been properly discussed.

Our meetings were conducted in the evening and it often lasted for about 3 hours, sometimes, it might even extend to 4 hours. Nearing the end of the meeting, all of us would usually be tired and hungry however most of us would still want to discuss the agenda properly. As the saying goes “a hungry man is an angry man” so there were a few incidents when I could no longer endure John’s rushing and asked him to keep his opinions to himself in order to let us think of a proper solution. Needless to say, he was not very happy about it so I have always SMSed him after the meeting to apologize. On a few occasions, we even trashed it out with each other and discussed about the things we disliked of each other after my apology.

Sadly, the trashing out did not solve the conflicts. In the next meeting, the exact same thing happened and this time round I did not apologize. I felt that I was simply voicing out the thoughts of most of the members. In addition to that, I did not like the idea of constantly being the first to apologize as I believed that he was also in the wrong too. Being the first to apologize in every conflict made me feel as if I am a subordinate to him. After that incident there was a cold war between the two of us and I felt very miserable that I have lost a very close friend.

What could be done to salvage this friendship? Is there anything that could be done in the future to prevent this incident from happening again?

Why communicate professionally?

The answer to the above question is simple. Why not? The first barrier that stands between everyone and their job would be a test of communicating your skills and achievements to your future employer. No matter how good are the qualifications of the interviewee, without the basic ability of communicating properly, the interviewer would not be impressed. After we get employed, our communication skills are further tested when we are supposed to work as a team. Sending wrong signals or messages at this point might result in a poor appraisal or even something disastrous.

One of the major incidents that happened was the loss of a $125 million Mars orbiter by NASA. It happened because one of the teams used the English units of measurement while the rest of NASA used the metric system for measurements. To put it simply, the NASA engineers mistook 12 inches for 12 cm. I guess this is a classic example of miscommunication which led to a great loss of assets.

To give another story (so as to prevent my readers from falling asleep), I would like to relate the recent McDonald’s blunder. I am sure most of us know about this incident whereby McDonald removed the Doraemon-pig soft toy from the zodiac collection. To give a brief background of the incident, McDonald released its Doraemon soft toy zodiac collection to celebrate the upcoming lunar New Year. In order to be sensitive towards Muslims, they have removed the Doraemon-pig version as a pig is considered non-Halal and therefore unclean. This incident caused quite some commotion among Singaporeans. In a simple search on the internet by me, I learnt that monkeys, snakes and rats were also not Halal, though I am still not quite sure whether a dragon is Halal or not. Through further probing by the media, it was discovered that McDonald has not consulted the Majlis Ugama Islam Singapura (MUIS), which is Islamic religious council of Singapore, regarding this decision. This is an area where a lack of communication resulted in an issue that McDonald now has to handle. McDonald followed up by apologizing to its customers in print (which I think was quite standard and professional on their part), and also started selling the Doraemon-pig to its customers. However, I got a slight feeling that they did this in order to create some publicity for themselves (which they really succeeded!). What do you think?

To summarize, effective communication skills are very important not just to me but also to everyone else.

P.S. I tried my best to be grammatically correct by writing my first draft in Microsoft Word, hope it helped!

P.P.S As much as I smiled and laughed while typing this blog post, I felt constipated as I was unable to express my feelings in the forms of emoticons or “haha” and “lol”. So dear friends, do me a favor and read the above post in a light-hearted way by adding in smileys, “haha” and “lol” in your own imagination. Thanks! (:

References

1. Nasa incident, http://www.cnn.com/TECH/space/9909/30/mars.metric.02/

2. McDonald's blunder, http://www.timeslive.co.za/news/world/article272599.ece

3. Halal and Haram food, http://www.central-mosque.com/fiqh/fhalal1.htm

Pilot

Hello coursemates!

This is my first blog, I hope we will all have fun and laughter in ES2007!

P.S. To all social network experts out there, feel free to add me on facebook at kunlinz@gmail.com

Cheers
kun lin