Making Sense of the Senseless

In the hurried world of business, enterprise and management, one goes through a day with “chopsuey” thoughts and concerns. These days, planning a day becomes difficult and complex as you ask questions to yourself about who to meet, why, and the significance of a meeting or even casual conversation. Most times, a planned conversation with an agenda in mind becomes irrelevant simply because it has been planned. The candidness, where one can expect a more truthful sharing of information is lost if a pattern or a plan is followed. -- Well I guess that all depends on what one wants anyway.

Several weeks ago, this company went through a dilemma over the scheduled legal holiday season. The kind of dilemma we go through every year being an enterprise involved in the entertainment and tourism industry. In my mind, the dilemma should not have happened, but since it did, then that means that we have not learned anything for the past five years... and apparently, such is the case. In cases like these, I am reminded very much of the two terms that I have learned while I was still involved in development work, REACTIVE VS. PROACTIVE.

allwords.com defines reactive as showing a reaction; liable to react; sensitive to stimuli, while proactive was defined as actively initiating change in anticipation of future developments, rather than merely reacting to events as they occur.

These words are two of the many favorites I have had since taking on a management position in this company and I have taken a liking to them in analyzing situations or at least in pretending to understand and analyze a situation.

As a manager, I would always want to be proactive in my stance... no matter what. That's basically because I do not want to get entangled in a mess that I know could have been prevented in the first place. But that's me... and I hope and wish that all my managers would think the same. Then again, sometimes I wish that the rest of the executives would be the same. However, there is this slight surge of logic that runs through me in defense of being reactive.

I would like to examine how a person perceives a necessary possession, let's say, a car. Being a proactive person, I like the feeling of security knowing that there is nothing wrong with it and therefore the chances of being compromised in the middle of the street becomes almost nil. This we call, PREVENTIVE MAINTENANCE. This used to be the reason why I always get pissed off with my driver because something always seems to be wrong with the car. Now that I'm driving it by myself (don't worry, I didn't fire him, he's on medical leave after crashing my motorcycle on Christmas day), everything seems to be okay.

So getting back to the topic...

Being proactive or practicing preventive maintenance on your vehicle is way more expensive than it should be. Imagine paying for a new battery even before the old one dies. I think that mere mortals like myself would much rather squeeze to the last drop our car battery's life or better yet, buy a new one, place it in the trunk and then wait for the old one to actually die before installing the new battery.

I guess that managing a company is as much pressure filled to an investor or an executive as it is to the average Joe thinking about a buck he's saved squeezing the last ounce of energy from a car's battery. I know that the comparison is way much simplified, and that the bottom line seems to revolve around the "buck" but I guess that in today's society, life does revolve around it, no matter how much we deny that fact. With companies, the buck ensures our existence as an organization.

Of course, there is also that logic stating that preventive maintenance ultimately saves you money in the long run because it prevents your vehicle from suffering bigger damages resulting from allowing damaged parts to interact with good parts. But this assumption is only applicable assuming that you have the money to burn in the first place… So what if you don’t?

An organization, much like a car runs on the same principle, except that the parts feel,… parts meaning the members of this organization, parts meaning the employees – rank and file, supervisors, managers, executives plus the shareholders. And unlike car parts, they can’t simply be thrown away without the repercussions that will follow. And I’m not even talking about the repercussions you might have in mind, I meant that the best part of my job is when I hire people and say “welcome”, the worst is when I have to say goodbye.

This hint of being human in the face of managing a large organization simply exemplifies to me that two terms are much closely related to one word. – Sensitivity. Being proactive simply means that one must be very sensitive to know when things are about to happen and therefore be able to remedy a situation even before it does happen, if not, being reactive simply means that you must be sensitive enough to react when a situation is at hand.

Note:
Again, my apologies for posting a blog on my consistent incoherence. I guess that I just needed to blabber again.