A thought I’ve frequently held in the midst of serving my nation.
They wonder why I bother. They wonder why I’m obsessed with standards. They wonder about my priorities in all that I do. They wonder why I pour in so much heart and soul in something that doesn’t really matter. What they can never understand is that:
- Excellence is a habit, not an act.
- Nonchalance is unacceptable behaviour.
On the other hand, I wonder why they don’t care. I wonder about the source of their laziness. I wonder how they put in zero effort. I wonder how they undermine professionalism. There might be some things I could never understand too.
I keep asking myself what is it that made me care so much. To me, doing everything in the best possible manner and putting in just that slight effort to remember what I need to remember (be it people, environment, systems, protocols) would just make my job easier, make time past faster, and make myself look more professional (and actually so too). Or probably it’s my perceived unenlightened obsession with professionalism, image and standards. As a matter of fact, I treat every single task seriously – and there is no laughing matter over keeping myself professional so as to facilitate work in future.
But some people just don’t care. I wonder how they get by it – there’s totally no effort put in. Probably it’s just me. Yes, I can’t stand laziness. I can’t stand stupidity. I can’t stand nonchalance. I value professionalism a lot. I value hard and smart work a lot. There’s a whole lot of things I want the world to become and I believe they ought to become, but there’s too many mediocre beings out there which makes this vision virtually impossible.
But it just does not feel right when I’m the only one working my socks off when everyone around me is in a totally different mood. There’s no way to get them on the ball anymore – it’s reached a point of no return.
Defending my nation also thought me one thing – if not me, then who? No one else is going to take responsibility and ownership for what I am assigned. Although it’s a team effort, I know I eventually only have myself to rely on should everybody else default. If I can’t encourage the ownership, or generalising, if I can’t inspire the attitude and ethics I want, I have to do it myself. Although that’s not very much the epitome of being a leader, there seems to be no alternative in desperation.
Attitudes can’t be forced. If someone has a proper attitude, he would be able to influence that unto his work. But one should not let this bad attitude affect others who genuinely are keen on quality. And despite a poor attitude, he should never show it, or at least complete a status quo set down by the system faithfully notwithstanding any temptations to slack off at any one point in time. We’ll all be gone in due time – yes, so all the more the need take caution against burning bridges. And these are, furthermore, basics of not just the workplace or school, but of life itself. Shouldn’t it be?
The term ‘follow through motion’ in the military is more than common, and seems to be oft-used, yet overused and misused. And the people who are always the ones admonishing others for that silly act are committing it themselves too. Ironic, isn’t it? Military leadership is supposed to inspire leadership by example and a strong subject matter expertise/mastery, yet those given this privilege are not exemplifying what they’re obliged to.
But then again, what happened to the importance of adapting to organisational goals? Times may be different, but be it in the past or present, or even the future, it remains unchanged that any worker must align first to the organisation, then command should that fail, and nothing else, regardless of his/her priorities, principles and pedagogy. All these seem so hard to come by now.
And all these undermine the expectation of any single worker by the organisation. And maybe by me at times. It undermines, totally, the fundamentalism of work itself – not following protocols and procedures laid down way before hand and straying from basics. Yet, I always try to tell myself:
- Expectation provides aspiration and desperation.
- Don’t expect too much from someone you know will produce nothing out of it.
What one needs in a working team is not just his own expectations and models, but also those of the team. There must be a compromise.
The Thought Depository 