{"id":857,"date":"2017-01-26T12:21:01","date_gmt":"2017-01-26T04:21:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/theplantcloner.com\/?p=857"},"modified":"2017-01-26T12:21:01","modified_gmt":"2017-01-26T04:21:01","slug":"deadline-means-youre-dead-if-this-line-is-crossed","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/2017\/01\/26\/deadline-means-youre-dead-if-this-line-is-crossed\/","title":{"rendered":"Deadline means you’re dead if this line is crossed!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Commentary<\/strong>:
\nThe first few months of my taking up the CEO \/ Principal post at Han Chiang College \/ University College in January 2015 was a frustrating time for me. The pace of work of my staff was at least 40% slower than what I was accustomed to in\u00a0 workplaces of the Klang Valley. Nobody seemed to be bothered with deadlines set and I ended up doing a lot of unnecessary “fire fighting” jobs. It took a while before my message of “being professional and taking management’s instruction seriously”was finally percolated through. This article which I wrote in August 2015 perhaps helped, albeit a wee bit, I think!<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

As the leader of a higher education institution during the period of 2015 to 2017, I had to rely heavily on both the academic and administrative colleagues to complete crucial tasks.<\/p>\n

I still remember one of the management lessons I learned while I was an undergraduate, that a manager gets things done via other people. Thus having good communication skill is a \u2018must have\u201d for one to be a good manager. When confronted with the fact that most members of my senior team \u00a0seemed to have trouble adhering to the timelines agreed or assigned for tasks and projects to be completed, naturally I began to investigate if it was the inefficiency in my communication skills that caused these delays. Having worked over 17 years in the Klang Valley (5 years before that in Singapore), I was accustomed to having colleagues, especially senior staff observe deadlines set for tasks and projects. I think the pace of life in the Klang Valley is much faster than Penang\u2019s but it did not mean my team members could easily ignore deadlines set by me. Hence these many incidences of delay in the completion of tasks assigned was a mystery that I had to dig into!<\/p>\n

One of the first difficult English words I learned from my tuition teacher, Mr. John Lee when I was in Form 1 (aged 14) was \u201cprocrastination\u201d. Mr. Lee went on the teach us the famous saying, \u201cprocrastination is the thief of time.\u201d I wanted to find out why many of my team members are indeed \u201cserial\u201d procrastinators and I was somewhat relieved that the problem did not lie in my communication skills!<\/p>\n

One morning while I was in the shower before getting ready for work, I suddenly discovered the reason why so many of my team members were habitually breaching the relevant deadlines set by me for the completion of assigned projects and tasks. It also helps perhaps to explain the laid back attitude of Malaysians \u00a0in general when it comes to adherence to deadlines.<\/p>\n

The definition \u00a0of \u201cdeadline\u201d as provided by Google is, \u201cthe latest time or date by which something should be completed.\u201d The word \u2018dead\u201d in the compound word \u201cdeadline\u201d literally means something is going to be dead if the line is crossed. I thus quickly checked the definition of \u2018deadline\u2019 in Chinese which \u00a0is \u201c\u6700\u540e\u671f\u9650\u201d (zu\u00ech\u00f2u q\u00edxi\u00e0n <\/i>or the last date limit) or \u201c\u622a\u6b62\u65e5\u671f\u201d (ji\u00e9zh\u01d0 r\u00ecq\u00ed<\/i> or expiry date\/closing date). The word \u201cdead\u201d is somehow omitted in the translated definition. My wife who does not read Chinese but speaks fluent Cantonese tried to translate \u201cdeadline\u201d literally, which is \u201c\u6b7b\u671f\u201d (si qi <\/i>or date of death) and is obviously not correct. But I think \u201cdeath\u201d is a tabooed word for the Chinese when it comes to the context of a project or a job. Hence the Chinese in Malaysia (at least those who speak Mandarin, Hokkien, Cantonese and Hakka\u2026. that \u00a0is the limit to the dialects that I have some understanding) do not collectively \u00a0have a concept of death to a project or task should the deadline is crossed! If nothing is going to die if the deadline is breached, naturally no one will worry about adhering to it.<\/p>\n

In Bahasa Malaysia, often \u201cdeadline\u201d is translated as \u201ctarikh akhir\u201d, again the word \u201cdead\u201d (or \u201cmati\u201d) never comes into this. In fact \u201ctarikh mati\u201d is literally the \u201cdate of death\u201d as in \u201c\u6b7b\u671f\u201d in Chinese. I then went on to check with \u00a0a colleague who speaks and writes Tamil the definition of \u201cdeadline\u201d in this language. She \u00a0confirms that the word \u201cdead\u201d is also not a part of the definition in Tamil. She thinks that there is also no equivalent for the word \u201cdead\u201d in Hindi for \u201cdeadline\u201d too.<\/p>\n

While discussing the issue of \u201cdeadline\u201d I was reminded that many Malaysians often use the word \u201cdateline\u201d in place of \u201cdeadline\u201d. The word \u201cdateline\u201d is used mainly in journalism where it refers to, as provided by Google, \u201ca line at the head of a dispatch or special article in a newspaper showing the date and place of writing\u201d. \u00a0Thus \u201cdateline\u201d is very different from \u201cdeadline\u201d. Perhaps this is another reason for the procrastination displayed by some of my team members?<\/p>\n

I therefore can opine that being procrastinators is inherently \u00a0embedded in the Malaysian culture because collectively we do not have the concept of \u201cdeath\u201d to a project \/ job \/ task \/ one\u2019s career if the timeline is not observed. Hence the long queue as the deadline approaches in filing of income tax, application for approvals etc. as prevalent in our culture. \u00a0Thus, it is high time we adopt and use the word \u201cdeadline\u201d literally as it is. Unless we have the notion that something, someone, some event or someone\u2019s career is going to die if this timeline is not observed, Malaysians will forever be a nation of procrastinators. I hope that my definition of \u201cdeadline\u201d has been \u201csticky\u201d enough in the minds of my team members by now!<\/p>\n

If you are leading a team as a manager, team leader or in a similar role, my advice is, before you start to assign tasks to your team members, do remind them of my definition of \u201cdeadline\u201d.<\/p>\n

If you are a team member, my advice is to get a move on the task assigned as soon as possible to provide yourself with sufficient timeline to meet the deadline. If you face issues that have an impact on your timeline or proving to be an impedance to your progress, you should, like I have advised my team members, bring this to the attention of your leader at the soonest for he\/she may be able to solve your problems easily or extend your deadline. Sitting on a task \/ project and doing nothing will make you a\u00a0procrastinator and more importantly it will surely hurt your career! The latter was what I told my team members and you can bet by now they know pretty well of my expectations!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

It is high time we adopt and use the word \u201cdeadline\u201d literally as it is. Unless we have the notion that something, someone, some event or someone\u2019s career is going to die if this timeline is not observed, Malaysians will forever be a nation of procrastinators.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":1776,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,3],"tags":[102,106,243,355,467,468],"class_list":["post-857","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-commentary","category-learning","tag-dateline","tag-deadline","tag-late","tag-procrastination","tag-tardiness","tag-tardy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=857"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/857\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/1776"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=857"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=857"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/slc4u.org\/wp-new\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=857"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}