.... OF WORK AND COMMUNICATION
Posted by: Robecca Jumin
A friend recently shared a newspaper clipping from the New York Times with a very catchy headline - “Worker dead at desk for five days”. The newspaper clipping basically talk about how a worker of a publishing firm died of a heart attack at his table and remained there for five days before being noticed by his colleagues. At the end of the clipping, a yellow box highlighted the equally catchy moral of the story - “Don’t work too hard. Nobody notices anyway”.
I had a mix reaction to this. Working in a remote area like Kudat-Banggi PCA, and away from the prying eyes of the bosses with only ourselves to pace ourselves, this is certainly doable. I can also probably agree with the moral of the story, depending on my mood at that time. Reality checks though… can we really afford not to work hard? I would say, not really.
Between our commitment to implement our workplan and obligation to donors, and our commitment to continue working with stakeholders here in Kudat-Banggi PCA, we do not really have room to consider slowing down our pace just because “nobody will notice anyway". Knowing my team mates, they have enough passions and commitment to see our work through despite all the challenges - crocodile fear aside, some of us still go diving. Working with people is not a one way street either. Expectations go both ways. If in the beginning, we do a lot of the approaching and expectations were very high on our side. But we start to see the fruit of our work when our stakeholders start to call us at an unexpected time, inviting us to their events even when we wanted to go back and celebrate the coming of the New Year with our families, or simply relax during weekends. We basically have to be “on-call” all the time, or risk losing our credibility and the trust of our stakeholder (and go back to square one).
So what options do we have? Well, in this context, I certainly think that we deserved to be noticed for the work we do. Everyone deserves this.
Circulating this clipping to a few others with the suggestion that it would be good to be kepoh and loudmouth once in a while to be noticed didn’t generate much response. Everyone is too busy. But truly, I think communicating well is the best option. Maybe being kepoh and loudmouth is unacceptable to most people, but surely a blog would be a good way to share our stories from this remote area of Kudat-Banggi PCA. People have the options of staying tune or not. I’m glad my team mates agreed to this too. So despite my fear of losing privacy and my low confidence in my writing skill in English, I volunteered to write our first post.
And here it is…. stay tune for the next posts. We promised to limit it below loudmouth level.
A friend recently shared a newspaper clipping from the New York Times with a very catchy headline - “Worker dead at desk for five days”. The newspaper clipping basically talk about how a worker of a publishing firm died of a heart attack at his table and remained there for five days before being noticed by his colleagues. At the end of the clipping, a yellow box highlighted the equally catchy moral of the story - “Don’t work too hard. Nobody notices anyway”.
I had a mix reaction to this. Working in a remote area like Kudat-Banggi PCA, and away from the prying eyes of the bosses with only ourselves to pace ourselves, this is certainly doable. I can also probably agree with the moral of the story, depending on my mood at that time. Reality checks though… can we really afford not to work hard? I would say, not really.
Between our commitment to implement our workplan and obligation to donors, and our commitment to continue working with stakeholders here in Kudat-Banggi PCA, we do not really have room to consider slowing down our pace just because “nobody will notice anyway". Knowing my team mates, they have enough passions and commitment to see our work through despite all the challenges - crocodile fear aside, some of us still go diving. Working with people is not a one way street either. Expectations go both ways. If in the beginning, we do a lot of the approaching and expectations were very high on our side. But we start to see the fruit of our work when our stakeholders start to call us at an unexpected time, inviting us to their events even when we wanted to go back and celebrate the coming of the New Year with our families, or simply relax during weekends. We basically have to be “on-call” all the time, or risk losing our credibility and the trust of our stakeholder (and go back to square one).
So what options do we have? Well, in this context, I certainly think that we deserved to be noticed for the work we do. Everyone deserves this.
Circulating this clipping to a few others with the suggestion that it would be good to be kepoh and loudmouth once in a while to be noticed didn’t generate much response. Everyone is too busy. But truly, I think communicating well is the best option. Maybe being kepoh and loudmouth is unacceptable to most people, but surely a blog would be a good way to share our stories from this remote area of Kudat-Banggi PCA. People have the options of staying tune or not. I’m glad my team mates agreed to this too. So despite my fear of losing privacy and my low confidence in my writing skill in English, I volunteered to write our first post.
And here it is…. stay tune for the next posts. We promised to limit it below loudmouth level.
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congrats on the blog - i love this idea & i wished i worked out of the office & its politics to do actual hands on conservation work. It's so much more rewarding than facing internal battles in the office which are so petty and a total waste of time & energy at the dispense of people who do not know how to appreciate that everyone is trying their best. You should be lucky to be in the field and you guys/gals are definitely the heroes to me. keep it up!!
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