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Archive for the 'People' Category

May 04 2008

Turning Committee Into Community

Recently I served in the organizing committee of a grand annual sports event held on Labour Day in Matsushita Sports Complex, Shah Alam. We received compliments that the sports event has been held more smoothly and systematically. However, we didn’t expect much less crowd turned up this year compared to last year.

Anyway, I learned something important that, relationship is equally, if not more, important that the results we strive to achieve, be it in business, office or social work. Through working together in the committee, we not only worked together to achieve our organizational goal, but we also developed friendship and relationship.

As I heard from a speaker before, we can know how many seeds there are in an apple. But we do not know how many apples can come out of one seed. Our relationship with others is like the seed. We may do great things together for now. But without a good relationship, we may not be able to do great things together many times. It is no use that we do great things now but our relationship with colleagues deteriorates as a result of working together.

When I was younger, I tended to go for results no matter what, even at the expense of relationship with others. When working for one company, I remember being a busybody to always give suggestions to reform the business process of the company, to the extent of hurting relationship with others especially my boss. As a result, I lost out in office politics and was nearly fired from the job.

Good relationship is vital in our life. Let’s turn a committee into a community. Let’s turn our office into a fellowship of humans who love and care for one another. Of course, oftentimes we need to start from ourselves first.