When you are placed in a position where you have to manage people across diverse age groups and seniority, you have to build a cohesive team based on common vision and mission. It takes plenty of communication and positive reinforcement amid all the ongoing demands required of the department.

With performance appraisals, back-to-back audits, systems implementation and restructuring all happening in a span of 3 months, time is never enough. There are often frayed tempers among the team which needs to be nipped in the bud. You often find yourself the arbitrator of many problems among the members.

While doing these, you have to catch up on your paperwork, which unfortunately, is steadily piling up. You feel as you are being pulled from all directions. You feel frustrated, tired and helpless at times. 

Perhaps you need to start running more frequently to burn off those frustrations. Either that or you got to start re-applying for that flying job again.

This post is somewhat 2 weeks late. But amid the hustle and bustle of the packed work schedule, you needed time to reflect on the past 35 years of your life.

While the attainment of this milestone is a cause for celebration (who wouldn't celebrate when you can finally get your own house under the Singles scheme), it's also a cause for concern. It means that the health has started to deteriorate at a faster pace as evident from the recent medical results, your metabolism starts to slow as evident by the weight gain, your mind doesn't seems to be as sharp as evident from the over-looked details.

Not only has the physiological aspects gone downhill, you felt as if you have not achieved much when compared to the rest of your cohort. Most of them are happily married with kids and have attained certain amounts of competence in their field of work. While you are cognisant of the fact that one should not compare, you are often envy of their position (even though they envied yours too).

With the body clock ticking away (yes, you do feel abit anxious too), the primal instinct of having offspring often hangs at the back of the mind. Unfortunately, a mate with the right chemistry, right values and right communication wavelength seems to be non-existent. Well, perhaps, there was one, but its all in the past.

While you reflected over the past years, you are looking forward the future; one where you can be a homeowner, remain healthy and also hoping to head back up to the skies again.So, it would be the time of more healthy eating, disciplined exercise and ATPL studies. As to meeting the ONE, you shall submit yourself to the hands of Fate..

You dreamt of J in your sleep last night and everything was so vivid that you thought it was real. In the dream, she walked into the office dressed in an one-piece black dress. After signing a document, she left without even noticing someone, whom was once dear to her was looking at her.

After she left, you spoke to the person whom she has signed the document. The interesting fact lies in that no recollection of the face of this person exists.When you saw the document she has signed, it was a letter of appointment for a position (again, no recollection) in the India Commercial Bank (does it even exist?)

It goes to show that the brain is a powerful organ with the ability to tune out and amplify certain thoughts. Some dreams can also be lived out in real life just like how both of you once lived it out years ago. And it also goes to show how deep an impact she has had to your life.

 

Sometimes you wonder how an Organisation can survive for 30 years and expect to survive for another 30 years based on its antiquated practices. When questioned the rationale behind certain practices, the standard answer is always; " This practice has been there since the olden days and has been working well for us. In addition, this is the industry practice."

Everyone is just so comfortable maintaining the status quo and hoping that nothing will happen during their watch until they retire. You have been challenging the status quo at every opportunity by asking many hard questions which no one have the answers to.

To you, such mindset won't bode well as the company seeks to transform itself to face the intense competition. Even though everyone knows of the importance to transform itself, nobody seems to want to be the change agent to do so.

The key question you always have is; How do you help the company create value for customers without comprising on safety standards?" 

As you met up with your HR director and one of her deputies to chart out the re-organisation, you know the uphill task you are facing. It gets more frustrating when your management doesn't seem to be buying your argument. When you sounded out the issue to one of your former mentors, he pointed you to an option which you think may be a possible outcome; something which you have learnt in school; Kotter 8 steps for managing change.

Hopefully it will help. 

You were nominated to attend the pilot run of the company's leadership program. 

This program was designed to develop managers who have assumed new roles into leaders of tomorrow and to equip them with the necessary leadership skills.Even though today is the first day of the pilot run, you have benefited tremendously.

Taking a leaf from what you have seen from a former superior in the Organisation, a leader needs to have;

But your key takeaway from today's session was on the need to have clarity and to frame the problems in a manner which the management and your direct reports can understand. With a proper framing, one would be able to get the attention of the management and provide the direction to the direct reports.

However, your key challenge lies in crytallising and articulating your thoughts. Notwithstanding that, you need to be able to coach both the management and direct reports to frame the issues, an area which you need to beef up on.

Perhaps its time to put the Skillsfuture money into good use to learn some new skills.

You have been working late nights again ever since you have gotten back from a short family road trip up north. Indeed, the amount of workload is piling up as you clear the work backlog.

But this post is not about work but about your thoughts which went through your mind during your holidays.

While you enjoyed the cooling weather of Cameron Highlands and street art of Ipoh town, your thoughts often drifted to J. It's often during holidays that you harbored thoughts of how nice it would be to cuddle with her before drifting off to dreamland and waking up with the warmth of her body by your side.

Isn't it surprising that someone can still mean so much to you after so long?

Is that normal? 

Better for you to think of her than for her to think of you as she is happy with her life now. With her exams approaching, she is better off utilising the brain capacity to concentrate on her studies instead. 

Good luck for your exams, J.