Management Update

 Recruitment

I did some interviews with the geography graduates - looking for those who can help take our publications forward - but they tend to be like advice sessions - as quality is not well held up by that department. One of them - Senarathne  - was good - so we may check her out. 

Yoosuf Razi is a relative - I don't know him that well as I don't know the young people in the family but know his mother - but given the problem we have with sudden departures and his abilities in English and Physics and fact that he can walk to the office.  After a lot of thought, I thought we have to compromise. When we took the 2nd twin two years back, we sent him to Digana - that sort of thing is not feasible anymore. taking Akurana folks is also risky - we have learned.

I have advised Yoosuf about not behaving like a relative or like a Akurana guy  - he is a bit of a geek and very gentle  - so think we can manage. Let me know your feedback - I can also ask if he works out of his place so that there are no issues.  

Departures without Notice

The manner in which Asela has given notice and the fact that I did not get any indication of his applying elsewhere or discontent here - is something that you want to reflect on?

He basically used us - and the value of his work would have come out in the next months because it was mostly training and also the work on the App. We cannot use the latter in any case.

What happened there - there is more to this but what is clear

- he thinks it is the norm after KW and ZA left

- the office did not have senior staff attendance for reasons which are mostly legit - but should be avoided.

- supervision of him may have been too distributed.

When people leave - others tend to think that they do not pay a price for leaving early -

we don't have very ethical or moral staff members sadly - and that is really ugly that so early they

have not gratitude or consideration for the damage they do.

The tune they sing is

- forced to do so due to external reasons - usually false

- they will finish the tasks and support FECT after they leave - never happens.

Do we have a full list of those who left lately - of course some did terrible things

- Shifna,

- Janan

- Mahasen

- Chayana

We need to maintain a black list.

In the case of those who leave without consultation and break their contract

- we shall not issue any letter to them

- we shall let the institution of the Internships know immediately - and we shall not certify

any work they have done

- we shall insist that they pay the penalty of one month of salary - in the case of AR - we shall not pay his last month.

In the case of AR - let him leave first before we follow up on this or let him know of the above - we need to take over his email account and archive first. Don't try to get him to stay.

Management Updates

 Did Lack of Follow-up on Web Tasks Undermine our Proposals?

There is a  likelihood that we got some of our proposals this year refused to

AusAid - 2

Asia Foundation

US org 

US Embassy - AEIF

one more to the Maldives

because despite all the work going to the deadline - we took off our focus thereafter to

get our websites consistent, especially with

Staff in the proposals did not match with those in the proposals sent from

DS, TCG 

Our cleanair.lk is broken in front - huge holes. 

There could be other reasons as well -

but this work was so easy to do - and there have been failures on

my part, IT supervisors part, proposal coordinators part.

 

Staff is not consulting with the TB and TPPI is being done just to get its ticket off rather than solving problems.

AM is not able to maintain her own cards - she is fanciful in terms of assigning people work. TH you need to take over. We have to get AM and UA back to technical work. We shall have to sacrifice the SM work which is all that they are doing.

Fixing the Problem

It is clear to see who the problem cases are just seeing who are not reporting - if they report properly, it shall give us a chance to help them with prioritization and understanding what is needed.

1. Learning Problems

There are others who have learning problems or just problems in applying their intelligence

Those who are not able to read and understand emails and our guidance material.

We have been careful of taking in those who have the language skills - but it is a question of

2.  Technical Inaptitude 

UA says he does not know how to filter the cards on the TB after trying - AM had done it properly.

This is a poor reflection on our IT staff.

There are staff members who are not trying to learn.

3. Indiscipline and Pretense

We may be having some bad eggs as well.

 

Proposals and Sustainability of FECT

As you know if we don't get proposals funded this year, despite 5-6 submissions.

Our organization is not sustainable,   at this scale. So we cannot dawdle. Else this boat shall take water.

We have to start with corrections including strict advice, careful checking.

We also have to not extend the staff members who are not doing their work and to give them time to find alternatives or give them a consultancy if they can do some part of their assignment.

 

Until we get our house in order - we may need to be careful about investing in further proposals.

Re: Few Management Updates

 There is at least one more email chain for management updates - but it seems that this is not updated since February. 

FS - do we have these updates on the blog.

https://fectmgmt.blogspot.com/

Even content on this chain is not included

Can you scavenge the emails since this was updated and you can post?

Key Issues

Reporting

Has been falling apart for too many - my request to take on weekly TB filtering was ignored in April and subsequently. 

As Supervisors, people are going to take you as an example. It is damaging if you do not follow the rules.

As for the folks who are repeate6-monthly falling short, we have to ask where the supervision is falling short as well. We can improve that but we may have to have some corrective action.

When we penalize staff, there have been negative reactions before. Thus preference is to

part with folks. We have to treat them as adults.

FS - it's time to put out the 6-month Report Format for Jan to Jun - for all but the Interns

TPPI reporting and TB maintenance 

is falling short - it does not reflect our urgent and important needs and the staff are not consulting or representing work.

There are four  clusters

Admin

IT 

Outreach

Research

All of these are falling short - in the TB's and monthly reports. 

Staff

We are quite short with recent departures

ZI, KW, SV

In terms of taking responsibility,

I don't see ZA, UA stepping up when given the opportunity. AM is good at times and not attentive at other times. Key tasks in Web such as fect.lk and fect.mv have not been touched.

ZA - TH last month you had wanted to wait for improvement - As I see it, he is good to go and set up instruments - so we can put him back on that track. I can talk to him after you let me know.

HH and PR seem to have the potential to help administer. 

We shall try out PR and HH to manage some of the TPPI.

To manage  publications,

Given two week WFH, People working for the govt such as

CG and SV may be available to complete our tasks - so we can use them for the pubs work 

Hiring

There is a lot to do - for IT - we can use some Interns - we may have a couple of NIBM interns to check out - if not the NIBM interns look strong - and some may be willing to start earlier than the end of August. 

We do need to hire the

Legal Officer -

Writer

We can include these in the work plans for HR and the respective TB.

Maldives

With SL as is, MV is an opportunity for work going forward. 

We can do a launch there - on the 15th, a new website, maybe a new magazine, DL and a publication by September.

NA has started on the MV SWOT - needs to be cleaned.

She has stated that there is a tone done there so it is an opportunity.

Pl give feedback.

Infrastructure

My requests in the email are going into thin air - e.g - nobody responded about the power switch, power supply,

ZA is not trying to catch up on ZI or taking advantage of him.

Purchases

ZA'sit's support for research for purchases has been perfunctory - its not research he gives but

a final recommendation.

RE-MANAGEMENT UPDATE

 Am working on the legal docs for the submission to CoA - its overdue to our lawyers. TH was in cmb and has got a key document from EQD. So not able to attend to follow up.

What's immediately on my mind are reaching our partners with the greeting cards, the proposals to the Australian embassy and the Commonwealth Fund, the dengue, climate services and AQ papers, and the strategic plan. So please see that you can advance. 

Finance - we have to check with Seylan about the USD transfers, the USD transfer done here (LZ) and of course staff disbursements.

See what you can do on the above topics if you can. 

To the whole staff last week, I wrote about updating the various TB - and that was done patchily

here there are some sensitive topics - you need to address these boards - connect the

Strategic Planning, SWOT,

Mitigation Steps and

Representation in the TB - and identification of problem cards.

These are the boards - shall send this off now - but we can discuss - anything that is not clear.

Admin Strategic Planning

HR

Is missing the information about the ongoing hiring process.

HR requires representation of current work and updating of cards that are done.

• https://trello.com/b/5ys4nydD/fect-hr

Legal

• https://trello.com/b/4tgbY2wu/zy-cases-lt-dc-mc-coa
• https://trello.com/b/2njt2NGk/fect-legal
• https://trello.com/b/a4oYPz0z/zubair-family-legal

Finance

Akurana House

RE-MANAGEMENT UPDATE

To the extent I write these things below, you may get to know what is in my mind. But

we need more systematic participation in the management of FECT, especially by the more experienced staff. 

Except for isolated recent failures, there has been timely reporting the monthly but not at the

weekly level. This is an improvement. We need to at least monitor the weekly supervision as supervisors. As for the monthly reporting, we need certifications by the supervisors for payments. Without the 6 monthly reports, the next appointment revisions shall be held back.

The individual staff reporting time for some is quite high - we can encourage folks to try to simplify and only include the work that is taking at least an hour - unless these are pivotal.

As for the daily reporting, we can restrict it to the Interns for their initial 6 months and anyone else who wants to do it.

One of the problems, I am seeing is that there is a focus on monitoring the individuals but not the TPPI. We also need to have monitoring of our progress with the WIGs. If we are not monitoring, then we are not managing the problems.

Hence, I am proposing monthly reviews by each TPPI team and a report as to what needs to get done and priorities, targets and resource needs. This shall help with folks working on a topic thinking systematically overall.

e.g.

AQ program

Web work

Weather Card

Proposal Follow up

- there are questions I have raised in individual emails and discussions which need input from others in the TPPI

I have thoughts on

Proposal Work - what should we go for

Finance - priorities 

Publishing

which are not getting play.

We shall develop a reporting format which should take no more than 2 hours to do. FS pl start on this.

Month - XXX

- Team - Members and Coordinator

- Update of TPPI Strategic Plan Internal Audit, TB/FC 

- Tasks from Last Month

- Challenges and Opportunities Arising

- Task for current month Priorities and Staff allocation

- Tasks to be carried over for next months

- Resource Needs

- Representation on TB or FC