Management Dilemma 002

ACCOUNTABILITY AND RESPONSIBILTY ISSUES.

Subur Mekar Sdn Bhd is a local incorporated private company limited by shares.

Ms. Yoke Yin Ling has just joined the company a week ago as the new governance and compliance manager. Today is her first time attending a management review meeting. The meeting is attended by the MD (Charles), GM(Suhaila), Finance and Accounts manager (Rajesh), Supply Chain manager (Leow), HR manager (Kamariah), Operation manager (Robert), QA manager ( Badrul) and Procurement manager ( Albert).

As usual the QA manager is asked to chair the meeting as he is also the person in charge of ISO certification matters in the company.

He started by reporting on the customers outstanding delivery claims and its appropriate solutions exercised by his department. He also reported the customer's satisfaction survey report and soon after that the MD exchanges few questions and answers with him.

There were some general statements announced by MD for all to hear. Thirty minutes into the meeting, En. Badrul opened to the floor if there are any relevant questions to discuss but no one came forward.

Finally, quite about 35 minutes later En. Badrul wrapped up his presentation. The MD then adjourned the meeting.

Ms Yoke Yin Ling was a bit astonished. She was surprised to see that not only the meeting finished quite early, there were no engagement and participation among managers in that meeting. Surely, there are many problems to discuss, and surely strategies and policies in place can go off-railed, thus needed to be discussed. How about existing compliance procedures and risk controls? Are they all superbly functioning?

She was a bit disappointed seeing the meeting did not touch on salient agendas and this had prompted her to approach the MD for clarification.

However, her intuition stopped her from proceeding. Fear and worry began to creep. She was worried and thought if it is better for her to keep her mouth shut and accept things as it is or approach her superior to share her suggestions. She was worried that by seeking a private meeting with MD, she could be labelled as insubordination that could lead to personal career instability in the new company that she had just joined.

How can you assist Ms Yoke in handling her dilemma?

VIJAYA DEVAN'S SOLUTION 

I think this is a clear and common scenario faced by many corporations worldwide, especially the SMEs.
Ms Yoke was right. First of all she felt that there were no proper and appropriate coordination among the management team. As the saying goes, the fish rottens from the head down. Here, I am confident that the MD is one that is incompetence in stewarding the company. Being exposed to good corporate governance and compliance practices, Ms. Yoke could quickly tell and identify any wrongdoings. She realised that she was selected merely not as a figurehead but as part of a responsible team to grow and direct the organization on the right pathway. I can understand her reaction!
There is a dire need for the meeting to be handled in a more professional way. The meeting should have started with a clear documented agenda paper distributed one week prior to the meeting date. All the attendees of the meeting should be the recipients of the agenda paper and this paper should be sent via an intranet communication system to each attendees email address. The sender will be the chairman or anyone appointed by the MD to take the minutes of the meeting. Such method of disseminating agenda papers is not only quick and less hassle but it also solidifies organization's strategy in moving towards a digital transformation era.
On meeting day, instead of En. Badrul, i opine that the MD should be the one chairing it. The MD reads the agenda item one at a time and then calls for collaborative inputs from attendees. 
Ms Yoke should bring this approach to her MD's understanding and explain to him the rationale behind the approach. Being the person of the highest rank in her organization, the MD should act in good faith and display the principal of duty of care in all his business judgments. Thus, the MD has no excuse to refuse adhering to Ms Yoke's suggestion.
The other thing Ms Yoke can do is to suggest to her MD to let every Risk Owner or functional department heads to take turn one by one to make presentation on departmental's achievement. They should cover among others the performances, challenges and risk control measures implemented in their department.
From what we see, the MD currently failed to provide good leadership by displaying show of less interest on the activities of other functional departments except for the sales related issues.
It could probably be that the MD has vast experience in sales and marketing functions and that his designation before being a MD was in sales line. Probably he had been promoted to be the MD due to his good track record in generating revenue through building up customer base. However, this selection criteria alone cannot be used as sole deciding factor, ignoring many other salient qualification criterias that fits that of a successful MD. 
The board of directors should review the effectiveness of all the directors and as well as the management team so that only the efficient one are retained to run a corporate entity.