To solve energy cost problem

Energy prices rise again. So do energy company profits. A happy coincidence? Hardly. 

It seems to be this is a testament of how the market mechanism fails in the same way as what happened to the financial sector in 2008. Finance and banking companies draw out profits to pay their CEOs bonuses and shareholders dividends. There was and probably still is price fixing, collusion as well as other criminal activities. Can anyone draw a parallel between finance and energy markets? Nationalisation was a solution to many banking crises around the world. Time for UK energy nationalisation?

Politics of school playground

Do you see school playground politics playing out in your adult life? If you want to be part of the group, you have to conform or ex-communicate that singled out kid. In a person's lifetime, it's not rare to see the scenario play out numerous times in work amongst colleagues or between departments, at play with groups of friends and even in a family - the aunt who won't talk to that uncle and who's taking whose side, etc. For many people, it is more important to be in with the crowd than to be in the right. I notice that society teaches us less to be kind to others but more to 'achieve' and 'aim high' but it comes at a cost. Has it always been like this or has it worsen recently? I'm not sure.

I went to a children playgroup today. There are parents who will not consider others' but their own needs (to put it politely) and hence impressing upon their children that this is acceptable. Okay, this is not news but when the society develops tolerance towards graceless behaviours, the result is almost the same as an encouragement. I think this leads to a lot of wrongs in the world - the sufferings (through wars and conflicts), inequality (through self-serving policies and conducts and an unwillingness to change), cheating, corruption and so forth. We need the right virtues to be instilled in adults and children such as being respectful, considerate, selfless and kind. The problem is, unlike school grades, there isn't measurable key performance indicators for an achievement in these virtues. Nor is there material incentives for policy makers or educators to view this as a priority. As long as it is left aside, we will endlessly be dealing with social problems that money can't solve.

I am not all pessimistic though. I have experienced much genuine kindness in the past year when I was pregnant and after I have had a baby and I truly appreciate it. There is still hope after all.

Management needs to be careful about achieving targets at all costs

It is understandable that organisations should have performance indicators - measurable goals to work towards. However, by splitting and stacking the indicators further down the hierarchy, an organisation will likely favour managers who tend to focus on reporting up and alienate people who have genuine interest in the organisation goals. 

Being target-driven and people-driven are not mutually exclusive but most humans have natural tendency towards one style or the other. In theory, managers may choose to recruit staff who have a different approach and style from theirs to complement what they lack. In reality, they look for staff whose values are the same as theirs. This leads to the organisation being tipped over in one direction and when it leans too far in the target-oriented direction, customer and staff dissatisfaction will soon emerge.

Management needs to be careful about achieving targets at all costs. It is particularly harmful in hierarchical organisations where multi-levels of managers focus solely on driving their team to deliver against their individual targets with no regards for the overall organisation objectives. When people at the top focus on fragmented deliverables and reward managers whose sole priority is to achieve internal targets and thus creating a target-driving culture, often it is at a cost of losing sight of the big picture.

These middle managers tend to spend more time with their superiors or peers than with their customers or service users and talk more about strategies and policies than goods or service quality. They may claim to internal audiences who might be their next recruiter in a different department to have achieved their job objectives and make a move up their career ladder. However, it is often found that they concentrate their effort on short-term (and often personal) goals, tend to work to the job, have no interest in collaborating with other colleagues (especially where credit might be shared), focus purely on being on the right side of their superiors and fail to develop and promote staff under their charge.

Organisations need to make sure that their top executive, through their strategic goals and implementation plan, maintain the right balance in their decision making as well as making a conscious effort to recruit middle managers from both camps.