The project I am working on will be the next disaster. There are three offices involved. The project belongs to the Chinese office. The conceptual design was supposed to be done in the US, the detail design in China and Thailand. So far nobody is clear about the direction of this project.
The communication is really bad. One example, I decided to do something, I informed Chinese office, they were OK with it. A couple weeks later someone in US office told me what I did was wrong. So I replied that guy that I had no objection with him, however, he had to confirm and co-ordinate with China (as they own the project.)
After my response, I was under the impression that the plan was changed per that guy in US. But then I got a different direction from China. So I asked for confirmation, and the response I got back was that they had meeting between US and China and were agreed that they would ignore that comment and went back to my original plan. Well, that was very nice to finally let me know.
A few other occasions I raised questions to my boss. He thought that emails were sometime tiring and needed too many iterations, he decided to discuss with China over the phone (we are on the same time zone, if it were US project, we would have no other choice but emails). After he disussed with China, he let me know what do to. I proceeded per the boss’s instruction and then later somebody came back and said different thing. I had to re-do what I have done.
I thought I have had enough of these. I vowed not do anything unless it’s in writing. Of couse, I have made this clear to myself, and would not let anyone know about it!! :P
My collegues and I have observed that on this project , no one seems to want to have a hand on it. If there was some task, nobody volunteered to do it. If the task was assigned to someone, they would reject it with the comments that either they didn’t have enough information (true to some extent) or not enough manpower.
This is a bad sign for a project, especailly at this early stage. We started to guess how much the company would lose on this project and who would be responsible for.
The scape goat
The China office has just started for a few months. They have a few expats in the management positions, and started hiring local Chinese to fill in various roles. Previously I was under the impression that the Chinese will work under the expats management (the same way my office set up 7-8 years ago).
Last week the China office announced that they finally could hire the Chinese to fill in the management role for the projects. The expats retreat themselves to the advisor and supporter roles only. I was a bit surprised, as I think it takes a lot of time and experience to manage a power plant project alone. Not to mention to manage it the same way my company does things.
Then there was another email, that I was CC’d as FYI, from the expat who was previously on the management position. He complained in his one-A4-page long email about his disappointment on the the Chinese staff’s performance. He also listed his expectations on the Chinese staff and management on the project.
From what I read it was very overwhelming. Even for Thai staff who have work with the company many years and familiar with the company standards of how we do things, meeting the same expectation is still a difficult thing to do. They expect the new-hired staff to be up to speed on the already-delay-schedule.
For this “doubtfire” project, everybody will try to survive. I have a feeling that the Chinese are hired to be the scape goat. Hopefully I was wrong, but only time can tell.
8:36 p.m. - Tuesday, Oct. 12, 2004
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