shhh, quiet please....

The smooth running of an organization depends mainly on the belief that everyone else in the organization will try their very best and exhausted every means in order to accommodate each other.

It runs - albeit paradoxically - on a clear demarcation of one's roles and responsibilities but at the same time glued together by the notion of respect and trust on other people's competence.

Therefore, one needs to know precisely when to interfere, to make demands on other people and when to back off and leave someone to his task alone.

Failing to look after each other or turning a blind eye to other people's failings and flaws could drive the organization to its untimely demise. In this case, ignorance is nothing but a short-lived bliss before the impending doom.

On the other hand, trying to control too many aspects of an organization would strectch one's limits dangerously too far, too thin. At the end of the day, one may end up running the entire organization oneself, disposing off the need for the other members altogether.

But I guess at the very basic level of any organization is the notion that everyone when given a task will do his or her best to execute it; it is the belief that everyone will do their task fairly, dillgently and with the fullest commitment.

Even when the other principles are thrown away, at the very root of any organization is the belief that you can trust someone to do a task just as good, if not better, as you would yourself.

After all, isn't that the point of forming an organization in the first place right?

However, when certain quarters felt that that particular trust have been misused and the matter is not honestly adressed, it will only lead to increasing exasperations, silent grumblings and eventually the slow rot within the organization.

An organization with a rigid and unbending hierachy will not be able to withstood the oncoming onslaughts of change nor could it refashion itself fast enough to adapt to the ever-changing trends around it.

Rigidity and dogmatism used to be related to strength and survivability but the new catchphrase of this new era is flexibility and transmutability. The former concepts now belong to the rubbish bin of history.

The stuffy, stale and closed atmosphere of the previous decade have been replaced by an airy, fresh and open one, illuminated primarily by the light of an increased proliferation of and greater access to information.

An organization thus could not afford to blindly hold on to its old practice; an unbiased and clear reflection of its strengths and weaknesses must always be made in order to ensure its survival.

The organization must be restless in a sense that it must always seek new ways to improve itself; after all, not all who wander are lost.

Its strength is not measured in terms of for how long a particular strategy it came out with manage to last; rather it is now measured in terms of how many good strategies it is able to come up with in a particular period of time.

To do that requires the organization to muster all of its resources, to carefully evaluate the potential of its member and make full use of their relevant talents and to ensure the succession to the top positions are not mired in elements of favouritism or elitism.

An air of honest openess, transparency, accountability and genuine respect for others must permeate the organization which gives everyone their share of self-worth.

That said, it is certainly a huge shame for any organization - no matter how great or small - to

crumble just because of the failure of its leaders to do something as simple as to openly listen to the dissenting voices within it.

Indeed, the ability to listen is sometimes a more profound measure of a person as compared to one's oratory skills.