Another birthday passes. (Actually, as I write, it’s still my birthday in the US, as the US is 12 hours behind us.) Time to reminisce on my life and evaluate where I went right or wrong. One tends to ask oneself, “What was my greatest achievement?”
My thoughts turned to being a ‘team player’, and it occurred to me that there are two diametrically opposed definitions of the term. The first is always to work towards the objectives of the team, in a win-win attitude. The other is blind obedience to an egotistical leader. I think that my greatest achievement has been to be a team player in the first sense and to avoid the second.
Job interviews and advertisements often refer to the term in the second sense. I have worked for projects and institutions that emphasized blind obedience, which they call ‘team playing’. They have tended to be high profile projects with career-climbing leaders whose aim is self-agrandizement rather than doing good. The team members are expected to massage the ego and enhance the career of the leader above all else.
I admit to playing the CV game, and I landed prestigious consultancies with World Bank, Asia Development Bank, UNDP, and USAID. They never achieved much, other than to enhance the career of the team leader and play the politics of the sponsor. I was often berated, or even fired, because I tended to suggest win-win solutions to enhance the project or institution, which is not what is required. On the other hand, my lower profile work with some institutions proved very satisfactory. I want to single out a couple:
- The University of East Asia, Macau, was set up by the late George Hines, whose leadership was aimed at promoting the university, not himself. He gathered around him a real team of dedicated win-win personalities, with whom I am still in contact today. And the university was very successful. It was eventually bought out by the Macau government and is now the University of Macau.
- Goroka Teachers’ College in Papua New Guinea took me on as a United Nations Volunteer. Under the leadership of Dr. Mark Solon and Dr. James Quarshie, we transformed the teachers’ college into Goroka University, often against the opposition of the powers-that-be down in Port Moresby. We all worked towards the common goal, so that the mountain university is still thriving today.
I ended up here in Cambodia, as part of a USAID project to set up the National University of Management in Phnom Penh. The project was full of interpersonal strife, with ‘team leaders’ pushing their own agenda with little regard for Cambodia. However, we lower-ranked team members persevered, and our efforts eventually led to the number one and most highly respected business university in Cambodia today. Several of those good team players are still in Cambodia today.
I moved to Battambang, in northern Cambodia, and helped set up a new private university. We had high ideals, but one founder bought out the shares of the others, and turned the university into a fake university, with phony programs and lies to promote a glitzy, international image. I persevered, especially after the owner named me ‘President’ of the university. Alas, that, too, was all phony imagery – I was the white-skinned academic with no actual authority. I watched as the owner ran the quality of the university into the ground, while I persevered – or perseverated — in the hope that I could salvage something. I often used the following analogy:
Imagine a huge boulder rolling down the mountain towards a village. If I stand in front of the boulder, it will crush me and continue on to destroy the village. But if I stand to the side and give the boulder a nudge, it may miss the village.
Well, I saw my university about to be destroyed and I tried to be the ‘adult in the room’, in an attempt to save the university. My friends often criticized me for continuing to play along with the narcissistic owner, but I hoped, perhaps irrationally, that I might save the university I had founded. Finally, the owner started a new program that was so outrageous, impossible, and phony, that I could no longer attach my name as President to such fraud. I consider it to my credit that I got out, although I should have gotten out long before that.
Maybe my ego succumbed to the prestige of the title of University President, although I knew all along that it was all fake, so I played along with the game. Therefore, I feel no pride in being a ‘University President’, and I’m even ashamed that I played along with this fraudulent game, but am pleased that I eventually got out.
In summary, I consider that my life’s greatest accomplishment has been always to be a team player, in my own win-win sense of the word, and have never fallen prey to the suck-up, brown-nosing sense of the term.