Soft Skill: Sugar Coating

Dramatic-Delusional Mode: ON

LOL

Hi Guys! It’s been a while (well, more than a while I guess) since I last posted about random-unimportant stuff here.

How’s life?

Surprisingly enough, it is safe for me to say I am fine.

It’s been sooo long and to be honest, I am a bit ashamed by the fact that I just hid in my cave for hundred years and abandoned this sanctuary of mine – baca: blog usang tempat tsurhat in a very childish way- just because I was too scared of some new facts I’d learned about this so called layff.

So, why today? Why I show up once again?

Well, because it is tiring tho, being idle. lol. Plus, I have so much things to share actually.

Okay, enough with the confession intro.

Let’s go straight to the topic.

Sugar Coating?

I remember once I wrote here that I wanted to share things about my new job and my new life in this Mighty Jekardah as a program evaluator of this –as Mighty- Ministry.

How is it going, really?

Hahaha,

Well, lemme describe a bit about my duty and responsibility so you can at least get the big picture. I am working as a program evaluator and my job is to evaluate development programs under one particular Ministry of the current cabinet of our country.

From a harsh point of view, my job is basically identifying the flaws of the program implementation perfomance or on other words, I am looking for errors. The worse part is, the result of my evaluation is going to be one of the key inputs of the National Budgeting in the following year.

Meaning, from the even harsher other point of view, the reccomendation Im going to make would affect how much budget allocation of that ministry would get. So I am just basically a scary witch in the front of that Ministry I’ve been evaluating. lol what a hateful job, isn’t it?

There are a lot of things I’ve learned for being an evaluator. One of them is sugar coating. I don’t really fond of this skill to be honest, but working in a sensitive field like this, which involved many people –who have hearts and are capable of feeling something, if I may add- indeed does require one giant set of this ‘magic trick’ so you won't get killed (lol, I'm kidding).

I mean, let us just try to put ourselves in their shoes for once.

They’ve been working for one whole year to build this country. They’ve invested their blood, sweat and tears -well, I don't know in which degree their effort were at tho- and suddenly, there is a stranger, an outsider, who casually walks in and comes to judge what they’ve accomplished.

LOL

I can’t just instantly point out my finger toward them when I see an ineffectiveness.

I can’t just say “Bapak, Ibu, to be honest, saya rasa program yang anda kerjakan tidak membantu kemajuan negara ini, at all. Thus Im going to shut your program down.” With my resting-bitch face and annoying voice even though I really really want to.

Why? Because it does me no good! *mind blown*

I am not trying to play angel or something. All I just realize is that delivering a bad news with a bad attitude is not going to get us anywhere. The responsibility of an evaluator doesn’t stop at finding an error, but s/he is also challenged to propose an improvement otherwise what s/he has found would be useless.

During my data analyzing, I found out that, among many programs I was evaluating, there was a certain program which got me be like “this program is bad, the concept itself is almost nonsensical, the timeline is messed up, blablabla.” I yelled at my computer out of frustration, I stared blankly at those charts, on my cluttered desk. There were bags under my eyes, pimples started showing up, I ate more than usual. Wait what? Forget it.

But, as an evaluator, I will not and I shall not throw all of those uncool barenaked facts recklessly even though at the moment, I begun to afraid that I would lose my own sanity too lol.

Instead,

During the verification meeting, it would be more accepted and understood if I say “you’ve formulated an interesting approach on this program, however..there are some components which didn't run well. Did you face any obstacle on the implementation? do you have any suggestion to make it better?”

In all seriousness, it might make me sounds like a two-faced person, it does in fact, I believe so. But that is not the point.

The point is, as I said earlier, an evaluation will be a waste without a solution, a further recommendation, right?

BUT let’s say, even if it does success on producing a recommendation, it would still as useless if the implementers implement the recommendation half-heartly due to our harsh words and bad attitude.

Can you imagine how ridiculous it is that one national development program couldn’t run optimally just because this mere reason?

I mean, developing a country is not a one-step-action which could be done by one actor only. We have to be able to communicate, consolidate, and compromise our ideas without offending other people in the same room. Because like it or not, we have to admit that we need them just like they need us.  (this last sentence kayak dialog2 pilem action tho uwuwuwu)

LOL

Again, pardon my absurdness please..