Imagine you join a new kind of job in a different line of business you don’t have any experience in.
Imagine your new colleagues are as novice as you are and all of you join at the same time.
Imagine most of your trainers as well as your team leaders have never done this job before either. Most of them have joined the new organisation only slightly earlier than you.
Imagine this organisation involves more than five hundred paid staff most of whom are recruited and trained within much less than two years.
Imagine your new employer relies on more than twenty thousand volunteers and hundreds of vendors most of whom have never worked together in this kind of system before.
Imagine there is limited time for dry runs and there is no chance for a full dress rehearsal before the actual start of operations when full “customer demand” comes in with a bang, without any ramping up phase whatsoever.
Imagine you, together with all other staff, are only hired temporarily and requested to do your best for a very short period of time although having in mind that shortly after delivering you all will be out of job.
Imagine you, together with all your new colleagues and leaders, are under constant scrutiny by national and international media, by representatives of a powerful international body, by doubting members of the public and by worried politicians.
How much chance would you give your new employer and yourself to deliver excellent results, exceptional customer satisfaction as well as extremely positive feedback and job satisfaction of volunteers and staff?
From 2008 to August 2010, the Singapore Youth Olympic Games Organising Committee have delivered exactly this – the results of a true Masterpiece of Organisational Development.
There is much to learn from BG Goh Kee Nguan and his team.
