Coordinator

I have undertaken a number of coordinator roles since end of last year - from the coordinator for total corporate product revenue roll-up budget, to the coordinator for total Singapore Business staff cost and to the recent annual product costing exercise. I used to have much respect for the coordinators as they are often facing the tightest deadline and to stay back the latest. Typically, any delay in timeline by each team member will snowball and squeeze the remaining time for the coordinator because the ultimate deadline never moves. However, my respect for them increased exponentially since I have a real taste of what it is like.

To be frank, most people are not that stringent when it comes to disciplining themselve to meeting deadlines. We often have thousand and one reasons, or should I say excuses, on why we cannot submit on the deadline despite being informed of the deadlines many moons ago. Or worse. Sometimes, even after we submit on the deadline itself, our perfectionistic self may discover "areas of enhancements", be it genuine rectification of errors or pure improvements, such that our earlier submissions are as good as no submission.

Many often misinterpreted coordinators to be pretty high profile and simple jobs. After all, aren't coordinators supposed to set deadlines and chase people for their submissions on the deadlines? Aren't they have nothing to do except to consolidate submissions? Aren't they not just a mailbox since when there are queries, they will direct back to the team members? Well, maybe there are coordinating roles which are cushy, but some of them could involve high level of stress and mass amount of data.

One of the key milestones for product costing has just passed. During the day before the presentation to the head for corporate products, it was again an intense exercise of roll-up, check formula, put in presentation slides - cut and paste many excel tables. Being not exactly having a very "keen eye" on details, checking tje integrity of the numbers and aggregation can be a tad stressful especially when I am not familiar to quickly discern any irregularity. Late submissions heightens the stress level when I need to roll-up quickly to have a first-cut view.

Somehow with the experience of the previous 2 exercises, I believe I have more expectations and feel like lost and overwhelmed. I believed I can enjoy the process more because instead of being flooded in the sea of data, I can take time to think through the analysis and pick up from my boss some skills on what to look out for. Doing coordinator provides the overview which may not be visible to someone who is just supporting a segment.

Notwithstanding the stress, I hope I can benefit more from this opportunity, be it in terms of technical knowledge, working with different people and learning how to manage stress and priorities. I hope I don't make too many mistakes along the way and cause inconvenience to anyone. Yes, I will continue to work hard. Please cheer me on. :-)