What is PSG. Well, this is the department that I work in now: Professional Standards Group. Don't ask me why I am being placed under this department. It used to be the "Technical" Department, where consultations take place when engagement teams have accounting technical problems. As time goes by, the evolution of various accounting, auditing and professional standards change (externally and internally), there is a need to constantly grow the department to address the changes and study the impact on our firm. Hence, the department has grown over the years and there are various sub-units to address different concerns. Ultimately, we're tasked to address the QUALITY issue (too much technical information and I can go on and on). At the beginning, I was brought in to fire-fight on ad-hoc projects. Subsequently, as matters evolve and I have a little sub-unit of my own. It's called "AMG Operations". I can go on and on on this subject again, but to put it simply, I support the Assurance Management Group ("AMG") in analysing data for their business strategic decision making. In addition, the projects that I did relate closely with Risk Management (my area of interest), I am gradually spending more time on that as well!
Basically, this annual offsite meeting is to discuss the way forward and draft our department's business plan for the next financial year. In addition, this year, we need to draft a 1 + 4 plan ( = 5-year plan). Wow, that's something that I haven't done before, but finds interesting.
We arrived before 9am on Monday morning and deposited our salad ingredients with Sharen, a compulsory contribution to the meeting. Little did we know that this was later being used as a character/personality guessing tool. Similar to last year, we were asked to describe our peers during a "getting to know each other" session. We were required to do a personality test, determining whether we are an INTROVERT / EXTROVERT. In the end, as expected, I've evaluated myself as an EXTROVERT, whilst everyone else thought I was an INTROVERT. I was almost dead after seeing that and thought something must be done to "up" my profile. This year, not as terrible as last year, but still not quite there yet, I brought a tub of organic greens* (from HK, coz I have only touched down Singapore midnight of 10 April). No one associated me with the tub of organic greens, but avocado (x 4), tomato (x 6) and alfafa sprouts (???). I was confused and started explaining why I saw myself as the box of organic greens. No one knew the symbolic relationship between how I see myself with the tub. Rather saddening, but nevermind, I think there's still room for me to grow and show them how. At least, after the explanation, I managed to impress some of the more important people again!
After the game, our Assurance / PSG Leader shared with us his vision for the year (s) to come and how our department is to fit into this ever-changing environment. Then, came the team-building exercise. What did we do this year? Cake-baking. We have been divided into 4 teams, with about 3/4 persons per team. My team had the 2 leaders: Oon Jin (Assurance / PSG Leader) and Kim Chiu (Risk Management Partner) + Su Yen and me. We were tasked to make an Apple Crumble Cake. Guess what? Oon Jin volunteered to sift the flour, which was quite impressive and Kim Chiu, didn't know how to wear an apron, preferred to observe and carry out the Risk Management role (remind us to be careful with knives!) I dived myself into the dirty job of rubbing butter into sugar to make the crumble top and played with it for very long, whilst Su Yen prepared the sponge base. Everything went well and we all had fun playing with it.
At the end, Lynette, the owner of Palate Sensation, the cooking school, has to decide who the winner is. Even though our cake is not as soft and spongy as Sharen/Alima/Si Ho's team, all of us had a great time and won a turtle each.
After the teambuilding exercise in the kitchen, we had DIY sandwich lunch and dessert --- apple crumble cake. After the nice lunch, we returned to the Geelinan Art Gallery to continue with the second half of the meeting, drafting our business plans. Instead of joining Methodology & Technology ("M&T")/ Continuous Quality Assurance ("CQA"), I joined Risk management ("RM") / Independence ("I") in drafting the 1 + 4 business plan. Finally, I'm being valued for my contribution to RM and included me into their future workplan!
To close off the day, we went to Marina Square K Box for karaoke and buffet lunch. What a fun and relaxing meeting, as compared to last year!
* Organic Greens = Traditional salad has a green base, which is symbolised by the organic greens, so pure and original. Grown and bred overseas, but being served in Singapore. Symbolising myself, maintaining a bed of quality data, to support the rests in building the final product on top. Soooooooo profound!
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