12 The original Silicon Valley firm, Hewlett-Packard, pioneered the management principle of “managing by walking around”. Taking a leaf out of its books, I sat down with all 200 assistant and associate professors, in groups of a dozen or so during the month of September. Importantly I listened to and heard them out on a whole range of topics, ranging from career prospects to the academic and general environment to personal aspirations. And last month in October, I continued my annual tradition of holding town hall meetings with students from each of our undergraduate and research postgraduate programmes. Together we resolved quick and easy issues on the spot, like captioning and uploading of archived e-learning videos or provision of additional microwave ovens; as well as acted as mutual sounding boards on deeper and more complex areas of interest such as reforming the MBBS clinical curriculum or the impact of the future Chinese Medicine Hospital on teaching and learning. These sessions have been very useful in grounding my colleagues and I in the everyday realities of our stakeholders, whom we serve in addition to lead. Leading by listening
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