Love affairs

Prelude

Living is love affairs. Life means nothing without love. Love could be the purpose of life. Hmmmm...love is actually one of the purposes of life. Ultimately.. we got to have love for God. We have to seek and understand the meaning of love to God. Well, i am not trying to be religious here, all I am trying to say is that there are a lot of kind of love and it is not limited.

I want to be taking about working or business as a love affairs.Since maybe most of us understand the normal love - love to family, love to your love one.. ie love form one person to another. So, I'd like to highlight love affairs in business and working as a change.

I am saying that working and business is a love affairs. Maybe we are not thinking in that terms. But we should be thinking in that terms to know what to do and how to react. Maybe we should be thinking in that terms to be succesful and to be happy at what we are doing.

The selection

The first stage is the selection stage. Like choosing patner when falling in love, this kind of love has to be mutual as well.

If we are the employee, we are to choose the organisation, the environment and the people, where we are to work. The situation is vice versa.If we are the employer, we are to chose the people according to our requirements. We have to look into the values that the person possessed. Each organisation have their own values which are unique to them and the person to be employed is to share that values. Else it will be chaos and imbanlance.

It is a matching process where the core values of the employee and employer has to be identical and tally. When we in love we look for chemistry. So there shall be chemistry in term of working bonding. The fact is that sometime even the best employee and the best employer could not be the ideal match. The relasionship simply wont work. The reason is that they may share different values and expect diffrent outcome out of the working relationship.

I'd like to stress that as in human love, it is very rare that we chose the right partner at the first time. Our partner selection can be spot on if we are lucky enough. But it is definately rare. We make mistakes in choosing but along the process our gut feeling will be sharper. Of course, we have to follow our gut feeling and just choose and see where it will take us. We have to be careful in choosing just to save possible time wasted. But on top of that, it is a gamble and we must try and we must make the selection decision.

The fact remain when choosing an employeer and employee. You have to follow your gut feeling and make the selection decision.

In between.

When we are done with selection decision, the relationship starts. The process of actual facts finding of things that we share in common and our differences begins. We will begin to discover who we are and who our partner is.

When in a relationship and working bonding we have to have a clear mind and determination to make it work. To make it work we have to put it our best efforts.

So we should have a clear mind while in the relationship to discover our strength and weaknesses. Along the way, we have to enhance our strength and minimise our weaknesses. We have to exploit the strength that we have in common and work out our differences.

As the relationship goes further it gets more complex. Peolple will discover more of themself especially rather then discover more of their partner. It gets more complex as our environment changes, our need changes and mostly it gets complicated going forward because we evolve and change along the way. So we will encounter new needs and new differences that we need to fulfil and work out.

That is why we should have clear mind all the time in relationship. Both have to realised that we and our partner changes all the time. Changes rate between the partner is different and we should be aware of that. The different rate of changes is influence by the differnt rate individual exposure to different environment.

Same goes to our business and working bonding. As business environment changes all the time, the organisation has to change to adapt. As soon as the organisation changes, the employee has to make changes as well and vice versa. Everybody has to adapt to changes to make it work and to ensure their relevence in the relationship.

That is why when in relationship, effort has to be put in all the time to accomodate chances and to stay relevence. If not the relationship will start to accumulate unsolved differences and always the effort put in has to be mutual to make it last.

When only one party put in effort to accomodate changes and evolve into something better, we have to communicate to our partner of the requirement to change and work out the new differences. When both adapt to changes and work out the new differences the relationship will become stronger. However if one party refuse to adapt to changes we have to put in effort to make them change. Unfortunately, if it does work out and the other partner refuse to tag along, then harsh decision has to be made on the relationship. Delaying on the decision will only mean suffering. Delaying mean it is the start downfall of the relationship or the love affair or the organisation.

To be editted and to be continued

Christmas 2009

I have been busy this year end. I have not been writing that much this month. So yesterday i was really buzy and decided that I should go on a short holiday while there is still 2009 remaining.

So, today here I am arriving at Tanjung Jara Resorts one of YTL luxury resort in Malaysia. I check into a room where Micheal Schumacher the F1 race driver stayed before!. By coincidence I was driving my ferrari to Terrenganu today :). I did quite some racing from Kuala Lumpur to Terengganu..hehehe

I am trying to enjoy this 3 days holiday as much as I could. I am now facing my private garden and beach now! It is so breath taking.

My work is going to be much challenging in 2010. So I am going to forget about work for a while and relax

Merry Christmast to those who celebrate it. And good weekend for the rest.

Business evolution

I have been doing business for a while now, I always wonder what is it that I am looking for and what am I suppose to get out of it...

It is a process of fact finding. I guess it is subjective matter anyhow.. depending on individual perception and perspective actually.

At first, I was looking for a better life with better earning. Well almost everybody started out with that reason.

When I started to venture into business and I found out the freedom that it offers. The freedom of not being tight to any terms or condition.

At this point of time, I feel is about the satisfaction of

1) being able to always learn new thing especially the strategic planning in the area of financial and human mananagement

2) to be able to create a work place with the kind of people that you want and the kind of that you makes you happy and performing.

3) to be able to see other people grow and helping them to discover their potential.

4) the challeges that business bring and coming out of every challeges stronger and wiser.

5) to be able to contribute to the society by paying taxes, by providing employment and etc

That is what I can think of right now!. maybe more to come...

Step by step

I have been busy lately. I am going to be more buzy this coming years. Well I guess I just have to manage it. Anyhow, there should be some time to write too! ;)

Every thing has to go through a generic process.That's the way it is. It is just the rate of going through the process or multiple process at the same time may differ.It depend on the effort that the person put in actually. I found that somehow from my experience it is always true.

You have to always go through the process. You cannot take shortcut. If you take shortcut you have to really put in mega effort to catch up.The fact is, if you do not put in more effort to catch up you will destine to fail.

If your are to speed up your progress and achievement, you have to put in more effort. Effort in term of your energy and brain power.But between the two I would say that brain power will give you faster and sustainable growth.

But what ever the rate of progress that you are capable of delivering, you have to through the process step by step.

Lastly, in order to have a clear picture of the steps that you need to follow, you got to have a target!.

The thing about leadership

The summary

Leadership counts that is for sure. Things go about around leadership. Growth is proportional to leadership enhancement. Down fall is caused by deteriorated, unmatched, stagnant leadership.

The idea is

Leadership is required at every stage of human and organisation development and evolution. The differentiation of human and organisation development rate and achievement is determined by the level of leadership that an individual and organisation possessed.

Leadership could also relate closely to management and decision making. The higher the leadership level the better management is required and the harder the decision making is required.

The human and organisation differentiation

The essential

When you or an organisation gets started, the factor that differentiates one man or an organisation from another is the ability of you to lead yourself or the owner of the organisation to lead himself as “the one man show”. This is where leadership started, this is where evolution started and this is where the differentiation of achievement and status begins.

So if you or an organisation what to be achieving, this is where you should start looking, this is where you should evaluate and rate yourself, and this is where you should learn how and what to improve. If you wonder why yourself or your organisation fail to achieve what other people or organisation have achieved compared to a relatively similar start up or start off, the difference is in the growth of leadership rate.

If you want to keep achieving, you have to learn lead yourself by learning how to grow yourself with continuous improvement. Self development has to be endured all the time. You can and should all the time improve yourself, you can grow yourself indefinitely and achieve more by increasing your leadership level, knowledge and capabilities. Leadership and growth is a process and it is suppose to be a never ending process.

I will not describe how to lead better, maybe in future writing and some I have written earlier. If you want to start learning, I would recommend you to start picking up leadership books.

If you need to know leadership start with care for oneself and getting better all the time. The only thing is that we are human and there is a limited rate that we can progress. The simple reason is human make mistakes and human takes time to digest mistakes and improve.

The multiplication factor

Sure you will be a better person and able to achieve more by leading yourself better, by managing yourself better and by learning how to make better and tougher decision on your own with regard to yourself. But if you want to do something significant, satisfying and contributing you should learn to lead other people. Leading other people is the way to multiplication and exponential growth.

But before you get so excited about it, remember that leading yourself is hard enough and leading yourself should be a never ending process regardless as I mentioned. Sometime even if you started to lead others and enjoy some degree of success, in time you may fail. One of the reasons apart from the failure to learn more how to lead other better is, the failure to continuously improve and leading yourself. At this stage people normally becomes either arrogant or ignorance. They stop growing and learning.

I am confident that if you are reading this and you have read this far, you are either starting your career and have the desire to improve yourself, or you are leading yourself well and leading others, or maybe you have done well but stuck not knowing what to do next since your growth has become stagnant, or hopefully not at the stage of a downfall. Even if it so, maybe it is time to re-assess and re-group.

So whatever the situation that you are in at the moment, you can grow exponentially by having more right people and more leaders. You are to be able to position yourself either in the middle, on top and underneath more right people and leaders depending on your position in your organisation. So if you are to grow beyond your maximum rate and current abilities, you are required to learn how to lead more people.

Just understand that the more people to lead means your leadership level must be horned. You can lead people who are more skilful than you, but you cannot lead someone with higher leadership level for long.

Last but not least

All I am writing is conceptual. I am writing about the effects and consequences. I am just stressing on the importance of leadership. Maybe leadership is the missing piece that stunts your growth. Maybe you have enjoyed some success without knowing the reason why. The reason is that you have subconsciously learn to lead better by some exposures, some good example and guidance, some informal knowledge and modelling some sort of leadership traits.

To be able to grow always, you have to be consciously learns the effect and consequences of growing, decline and absence of leadership. You should be aware of the framework and to be able to put the missing pieces together as you go along.

Putting accountability in place

I recently got myself in a situation which things got a little bit messy. Things got a little be out of control when I was subject to bigger job and more people to deal with. It takes me a while to understand and to figure out the root of the problem and the solution it.

I wonder about and find out that i have to really start putting accountability in place more seriously. So, I started to learn how to put accountability into practice. The way to start is to appoint someone to be in charge and accountable for the result required and the dateline.

When I started to do it thing started to become somewhat better and organised.

For those bosses and business owner, start to learn how to put in accountability in place and the rest learn how to be come more accountable if you want your career to fly.

But you must learn to communicate accountability to make it effective.

You can never go wrong

You can never go wrong by investing into great people. Even if you do not have any more place in your organisation, when you stumble across a great one, make a place for them.

You will definately do more with more good people.

Failure and Conflict - The Inevitable

The summary

Failures and crisis is the test for our decision making and our abilities. We will either get better and stronger or we will end up becoming worst after every failure and crisis.

When going through failure and crisis, we are to have a clear mind of what is going on, where it is headed and the lesson it offers.

The Idea is

Failures and crisis is the test for our decision making and our abilities. We will either get better and stronger or we will end up becoming worst after every failure and crisis.

When going through failure and crisis, we are to have a clear mind of what is going on, where it is headed and the lesson it offers.
In life there are bound to be failure and crisis whether you like it or not.
The mass of the people will try to avoid failure. Failure hurts. It can be frustrating. It can make you feel bad about yourself.

You cannot actually avoid failure. When you are avoiding it, you are actually just delaying it. You cannot avoid failure by not to decide. You have actually made the decision. The decision is to compromise, the decision is not to be better and the decision is to let others decide for you. You have failed anyway. I do want to address this type of people anyway. The writing is for those who desire to be great. These people will never be great anyway.

When people are at the time of crisis, they will be stressful, they tend to make wrong decision. Some get over it, and learn the lesson. Some could not get over it becomes worst then they were before.

Like it or not, failures and crisis come and go. It will keep coming not matter what. The thing about failure and crisis is that it is a test. It is the test of our decision making, the test of our ability to adapt, the test of our worthiness to grow. It is the differentiation factor.

When going through failures and crisis, at the end of the day, you will become either better or worst. It is a battle at the cross road. So brace yourself and have a clear mind whenever crisis and failure is at your doorstep. It is either your take it to your advantage or you will be the victim of crisis and failure.

The is a book by John C Maxwell titled “Failing Forward” and a book by Mark Gerzon titled “Leading Through Conflict” if you like to read.

It is not that difficult to tell

It is not that difficult to be wise. It is not that difficult to be want you wanted to be.
It is definitely not difficult to predict how you would be and how you would end up.
Life is a cycle. History always repeats itself. And it is not that difficult to see which history that you are repeating.
Review this...
Allah says that we should learn from the Holy Al Quran. Why?. What is there is the Holy Book? If you care to review, all Allah describes in His Book is history and reminders.
It is relevant?. It is very relevant!. Why is it relevant, it is an old history you might say.
The thing is no matter how old the history is, history will always repeat itself. No matter how modern and complicated the world is today. The basic story line is still the same!.
It is not fortune telling. If you care to learn about the history and other people history, and if you care to evaluate where you are now and your past, you will more or less know what you are going to be. It will not take a genius or a fortune teller to figure it all out. It just needs some study and muhasabah to be able to foretell.
To all my staffs.
We are to be a great company. We are to be great people. Learn from the history. Learn your responsibilities to be somebody different and somebody great. Only if you are great people, will the company becomes great!.

It is a story

We are living in an imperfect world.
We are human, so we are imperfect.

We go through life everyday.
Everyday in our life is a page of our book.
We are the author of the book.

The idea is

How do we want our story to be?
How do we want our story to conclude?
How do we want our story to end?

Hmmmm... I come to think to this idea..

If we are not somebody... we are nobody!
I was thinking how am I to be that somebody, not to be that nobody.
Then, I was thinking...even to write a story book we need ink or a pen.
So I come to think that the ink or pen represent money.

Yes..money is not everything. It is just a medium. It is what makes the world go round in human's term. We are living, we are living in this world. We work hard to make a living. Living is money.

The magic word is, working is living. Cheating for living is not living.It is a sin. A sin of living in denial.

So we got to have money to start with... that is the brutal fact!
And I intend to have a lot of them starting from today!

So let us get to work

Selamat Hari Raya

Saya ingin mengucapkan Selamat Hari Raya Aidil Adha kepada semua!

It is only for those few

Life is ever changing, business environment changes all the time, hence the demand on human ability changes all the time. The standard for work deliverables is becoming more and more demanding. There are also talk of better quality of life. So to juggle between those two is petty damn hard.

Recruitment for good people is very hard.

Recruitment for great people is so damn bloody hard.

The idea is

Only few are able be "the person". You can be great for some period of time. But you must be adaptive to to sustain the greatness.

That is why there are only a handful of great people in this world. Definately it is good to be great!. It gives life a sense of meaning and purpose.

We should not be working anymore!

When people are on the job, they got frustrated, they whin and complain about their job. What is the point of working if you are not happy?!.

We should not be working anymore, it is too hard.

The idea is

When you find yourself the right job, you will not be feeling like working anymore.

The right job should make you feel inspired, anxious and it gets under your skin.

If you have not found it yet. Go look for one.

If you are in a big company maybe you belong to a small set up

If you are in a small company maybe you belong to a big set up

If you are employed maybe you should be self employed.

If you are self employed maybe you should get a job

I found mine!

Do we need more great idea?

I dont think we need more good ideas right now. More good idea will make us confused because there are too many good ideas around already.

Already we have too many good ideas and we do basicly nothing about it!.Why then we need new idea for?.

In term of the country, we have many ideas and good systems already. It is just simple not being implemeted and executed well. The trend is, we are all the time trying to carry out new good ideas without having to finish and without mastering of the previous one, without proper review and improving the current ideas.

Same goes to business,there are many business ideas around. But people think it is so difficult to find one.Businessman in Malaysia normally try to do so many business ideas at one time. They failed because they cannot focus and fail to master one business at a time.They try to do too many not because they are able, it is just simple that they are greedy and trying to take short cut to richness and relaxation!. Stupid fools.

I have been doing business for 10 years now. I have been doing the same thing too. I cannot be doing other business yet. Simply because I have not even master this one yet and I only have few good and able people. I make too many mistakes and there are too much to learn.I dont understand why people are too eager to venture into some thing new too fast.They are prone to disasterous failure.

The fact is most wanna be businessman in this country should not businessman. They can only be sole propriter. They cannot expand beyond their skill and themself. They are simply selfish and does not have the people and management skills.

There are basic ideas out there all time. Just spend some time reading and thinking. It is not that hard, it is just creative imitation!.

The idea is

If you are working on one good idea. Just work hard on it and focus on it..master it.In time new ideas will automaticly come and presented to you!.

For those fresh graduates, look for an employment that demands your thinking, able you to develop new skills and demand the best out of you. Dont just simply work for money alone. Money will come later. You want a job that offer you learning and knowledge. If you dont have what it takes and are not willing to work hard and learn. Dont dream too high. You cannot go beyond your ability, your thinking, your will and your determination! Get the idea?

Technology Helps

I always have faith in people. The thing is, most of the time people dont have faith in their ownself.I try my best to help. Most of the time it's frustrates me. When it frustrates me, I used to get the feeling that I am wasting my time and I should not bother.

Then I wonder how am I suppose to answer to God when I die. I sure kena!.Maybe I would say to Him, people make me feels like giving up. Maybe He would say..I have never given up on you!. Why should you give up instead.

I would say that I thank Him for giving me the idea of blog. I would like to thank Cheah Ai Wei for teaching and helping me to set up my blog.

Now I am happy, I got the answer when He question me later!

It a serious and heavy

Yup, I admit I write heavy stuffs in my blog. My wife says it heavy.I am just being myself.That is what I am, I am always thinking of the heavy stuffs. It is worth my time.

If you notice, my grammar and sentence structure are often off. I am thinking as I write and my thinking is faster than my writing. I could not find my time to correct it. I just let it be.

That is why my decision is sometime off.. I make decision too fast.Well, nowadays I try to think it through more. But I wont take as much time. It is who I am. I am a risk taker.I am not that prudent. If I am too prudent, probably I will take too long to decide and playing on the save side.Risk taking means mistakes prone.No mistake no progress, no mistake no lessons.

It is always a double edge. I am trying to balance it out nowadays. I am trying to be more prudent but I wont lose my other edge, I dont intend to. I will have both edges.

To my staffs,I am telling you that I will get my third supercars, hehehe.

The way to grow - timeless tales

Be you are employed or selfemployed.

When we embark on a carrer or a business, at the beginning the accellaration of progess seems to be smooth. Our career and our business florishes and blooms.

Come halfway through, most of us will find out that it is hard to move forward. Growth is difficult to attain and sustained.

The idea is

To push forward and to keep growing we have to put ourself behind and to put others people growth as our focus. At this stage we will only grow by growing other people.

So if you have not started, learn focus on other people more and learn to manage people, or even learn to manage other people which is more intellegent and skillful than us.

In short, it is about being able to manage others people sincerely and to start to learn how to lead.

To grow, other people matters and to grow, leadership matters

The missing pieces about strengths and weaknesses.

As we journey through life, life and our experiences will show us something.. It will be revealed only if we care to reflect.

The idea is

If we care to reflect, life will reveal to us in time, more of our strengths and weaknesses.Many people might think that they know especially their strengths.

The fact is most of us does not know exactly and the assumption is mostly wrong. We will find out in time. Think more and try out more things to identify. Strengths and weaknesses have to be tested in term its validity. It will be validated mostly through real life experiences.

Once you have identified some of your strengths and weaknesses. Try to focus and work more on your strengths and try to fix your weaknesses. But focus on strengths!

Let us take a break

There are people that do nothing but hope that something good will come their way.

These people remained either hopeful or whiner or hopeless or helpless or pain in the neck..depending on how the present themself to the public.

I will not elaborate on this type of people, it is a waste of time

I want to focus on is the other type of people............

There are people who thought that they have done everything possible, put in every ouns of effort and energy yet nothing happens or nothing good materialises.

They have either give up, going to give up and start to blame their misfortune on anything possible.

The idea is.

Though sometime we have given everything into something,things wont simply happened accordingly.We should not give up. It is just time to stop doing what we are doing and take a break.

God is fair, He will give things for those wish and put in effort. The catch is...

Sometime we must take a break and think how to do it differently.When things does not come through we are simply doing the wrong thing, focusing on the wrong area or having wrong approach.

God will give for those who work, but they just have to work on the right thing and the right way.

So don't give up and give in...

The Culture of Compromise

When we embarked to do anything, normally we tend to be anxious and ambitious. It is normal to do it overboard and excessive. We got so overwhelmed that we did not compromises or making too much compromises.
Our country is multiracial. At the beginning compromises were made to set things up correctly. Compromises have to be made to make the ball rolling. Compromises at the beginning is definitely the right thing to do.
Of course compromises make a lot people happy. When people are happy they can focus on something else which is important, like working and working to develop country. Definately, compromises induces some degree of peace.
The Idea is
The problem with this country is that ever since, excessive compromising has become the solution and culture. There were and are too many compromises being made. When you make too many compromises, important agenda is very difficult to roll off, difficult to do and some time has to be abandoned. When there are too many compromises, we lose the sight of the right thing that has to be done. We are so swap to entertain a lot of parties and the kind of compromises have to be made that we do not quite enough argue what is the right thing to do.
The correct way is that to figure out the right thing to do first then figure out what is the compromises that need to be made to ensure that the agenda goes through accordingly but not at the expense of abandoning and ourselves losing too much.
The thing is if you make too many compromises over a long period of time environment will always and eventually deteriorate. The time will come that we have to make a harsh call or else we will lose it all.
Since we have developed and having the culture of making too many compromises, I like to draw our attention to situation of the country. The reason I bring out the issues is just to trigger everyone to think.
The first scenario, the government has the obligation to drive the country forward in term of economics, moral, thinking and many other aspects and disciplines. If they do not drive all these things forward they will lose the confident of the people.
The second scenario, the government or the ruling party has to really revamp the political parties that it becomes relevant, stable and produces quality leaders that will lead the country forward. Most of the leaders may not be relevant anymore and should be replaced. They are there not focusing on the people or the country anymore, they are there to take care of their legacy and position only. If they are not replaced, the government will also lose the confident of the people.
But the thing is if they are replaced there will definitely be havoc and instability in political parties. The coming election will definitely will be in jeopardy.
The fact that we have to face is that we are running out of time and we are at the cross road. We have to make a turning soon. The government is to make the decision and cannot be so hopeful that things are going to be ok. If they do not realise this fact and decide to ignore it, one day they will regret and found out that they have lose it all.
It is difficult issue but unfortunately the time has come to make the harsh decisions and it is so difficult to make the right compromise now, for we have arrived at the crossroad. May God have mercy on us.

From average to good, good to great

The base

In today's senario, what qualify you to becoming an average person is your formal education. From what it seems now, the basic qualification is a resonable degree. A diploma now seems to be the entry for you to go on the job market.

Average to good.

What then qualify you to be good? It is the commitment and the satisfactory deliverence of your assignment.

Most of people sits on this band. Simply because it is easy to settle for good.It is comfortable to be just good because you will look most competent on the job.

From good to great

Since this is the grandest status, very few qualify and very few are able to maintain it.

So what does qualify you to be great. Ambitious. Always seeking for better way of doing things. Dissatisfied with one's status of quo (good).Always learning and doing better things.

Some people did great but fail to maintain it. So how to maintain it? People who maintain it normally has the chracteristic of humality, not egosentric and always pursue a new level of improvement.

The idea is

It is so easy to settle for good that is a fact.So if you have settled for good, please dont be a whining person. It bleeds somebody's else ears listening to you.

In and out of the box

People say you have to be think outside of the box if you are to come up with better option and solutions.

That might be true. True to the people who life in a box and think within the box.

The idea is

Why limit youself living in a box. With thinking limitation within that box.

There should not be a box in the first place.

Don't get puzzled - simply benchmark

This morning, I was talking to my managers. There was this one issue that persist for a few months now.We have been implementing or rather investing into something new the past few months. The thing is the result is somehow not as we anticipated.

We have been trying a lot of approaches to get where it suppose to be. Somehow or rather we are against the wall. We are simply not moving as fast.

I got the feeling that we are simply not doing the thing that we are suppose to be doing. I pause for a while, thinking. Then I came out with the word... benchmarking.

The idea is

When you want to improve things and go about finding better solution or better option, you just have to benchmark. Benchmarking someone else or another organisation that is much better than us. Studying how they go about doing the same thing with better result.Then you will definately find better ways of doing things! with high standrard and better results of course.

Which one are we?

There is a saying

"Below average people talk about other people, average people talk about themselves, great people talk about idea"

The idea is

which one are we?

What needed to change?

Normally, when people want to introduce changes, they will go about making a fuss and hugh publicity, dwell into strategy and introduce new strategy and etc

The thing about changing and changes is that all the big fuss, horay does only one good thing and one good thing only. It only promotes awareness..what happened if you try to wake a bear during their hibernation season?.. They open one eye and goes back to sleep.
Changes and changing takes time...the fuss and publicity is only a starter.

If you poke the bear with a knife ... it will definately wake up..to kill you ...but what happened afterward? It goes back to sleep.

That is what happen if you introduces sudden and brave change agendas...most of the time it is not sustainable.

The idea is

So how to we tackle this individual, organisation and government to a sustainable change? hmmm... let me see...

I think the effective way to change oneself, organisation and government is cultural change. Cultural change mostly goes about discipline. It can be as simple as getting earlier in the morning..and other simple thing..discipline thinking and discipline action.

So the essence of change is the change of culture. Culture of discipline. Only with change of discipline will effectively change oneself, an organisation and a country.

Without it, the intended high income society or vision 2020 is futile.

Last but not least. God invent human with faith. Faith is about discipline. What does solat or prayer teaches us? The discipline of time, dicipline of thought and discipline of action!

Think about it... dicipline is fundamental. You cannot aim high if the foundation is wobbly. That is for sure

The key word is the culture of discipline

The little push that makes a lot of difference

When you started working, you get to know a few kind of people. I get to know a lot more kind of people. I get to know a lot of people especially when I started venturing into business.

Most of the succesful people that I observed of, of course work hard to look for opportunities. But there is one pattern that emerge to my observation. Guess what...

These are the people who are always been good to their parents. As to compare other of their siblings, they are the one that is most caring and responsible to their parents. Somewhat the kindness to their parents makes them easier to stumble upon good things.

The small number of them continue to be successful even more, simply because they do not forget their parents and their welfare even in most good times.

If your have tried hard and have not been that successful and find it hard to push forward, try check on your relationship with your parents.

The people that I mention has been successful over many economic cycles. These people are happy people and trust me, these are very successful people in their own way...

The Older The Better

I about middle age now. I make mistakes and I try to learn as much. Sometimes, I am in the middle of a mistake, I could not see it and I could not learn lesson from it there and then. I may realised the lesson and the mistake later, much later or sometime never.

Well that is pretty obvious huh...It happens all the time you might say. I will definately not be able to capture all the offerings. Will never will. It is just simply that we are human.

The idea is...

People say you should learn your own lesson. By that I think what they mean is, you have to go through it by yourself and make the mistakes, pay! the mistakes and learn the lesson.

Well I think that is about a fair statement for most of the time. Human do have to learn their own lesson. If not they wont be able to appreciate the lesson.But owwchhh...it can be painful most of the time.. to pay for the mistakes.

What am I getting at?

Well, I have made my fair share of mistakes and big mistakes..that you have to trust me and trust me, more are coming! definately and period!.I will make a lot of them in time and everyday.. why? because I am not going play it that prudent. I am going fast and I am going big!..why? I am ambitious and there is no fun in playing it too safe.

If my managers and my accountants are reading this.. they are going to start getting worried and oppss .. here he goes again...We are dead... we are going to be asked for more results and more results in shorter time...The boss is going nuts again...

All i am trying to say is that I am not going to let go the thrills and the good things that life is offering.Just in case you guys are reading this.. which I am sure you will.. I will tell you that I will always play it big and I always will play it rough...I want you guys to do the same too!.. But this time around, I will definately put you guys and the company sustainability in the equation. I will get it.. may be longer time.I will be a bit more prudent..I hope..hehehe

Ok...coming back to the topic..to learn from one own mistakes is a must and it is inevitable. Just that sometime ago, I realise that most people will definately learn a lot of lessons when they are pretty old!...So what? ..Nowadays, I look for the old and do more listening from the old..I ask them to tell me stories...I ask them if they dont mind, telling me, the things that they regret and the things that they were so grateful.. their experiences and etc.I am more interested in history and living history from the mouth of the living old.

I talk more to my father and mother, asking them questions. Listening to their past. Now I know why I got wacked all the times when I was little. I thank them for wacking me!

The things about finding the purpose of life

Just to note. Human will never find or understand the purposes of life unless they constantly makes mistakes and one day stumble upon 'the mistakes'.Don't be surprised even some of the wise and the religious one does not understand and found the meaning and purposes of life.

Why? becaused even the wise and the religious one are just only another human being.Why not? Because they will be subjected test of how they conduct themselves with the knowledge given by God.They shall not escape God test unless they are prophet or angel.Which they are not!

Life progression - a reminder

Life goes on regardless. Time goes by regardless.

The young and the old experinces new things everyday. Experiences is our test. There will be endless test regardless. It is the norm. It is normal life progession. It is "fitrah" of life and human.

Human does not have the choice to what situation that they are born. They can be born in wealthy or poor family. They can be born in Malaysia or in Europe. That is the decision of God. But upon being born is the decision of the parents.After puberty, it is the decision of human to decide their life progression.We do not have the choice of how we are brought here and being brought up, but after, it is about our choice to determine how it is going to be. What God will do is to reward and punish. He will subject human to test and evenue to learn. It is the fitrah or norm. Fitrah that human will make mistakes and sins, to correct it and to learn from it.

What will be then definate and the decision of God is only one. It is the exact second that we will die. Not one second more or less.

Human is constantly making mistakes and sins. It has been said that if this human does not sins, He will exterminate the human race and replace is with a new human being who sins.

That is the reason why,He loves it when human sins and ask for His forgivess. That is why He loves it when human is in trouble, he works hard and ask for His mercy and assistance.

The idea is

God will subject human to test until human exhale their last breath. Human are required to learn until the day they die.

That is why human progess from being rich to poor, from being rich to poor and rich again, from being rags to riches and etc. Some time God accelarate the this process because of other human excessive bad or good deeds. But human fate else than that rest upon the human himself. God is fair.

All I am trying to say is that, we should reflect the purposes of life. When we have purposes or when we are aware of our purposes, only then we will know what to do. And the right thing to do.

Reflect on that!

The thing about luck

I get to chat with my accountant today. I mention to her that i consider myself very lucky for I get to learn my lessons very early in life. She responded to saying that there is no such thing as luck.

Then I remembered of a book by George Clason - "The richesman in Babylon". It was written in 1926, if I am not mistaken..I shared with her and I'd like to share with you..The book mention that luck only attracted to those who work!

It is all about work

The truth is what you put it in is what you will get. But it is also true that what you put in will get you more if you do it smartly.

The idea is... You have to put in something to get something. You simply have to work and put in efforts.

The more efforts you put in, the more mistakes you will make. The more mistakes you make, the more likely you are going to learn new things.

So do more work and fear not making mistakes. It will do you good. There is no shortcuts!

The missing list - the secret

In the modern world, technology advances it term of communication, transportation and etc. It reduces time consumed to do things. That is great!, we might say. The thing is, time is more efficiently used nowadays, but it seems that we are getting more occupied with work and more busy . The boses and the organisation that we work demand more from us.

We spend odd hours checking and replying emails. We even have devices like blackberries (did i spell it right?. I dont have one!) to enable us to get updated.

It is in my opinion, this is very unhealthy. We work to provide to our family. But we does not seems to have time for them or even ourselves.

The idea is...

Time is saved by efficiency provided by technology. We are getting busier because we or other people in our surrounding keep adding more things to do to our 'to do lists'. It never stops!.. That is the thing what gets us busier, the endless addition to the 'to do lists'.

At the end of the day, we would only realised that suddenly we are old, we are tired, we are sick, we forgot to enjoy life, we are missing our children or somebody else gets the promotion that we work for.

What to do?..

Start having the 'missing list'. The missing list is the list of things that we should reconsider of its relevance and priority, to be abandoned and to be eliminated. The missing list is the 'not to do list'!. Most people are good with 'to do list', not many consider and have 'not to do list'.

The thing is, we can only get better if we are able to focus. Focus on key important items. We can not deliver best results if we are to do tons of thing at the same time. We can deliver best results if we focus on a few most important things on our to do list.

The idea now is, to shortern our 'to do list' and to have 'not to do list'

Think about it.... it will worth your while!

FDI dilemma - where does Malaysia stand?

In the past we have taken bold and aggressive steps to woo foreign investors to put their money into our country. We have succeeded. It was the era where foreign company outsources manufacturing to country of strategic location with cheap labour cost and sensible tax incentives. They also need a regional hub to reduce the logistic costs and to be able to be near to capture prospective market namely Asia.

We have been blessed because in those days we do have cheap labour cost and South East Asia is the most stable in term of politics. It makes sense to do business in South East Asia. Plus at that point of time South East Asia are on the verge of developing, because of competition among the Asia countries, incentives are very attractively formulated and the set up is very relax.

Singapore at the beginning is very much into the manufacturing developing Jurong industrial area. They compete intensely to win investment over Taiwan and other prospects. Later they found out that they are lacking in term of land and manpower thus pack up their management skills to conquer site for regional office and regional financial hub.

The last few years the climate has changes where China and India politics are more open to attract investors. They are cheaper in term labour cost and outsourcing to India and China is making more sense as they provide hugh sales potential from their high population. They are even catching up in term of knowledge workers. India has a lot of competent engineers. Most of outsourcing for global call centres and global supports goes to India. China of course carries the title of World Manufacturer.
Environment has changed. Malaysia has to change. Before we come to the need justify why changes are needed to change for Malaysia, let us go back to China. Even China has to change eventually. China has become exporter of their own products. They are exporting automotive, machineries, telecommunication products. This is because they are the hard working people who always look for growth opportunities. While manufacturing other people product, they learn how the technology works and develop their by creatively imitating.

The west has seen China an emerging potentially threatening competitor. The Chinese has to change into a product developer and producer with their own branding. The west foresees this and they are taking measure to only outsource the low tech manufacturing to china. They are taking back the high tech manufacturing to their country. There reasons that I do not want to elaborate here. In short, capture and improve manufacturing techniques to themselves, to integrate R&D and manufacturing of high tech together, to reduce competition and preserve their margin and etc.

Enough of that, so where does that leaves us?. I dare not intend to elaborate here. We have a lot of strategist and economist. Let them wake up and think!. They should stop get busy with mere busyness, sit down, think and come up with one concrete plan. They should be reviewing the state that what we are in now, our current competitive advantages and our relevance. They should be thinking of what new skill and new approaches needed to be acquired. They need to argue where we are heading with the current climate. Lastly they need to think of the direction that we needed to go. Also they need to think of how to diversify our skills and future income.

Being bold - drastic and dramatic

The country definitely needs drastic changes. It needs dramatic changes. Why drastic and dramatic?. It is because we have 2020 vision to become developed country. Dramatic changes are needed the wake people up and get them focus. I don’t see a lot of drama yet!. We are running out of time! For a country to change, 10 years is definitely a short time. We wasted a lot of time already...

Who are involved in these changes. The answer is the leaders and the people. Who has the responsibility for these changes. The leaders. They lead the followers. Whose faults it is if changes do not materialise?. The leaders.

I mention leaders not leader. It is plural not singular. I have seen small number of leaders shouting and promoting changes. They can only do best at promoting. That is all I have seen. I can guarantee little success.

The leaders need to be serious to deliver. They need to show their seriousness. The Prime Minister is good in promoting ideas and measures. He has shown seriousness promoting awareness. He should start showing seriousness in demanding and delivering results. He should push hard and drive hard for results.

The way I see it, if he is busy and serious promoting awareness, all eyes are on him only. What happened to the rest who are suppose to be executing?. They sleep and dream.His eyes and our eyes should be on ourselves and the people around the Prime Minister seeing whether we and they are doing the thing that we and they are suppose to be doing.

They were KPI. Publishes the KPI. What are the progress? Where is the results? I do not see the rewards and punishment yet. Do you think that all the ministers are performing? I don’t think so! They are busy cheering up the awareness promotion. They do not know what are they supposed to be doing. Why?. Because people and the prime minister are not demanding enough!.

High Income society - Self Improvement

High Income society is about more people getting paid more money. They are to be paid more for their job they delivered.

The question is how do we get paid more?

The Idea is.

We get paid more by increasing our knowledge, responsibility and professionalism.

Knowledge is the ability to deliver our job satisfactory and ability to know how to do it better.

Responsibility means being accountable for our assignment and results. Responsibilty also means the task to grow the people surrounding us including the bosses.

Professionalism is the awareness of knowledge and reponsibilty plus the ability to priorities and focus with integrity.

How do you get started? You are to improve and acquire the three elements. Give it your best try and give it time. Irregardless the organisation that you work for.

What if the organisation do not recognise the values? You still have to give it a sufficient time. I would say at least 1-3 years (too fast will hurt your resume'). Keep focusing on improving yourself regardless. Learn from the mismanagement of the organisation. Do not involve into gossip (it hurts your professionalism). Conserve your energy, your focus your motivation and dont give up!.

Then when the things does not change and impossible to change in your favour. Do the thing that most people fail to do. Decide to move on! Look for a new job! Then repeat the cycle all over again until you find the job that pays you according to your contribution.

Malaysia Dilemma

A lot of efforts have been put in since our independence to get things in the right path. There are lot of governing policies in place to develop the country. It is to change our status from an underdeveloped to becoming a developed country. There were many policies in term of economics, equality, governance, education, health and etc.
Most of the yesteryear governing policies were sufficient to get Malaysia from the underdeveloped country to the most developed underdeveloped country. However, the long term mission is to be a developed country. The yesteryear governing policies WILL DEFINATELY NOT take Malaysia to the desired status. It takes different governing policies to be able to do it.
The idea is
Most things had changed and are changing. It needs revisions. Most of our short and medium term goals have been achieved. Some of the policies need realignment as the environment and requirement has changes. The economic environment, politics, moral, unity, life style, social obligations have change. Even in the developed countries they are changing to adapt changes. So our yesteryear policies of does not need adjustment anymore. They have to go though major overhaul.
The most important thing to be focused on is Malaysian society. Malaysian has to change their mindset. All races have to change their mindset. For the Chinese and Indian they are not working here temporarily and later to go back to India and China anymore. They are the citizen of this country. They are supposed to be thinking of the country more. The Malay are not suppose to be getting subsidies and privileges all the time. They are given such things as buffer to reach equalities with others. In time, these things have to be gradually phased out. Later everything has to be open. Only then the Malay can be at par as others. If not they will all the time asking subsidies and privileges. They will not think and grow. Malaysian, collectively have to evolve in their own perspective and grow
Malaysia now is now like an old ship sailing in the open sea. With so many leaks that have been patched. Those patches will not hold the rough seas for long. The captain should not be busy resting on his laurel in his cabin. The sail is tearing apart.
To be able to forever sail in the open sea to its destination, the captain needs to take the ship to land for major repair and overhaul. He might to evaluate the ship seriously. For at the moment, ship does not sail anymore, they run on engine!. So maybe it is good to keep the sailing patched ship for recreation once and a while (our history). We are to continue our voyage on a brand new ship.
The thing is minor revamps have been done. But it does not seem to do much good. Policies are good but most of the time the result is somewhat slow and undesirable. Most probably the orientation and the goal are wrong. I would say the aim is wrong. The standard set is low. ‘Malaysia Boleh’ but ‘Malaysia Tak Boleh’ in term of most things measured at International standards. This is why most Malaysia venture outside Malaysia fails. Construction, automotive and others fail miserable.
Malaysia is like a company. The government is the independent directors. The most important factor to be successful is the people who work in the company. It has to be the right people.
The problem is, most of the people that the work is substandard. There is abundance of potentially right people. Only that, the problem is environment and the practice does not encourage these potentially right people to be the right people. Most of these right people eventually become the main stream which is substandard. That is the reason why it needs overhaul or total revamp instead of patching. The mainstream has to be changed.
Overhaul in all aspects with regard to politic, economic, social, education and others is mandatory. The overhaul is supposed to be focused on the mechanisms and policies with human development and capabilities in mind. Period.

The obvious - what government needs to do

Budget has been table out. I should say it is generic or it is the first cut. It has to be reviewed within the next fiscal year. There is no shame in doing that. Anyhow, when needed and it happened before, the government did table out mini budget.

Mini budget should be table out within 2010 if really the measure of cutting the operational expenditure is successful. The saving from the operational cost should be channel into capital expenditure. Or else, I would say that the government is not really serious in cutting down it operational expenses. Because there is simply no results.

The Idea is

The obvious is that the government needs to rigorously cut the operating expenditure but increases the capital expenditure.

Why? The economy was bad and still bad. What does good does it bring? It brings with it corrections. So those business and businessman who do not deserved to be exist should stop doing their business and start looking for employment. They have to face the brutal reality. They can hardly sustain their business, they have no prospect and more their present makes the sector that they are in losing its profitability.

But if even these businesses ceases to exist and the businessman looks for employment, it is very hard as the economic does not allow businesses to hire new people.

So we are stuck!!!

Worthy businesses and businessman can hire more people eventually if there are more business and more spill over effects from generation of more businesses

The is why capex has to be increased. It should be focus on area of hugh potential and area where there are most employment and activities. But measures are to be taken not to give businesses from capex to companies which are not really a company. Company who does not employ people or worst, does not have employee at all.

Now that is the obvious!

Why do we work - the modern day definiton

Human initially work to survive, to sustain life and to accumulate wealth.

Modern day human thought that they are doing the same thing. They survive but barely, they try to sustain life but barely surviving. Very little succeed and accumulate wealth.

This new senario exist because of the modern financial framework. It is now easy to find credit offered by financial institutions. This is why life can be very stressful nowaday. We are living on the edge.

Why do we work nowaday. To get the financial insitutions richer. To serve debts coming from our desires and uncontrolable temptation. Who we are today? We are the servants of the bank and practically their slave.

We are getting fed up with the bank calling us up for repayment. They call us night and day. We are their slave because though we have had enough of them, there are little that we can do for we have much more debts left to pay. We may be indebted to them for life!.

The Idea is

The relevation

Why do we work? We are the bank servants and slaves.

Why is the happening? We have bad management of temptation and desires.

What bad management of desire and temptation brings? More debts because we spend more than we earn.

Why are we not so different from each other? Most of us are NOT a free men and women. For those who are unable to pay they became defaulters. For those who are able to pay, they are able spreading the repayment of the debts for a long time. So we are not free men and women.

The thing needs to be done

To fight our enemy. Who is our enemy? Our temptation and desires. Who else? Our debts.

We are to fight to reduce and to eliminate our enemy. Be there only honest debts.

The things that we need to realise

We can have things and the luxuries that we desire if we work hard and have alot of patient. Good things will come but later when we earn it.

If we are to keep whatever that we "possessed". The only way is to increase the abilty to earn and learn to control our expenditure. Else if we do not have the ability to increase and diverse our income, just stop the spending and focus on settling the debts.

Good habit

Maybe to have the dicipline to set a side at least 10% of our income into saving.

It should work!

Just a note

Dear bloggers,

Just to note something

Before, I have little interest in the country economic and politics. This is because I found out that it is messy. And that there is little that i can contribute. Very seldom that I watch the news or reads the paper. That is why instead i study underlying conceptuals because it is the essence in most things.

Then in time, as I work, i discover a lot of things. Things like the degradation of human resources quality that education system produces, the level of transperancy, competitiveness, knowledge and a lot of other things which makes me worry. I worry more because i have children.

I love the country and the people, I think we could have been much better. So I think that something must be said and I must say something and contribute. So i decided that I should start writing. It is the least thing that i can do.

Actually, I do not want to talk about politic that much as i do not contribute that much (but can't help, it is worring me). Politic determines who runs the country.

My intention is to cover as many subjects as possible in term of improvement. Tq

High income society - the anwers

It good that the government aim to build a high income society. Much effort has to be put in if it is to be realised. This effort has to be continous. It a bit like a total reform!

They have to learn how it is being done. The have to dwell into international history to know how. Pre and Post Industrilisation and globalisation. They need to know what policies to be deviced, changed and abandoned. They need to learn how other succesful countries did. What I can tell you is that it takes years of efforts and focus! Surely it wont happened in a year!

The Idea Is.

The key to high income society is knowledge society. The economic model for high income society is knowledge economy @ k-economy!

How to do it? I will elaborate on my next posting....

Budget - dilemma

We want the country to be high income earner. Hmmm...is that a true statement? Not entirely true...The country will be a high income earner country if the people earns more and able to spend more. That why introducing new taxes just to cover budget deficits is wrong. You will deprive the people while the government get more income. We are a developing country, not yet developed!. Like a newly started ventures for example company, FDI, and others there should be tax incentives to allow thing to grow. When every thing mature by all means please tax more.

The idea is

1) I just writing it short coz i dont want to puzzle people about budget. The analyst and the economist talks about budget in a ways of confusing or maybe they are themself confused!. When they are confused, other people who knows less about the economy will be even more confused.

2) The people is the one to be the high income earners. The country and the budget on the other hand should be a balanced country and a balanced budget.

There should not be significant increase or new taxes introduced!. In time, when the people earns more, more shall tax is collected automaticly!

3) All this PFI , PPP and new project scheme have the advantage to a certain degree. But the govenment has to question it necessity and priority. Too many will incur more expenditure and long term commitment in term of payment of leasing. It has to be prudently managed.

4) What we may want to do is to review all the existing operating budget of all government agencies. This includes the government invesment agencies. TRIM ALL THE FATS. Those fats has be be get rid off before the government introduce new taxes or approch growth or development by taking more loans and long term leasing commitment.

5) There is no use to tax more if the tax money is not put into good use and wasted by inefficiencies.

6) The budget should focus on increasing the people capability to earn, a balanced budget, a sustainability budget. When this budget season is over. Mega efforts should be put into trimming down the government operational cost and unwise invesment. Focus on what is important to be financed and to be invested in, and the things to be abandon (wastage) - malpractice and loss making invesment. Making full use of the existing amout of tax income given by the people not by taxing more and depriving the people.

Think about it

Opsss... one more thing...one of the way to reduce cost of development and the true intrinsic value and practice in long run to REDUCE RED TAPES AND FIGHT BRIBERY!

Decision, change and success

People desire to be succesful. People are not successful because the delay things especially decision.

The idea is

Success can be achieve almost immediate. What you do is decide to change and start doing the changes... there you are..you are successful.

Is declaring Malaysia Day a public holiday a good move?

Recently the government has declared Malaysia Day as a public holiday starting next year. It is a wise move. I think not!. Since it is to be implemented next year may be there is still time to think it over.

The previous government has declared an additional public holiday for Thaipusam. Now this.

It is good intention to declare Malaysia Day for the country integration. It may be good for the 1Malaysia idea. But what does the people get from this? Another public holiday... In time, years to come, it is just another public holiday. Most probably without the appreciation of the meaning and purpose. Why not just make it the theme for next year Independence day.

It is easy to declare a public holiday but if it is to be reviewed later, it is hard to take it back. It will be an unpopular move! So please review.

The Idea is that

We have so many public holidays. If we are to be a great nation we are to work hard and to have momentum of working. The thing about Malaysian is that the momentum of working slows down before and after a public holiday. One more thing about Malaysian is that once they slow down the momentum, they tend to take longer time to build up momentum again. What may this probably results in? Our productivity!.

Extra holidays mean extra cost. If we are to give one public holiday, we are actually losing 3 days of productivity.

How are we going to attract FDI is cost of doing business goes up and there are frequent interruption in work momentum?

Yes, we are to look at people integration. But we have already many holidays to reflect out this intention. What we need is better work culture and inflow of investment.

Think about it

Greatness and decison - the obvious

As i have written before, decision completes with action and greatness start with questioning.

All this good decision and greatness start with desires to become better.

The idea is that

Man cannot be desirous for many things at once. Man has to have a short list of the thing that he desire most.

For one reason, man can not be doing a lot of things at once without losing focus. Man has to master one thing at the time.

After having the list, what man has to do is to be keen. To be keen means having put all thoughts and efforts into the things that he desires the most.

Decision - The Secret

Life is about making decision. Decisions are made everyday by everybody and for everybody. To become a better person, one has to make more decisions. It goes with the saying "If one does not make the decision, the decision will make them".

Being human, we are not perfect. Even with extreme cautious and focus we can not make all the decisions. In many cases being human, we do not realise that decision has to be made. Of course some decisions are to be made by God.

The point is, the better the person or the better one person desires to be, he or she has to make more decisions and more right decisions. And definately in time, one will be making more good decisions. This is because in time, human will understand and learn to make better decision from life exposure. I do not want, at this point to talk about the decision making processes or tools.

The Idea Is, I want want to highlight the important and the impact.

Everyday, we are always in a situation where there are at least two choices or may be more. So when that is the case, decision has to be made. Whether to do a task now or later, whether to take an assignment or not, even as to wake up early or not and many others which are simple or the hard ones, decision has to be made.

The point is, time waits for nobody and if the decision is not made, something or somebody will make for you. Once you realise this you are better off because you know that you have make decisions.

Once you understand this, it is all about deciding. Decision is the easiest part. It is to know what is right and what is wrong. The solution is always easy if you care to think as most problems are common. You can learn from your past experience or you can refer to other people experience to know the options that you have for deciding.

Well, if most people are asked to think, they can themself identify the problem and provide the solution to their problem. All they have to do is think and focus on their problem. That is all psiciatrist do. They make their clients to think of their problems and look for the answers for themself.

Ok, let us skip the easy part. The hard part is turning the decision into action. Action completes decision. And action is where most people fails. The more action one person takes up the better and the more successful the person will be!. Think about it...

Why Malaysia a good and almost the best country?

Malaysia is such a good country. We have been in peace and harmony. We can afford to learn, we can do almost anything because of the environment. There are abundance of opportunites if one care to look.

The good things happened is mainly because of the availability of ideas with good intentions. This good intentions has been successfull translated into a good system structure.

Structure, i mean by having planning and establishment effort and agencies to help and boost education, business, health and others.

We are such a good country that these efforts a put in advance. It is being put a head in anticipation progess. This is because the country learned from other advanced country, the important of these efforts. So it has been put in place.

The idea is

The country will be the best country if

The people and organisation can catch up to utilise and leverage the facilities that are in place.

The people start to care more about this country

The people start to learn the things that they expect from this country

The people find and understand common mission and vission for the country.

What are we to do? what does the government needs to do?

As i said there are many agencies and efforts been put in place. All we to do is to think of all that are in place. List it all out. Having those vission in mind and look for the important one and abandon what is not necessary in line with the vision. Asking what is the relevent role and contribution towarn the progress that we wanted.

Having done that we should have some system and management in place to make sure we produce the results that we anticipate. Of course accountability should be in place. Consistant review should be in place.

Any government agencies that can be turn into entrepernual performance should be structure in such away. The one that run on good cause such as education and health should be structure differently by having diffrent kind of measurements which is appropriate.

Last but not least, government should allow the people for opportunities and allow people to make mistakes and learn. There should be rooms for learning continuity.

This is because both the people and government have a lot more to learn and experiment.

Being manage correctly we will be the best country. But who say buiding knowledge people and revamping government agencies to be performance driven is easy. It takes a lot of efforts and hard work!

Something every leader should ponder

Leaders are human, they would be tempted and wishes that along their tenure they somehow gain recognition of their contribution to the nation or society or institution. All leaders would like to be remembered for their significant contribution toward improvement and will want to go down well in history.

However this temptation and wishes should be kept inside and not rushed. It should be earn from their people, it a process that has to be backup by small success over one another.

Most leaders will pressured by their people who always maintain a close look on how and what they are doing. The pressure is so great, especially in the case when new leaders are given the mandate to run a new institution. They are expected to deliver stunning results the soonest and the people they lead what to grasp the vision of change and growth very early in their tenure.

Under normal circumstance, leaders will resort to throwing in drastic measure and introduce dramatic changes which will give in short term recognition. This temporary recognition will surely buy them time, but the time should be used to show the people whom they led what their pure intentions are. They should always go back to basic and think. They should not be seduced by their momentary success, get their head down and get to work in those time gained. They should not be swamp by success of their launch or announcement of their plans for the institution and start walking their talk.

When it comes to large institution or a nation, the fact is that it has been there for a fair amount of years of establishment. Thus, it will normally have some direction carried on from the predecessor. In most of the time, it has already a medium or long term direction and these institutions would already have dynamic momentum. So may be the right thing to do is to carry on the direction, do a little bit of pruning, maintaining the direction or realign and let it grow. Maybe the worst thing to do is to stop the momentum that take years to built up and changing direction for the sake of being famous which will have a great bad impact on the institution that they lead by making them confused.

If a leader is truly honest making an impact, the momentum should be continued to be built up (with small success over another rather than momentary celebrated “quick fix” which unsustainable) in time something great will definitely be surface.

All I am trying to point out is progress take time, growth has to be nurtured, vision will be realised with continuity and respect and hard work will be in time recognised especially if it is done sincerely and for the greater cause. In this case, it should be the cause of the people whom they lead.

My points may sound obvious, but most of the time leaders always forget the obvious. In turn avoiding the obvious will deter the institution they lead into greatness, period.

How to achive Greatness

Every one and every organisation wants to be great. Some people do, some people do not achieve greatness. Greatness comes with a lot of good things. It can be respect, wealth and recognition and others.

But how does one achieve greatness?. First, you have to define greatness. Greatness itself is subjective, different people define greatness in different perspective.

The is the reason why there are thousands of writing on the idea of greatness. We can not be doing all ideas to achive greatness. One has to define by oneself the meaning of greatness. Only then one can screen what is actualy applicable and needed to achive one's greatness.

Before one start confusing oneself with the multiple ideas of how to achieve greatness. The is only way to do it right. Other tools and guide to achieve greatness follows.

What one MUST to do, to achive greatness is to be able to question oneself.

Only by questioning, will one know direction, tools needed and guides which are applicable.

One need to question and given answer. The trick is to be able to come up with the right questions and sincere answers.

Maybe as a guide, maybe I am wrong, is to first ask one's purpose of life or the purpose of the organisation. One has to scrutinise the purpose, its genuinity, it relevence or maybe obsolution.

Only upon getting the right meaningful purpose, one can start to ask things like strengths, weaknesses, direction, planning, discipline, improment needed and so on.

The idea is

Questioning and answer. Once if one starts to question, one will have all the answers and know how to achieve greatness. Else one will fail and alway wonder why greatness does not rest upon them. This is because when one does not question, one will be ignorance or maybe complacent.

Good Luck!

How bad is 2009

2009 and beyond indeed will be bad and worst. It maybe somewhat better only if something changes. Definately something got to change!.

We Malaysian loves to be pampered with stories that we are able to shelter ourselves from the global economic crisis. The reality is that those sweet stories are ending. The domino effect has landed at Malaysian shore and will be spread faster than anticipated. In the long run it is a bigger challenge for us to recover and we will suffer more than the US. This is because we have less money to spare.

The fact is that it is long due. We Malaysian have been greedy as the US of lately. We have unfortunately have developed a culture of getting ridicules return in a very short time. That is why there is a lot of Malaysia has been conned by “get rich fast scheme”. Ironically, it is never ending stories Lesson has not been learned and lesson learned normally will be forgotten in short time. Conned again as Malaysia has developed a culture for the lust of gold. There is nothing wrong with the culture. It is just that way Malaysian nowadays desires to achieve it the fastest route, being too lazy to go through the process and start cutting conners.

Be it Malay or Chinese or Indian it is the same. Be it the rich or the poor it is the same. Malaysian spends time at Mamak or hotel lobby sharing stories of successful people locally and abroad. Admire them, wanting to be them, jealous about them. They try to emulate them without studying what makes them. They don’t want to spent time to seek the knowledge and the process that these successful person has gone through. The thing that they are concern of is the final product.

They get to know the process but at the venue of mamak and hotel lobby which unfortunately mostly misleading mouth to mouth stories. Malaysia are too lazy to read and learn.

Be it Malay or Chinese or Indian, all have failed in most investment. We have too great lust for gold!. We have been continuously making wrong decisions in fooled investments.

Malaysian always follow bandwagon. It is not that we are not creative it is because we are too lazy to think. Franchise for example, we admires those pioneer who invested in cafes. We think that there were margins in it. The was actualy. So as expected, everybody jumps into cafes business. Mostly failed and will failed. For some are lucky for they have spare capital to sustained the business. For some lucky on they sustained this business for having done some homework. But then, some stupidly over expand.

All unfortunately, forget to include survey of the numbers of current competitors and customer demand in their business plan. That is if they even have a plan!. Most don’t bother for “it is the current trend”!. Of course money can be made and by all means please do try. It a good way to learn. But please spend time to think, plan and decide if the model is viable. Don’t just jump!. Else, you might lose your life time saving or even end up owing.

I am giving this example as the number cafes increases not in relation with the demand making harder to sustain the business. Furthermore I have to highlight it for amidst increasing cafes locally, we did not realise that Starbuck the model that very model that Malaysia try to emulate is closing unprofitable branches for their unattractive P&L and future outlooks.

All i am asking Malaysian is to take some time to think, consider and double check their proposition. Making better decision by seeking more knowledge, reads more, conduct more studies and have conducive discussions. Be more prudent be it in good or bad time. We have been spared for there were abundance of opportunity locally.

But the fact is, everybody will be bitten for the cause “mother of correction – the global economic crisis” has arrived. The electronic manufacturing is getting bitten. Who is next? Construction? Banking? Subcontract and sub vendor? Cafes?

Should we give Najib the chance?

Najib has just taken over the premiership of the country. The question is should we give him a chance to continue leading?.

We have 10 years to realise the 2020 vision of becoming a developed country. There a lot of work to be done to realise this. Mainly, I think in terms of developing the people of the country into knowledge society, preparing the country to give better impact globally and turning the employee of the country into high income earner, to name a few.

As to compare to the his predesessor, so far he has shown some good efforts and ideas to do this.

The country has not been spared from the global financial crisis. Obviously we do not have enough money to do away with development. Money is a mean to buy time, to think, to review and plan better. He has shown some effort to get financial institutions to play some role by means of issuance and subsciption of bonds. He has also try to get fresh fund (FDI) into the country to stimulate the economy and growth.

And I would guess that more efforts would be carried out to settle the deficit. I hope and wish he is successful.

The idea is

Once he could gather all the money he needed, what would he do with it?. I am sure that he has some good idea of how he wants to utilise it. Probably learning from his experience from the previous premeirship.

If he is to be given the chance he would probably span beyond 2020. He is the one to carry the final task to accomplish the 2020 vision. Is he capable of doing it?

Well, I think he has good intention and probably deserve the chance. It is fair as the majority of the country had given a chance to the previous premiership of more than 4 years.

Or should we give the chance to other political party? The thing is at this stage, to achieve the 2020 vision, we need to have leadership continuity. But continuity does not mean we are to do same thing. I doubt the vision will be realised if we keep doing the things that we did before. We need to do improvement and abandon thing which are obsolete. Continuity means to have momentum.

So do we change the leading political party? Maybe a bit later if necessary. The opposition parties are now leading few states and if they are to lead the country they have a lot more to learn in term of management. Of course they are progressing. But they have to really ask themselves of their collective and common mission, and work on their differences. How can they make this country stable if their coaliton is not!.

Decision that we make have to be based on the 2020 vision. The vision is important. It is important for the country and its people. We have to achieve this mission. Introduction of new vision will only delay ourselve to becoming a develop nation and gets the people confused.

Let us go back to Najib.

I am pretty sure that Najib like all previous leaders have good intentions for the country. Previous leaders perform diffrently from each other in term of the results they produced. Good intentions does not guarantee good results. Good intentions remain good intentions, if the intentions are not translate into action plan. Action plans that is measured and measurable. Action plan are to be executed. The execution has to be better and effective.

So basicly, what makes leaders of the country produced different result is the way they managed the execution. The easy part is always to have good intentions let alone if intentions is appropriate, the hard part is to make sure it is carried out and effectively executed.

Maybe in order to succed, Najib may need to shortlist his good intentions and focus on a few. Let the rest of the list carried out by other ministers and make them accountable for it. Ultimately he has to focus on execution of his ideas. Good efforts put in by his people has to be rewarded. Bad efforts and execution has to be rectified. Don't want to elaborate on KPI now, may be later.

I think he has make public of some of his plans. I should think that we should give him the chance and time to do the right thing. The people may have given him some faith (based on his intentions and plans). He will get more if he start to effectively execute and produce results.

Politic can be beaucratic and induce a lot of mere busyness, it will get politician loses its focus on what is the right things to do. So Najib may want to set or review his priority and shorten his to do list and focus.

We will see how he does it. It is easy for me to say and it is very hard for him to do! Anyhow the keyword if Effective Execution.