Insanity rules

1. The runup to the GE13 has started and silly season is well underway. Everything is a proxy issue now, and your stand on any issue that affects you risks being seen as a stand that you take due to your political affiliation. It's absolutely crazy, and absolutely ridiculous.
2. From a personal viewpoint, any stand should be taken after some thought at least as to the background problem, acceptaiblity of boundaries, positives and negatives of the idea, implications to stakeholders, long-term consequences, alternatives. WIthout all this being done, then you really run the risk of letting your cognitive biases of the lazy System 2 to abdicate responsibility and leave the thinking to supporters of the various factions, and hence really be taken by a ride by the cybertroopers' debating factions.
3. Take issue of MAS: MAS has been well and truly messed up for a long time now. Perhaps WAU was really the final nail, but at that point in time it was seen as a necessity to save it from oblivion, or so I was told and remains a fact that needs to be validated. Assuming this is true, the real killer for MAS is then an issue of being unable to resolve its fundamental issue of getting back to business profitability. Cutting the story short rather than going through the whole cycle of marketing, cost management, operations - who's the CEO then? What was the turnaround plan? I do hate pointing at individuals, but the fact remains that you get this one single decision wrong, and you're well and truly *bleeped*.
4. Take TNB. What was the problem within TNB back in 2004? Low staff morale due to an intervening Chairman keen to move out performing leaders but unfortunately waving the wrong political flag into 'cold storage', investments in coal mines about to go awry, and collapsing under the weight of its massive debts about to mature in the short term with very little cash pile to pay off. Credit to CK for resolving the financial challenge, and a lot more should be attributed to Izzaddin, but being a monopolistic integrated utility, the expectation would be to bring it overseas. In many ways, when spin shows that CK is the superhero who saved TNB, my reality would be that he missed a trick and in many ways was someone who merely kept it ticking over, as had many other previous TNB guys had done. Take non-tech losses for instance, heck, credit to Datuk Sidek for beginning this, Datuk Engku Hashim and Datuk Aishah for supporting it, and should be given just as much credit to this.
5. Take Sime Darby. Wow, this is mind-boggling when a former CEO is charged with CBT when an investment goes south. Remind me to decline any close working relationships with ex-politicians, especially the malay kind, not to attribute any personal agenda against them, but merely to eliminate any possible recriminations.
6. Take Telekom. Spin out the profit-making wireless business and merge with regional players and you have a winner. The fixed line business is compensated with a huge government project and funding and survives the restructuring. Job done and here's your promotion. And by the way, you've also done well changing the logo.
7. in addition to the lousy fact-fitting theory kind of writing associated with blogging, such as this, we can attribute the laziness of the media who failed to highlight such stories. And also those in the know would do well to explore the best ways of sharing the information in the most equitable ways possible that does not seek sensationalism, but espouses facts and credibility, such that the truth gwts out and paints the darkest pictures of these fake writers.
8. Point is, the GLCs are tough nuts. Monopolistic positions but outdated business models. Profitable but declining yields. Malay proxy business due to government policy and therefore politically charged when dealing with employees and hence difficult to change business culture. Intervention from all over and poor governance and all-over reporting lines.
9. Breaking them up into smaller business units would be the way to go. In this way, you open up the opportunities to many more people, and believe you me, there plenty of talented malay employees to develop and compete alongside and within a more pluralistic non-racial and non-discriminatory talent development policy if this is the unspoken objective, although there is no reason why this sort of policy cannot be made explicit. At the moment, what we have as Daim's boys in the 90s have made way to a different sort of Malay cartel, and this drives the insanity at the moment when political drivel makes up economic justifications and reasonings for why so-and-so are unsuited for what.
10. The hard rule is this - grow these GLCs. Massively. And for that, let all these detractors from both sides of the fence eat humble pie.
11. Just like a certain Mr Brick in Wall needs to eat humble pie for endorsing En Salleh Budu's Feedlot strategic initiative.  http://anotherbrickinwall.blogspot.com/2011/12/another-khazanah-amokh-failure.html I guess he felt that diversification into property is a typical business strategy when you use government mandated funds. tsk tsk
12. The question is who to trust to carry it out. In the malay tradition, I dont think we should be looking for a Hang Tuah character, rather there should be an apolitical, commercial, business-savvy entity that does this work, preferably in the background. Would that stop the detractors? No. But at least there is someone looking at it from a fair and true perspective, without influenced one way or the other to setup a huge media-friendly and cash-sapping organisation.