Kalau takut dipukul ombak...

1. Issue is: when does risk-taking transform into recklessness? When you fail is probably the right answer. But when do you succeed, if ever? When you don't give up when faced with failure but persist until you succeed with every ounce of determination and grit that you could possibly summon from every living pore, cell, protein, sweat, blood and tears.
2. A bit like the Texas Hold Em game too - you risk such that you'll still live to fight another day, you dont gamble unnecessarily, and when the conditions are such that you feel you have the circumstances, support and extenuating factors on your side do you raise the stakes to a tolerable and acceptable risk. And if you still fail, you have just been reckless!
3. But it's not the failing that counts, it's the getting up. So, in that sense, the mindset must be sharpened to not allow a defeatist mentality to creep in, to think of personal failures, to lack courage to move forward. The steps must be in the right direction, building pace until it moves forward towards winning, and conquering, and growing, and staying there, insyaAllah. If at first, you fail, try and try again. So the setting up of the mindset should be there first and foremost.

In search of wisdom

1. Just left a consultant-moderated session, and again feeling a mixture of rage and emptiness. Consultant mentality is about deconstructing a problem, finding a position within those elements and reconvening and packaging the findings nicely. In a policy development scheme, this is extremely dangerous as authorities can develop regulations, rules based on misconceived problem statements and observations. More often than not, the loudest voice gets the largest say. The difficulty is to develop the parameters that a consultant should work in, and there is the key to utilise consultants.
2. Equally, in search of wisdom, the "engineer" trails behind an "architect" mind-set well-educated in philosophy and humanities. The wisdom of the crowds is an oxymoronic paradox, just a get-out clause to reduce the required effort to come to a determination of a solution. Nothing beats the wisdom and the acceptance of guidance from the creator, the divine provider. The search of wisdom must begin with accepting the role of the creator in providing a "template" for existence, a roadmap for living.
3. So, where to? There is an opportunity to shape the direction of education this Sunday. Posing the right questions will be a right start?
4. In the meantime, speaking of bio-based economy, the agenda-driven stakeholders are a law unto themselves. The regulators need to be equally as vocal and to provide the guidance for the stakeholders to know that regulation should be in place, the incentives and the barriers are there. The policies should also be time-sensitive that there are avenues for review and limitations. Market forces can determine the winners in this. Regulations should be interventionist, but minimal to create the environment for the sector to grow, and the redistributive element to kick-in.

Climate change, sustainability and green in Malaysia - rant 1

1.       I’ve seen quite a few write-ups on this subject within a Malaysian context, and I can say that they have all been a disappointment. There were some that I had high hopes for, but again with all things ghost-written by a management consultant, the format, fonts, graphs are all there in all its pretentiousness, but very little by way of what needs to be executed and with strong courageous statements on what are the things that needs to be done. What was the last passionate, courageous statement that I have heard spoken on this context? The 40% conditional commitment by the PM in COP15 in 2009. And even then, what I’m hearing from the executioners down the line is that this was a stumble, poorly defined policy measure where it should be taken as a conviction to fully carry this through. Now, that in its entirety is what is missing in this country – a true, resolute commitment from the soul of what needs to be done, and then move mountains to do it.

2.       Just to add on to the consultant-speak, I remember my consulting days when we were engaged to help translate the Iskandar Development tome, a massive, voluminous work that promised much and delivered little. I have no idea how much of that tome is of use. Have I also addressed before the prostitution of a consultant that contradicted its own tome when asked to re-do an assessment of innovation in Malaysia just 2-odd years on? Huge frustration is an understatement. But this is what happens when the positioning is that we’ll try to attract attention to the things that we do with glossy write-ups, and then fail to continue that by developing the necessary manpower and expertise to carry it through. And oftentimes, the expertise that comes across are the ones without the necessary passion, but loud-mouthed enough ie articulate to impress, and not enough to understand the real issues. Ok, now that I have got the moaning off my chest, perhaps I can relook at the issues again in a bit more detail.

3.       What are sustainability issues? Again, like innovation, it is systemic. You cant adopt bits and pieces, and hope we are transformed overnight. Look at Liverpool, struggling to reclaim its throne. I’m impressed with Dalglish, that while still marginally not as good in terms of results as good as Rafa had (pre09-10), you can see the imposition of a new philosophy which can only be good in the mid-term. It takes balls to impose a philosophy to something which is already pretty good, and its thanks to Hodgson as it was his failings that meant this new philosophy has to imposed. I digress. But this is the crux of the issue.

4.       We can import Feed-in Tariffs, and have 3 years of solar pv quotas sold out within 2 hours. But beyond making Malaysian contractors some margins on installation, where is the indigenous technology going to come from? How do you effect, rather than impose, innovation? Is there a demand for these productivity enhancements? Are we happy with what we have? Is mediocrity the consequence of accepting a lowered bar? What then drives people to seek a higher bar? Increased profits? What is the motivation? Family? Money? Recognition? What is the regulatory role to raise this bar?

5.       And now back to the climate change and sustainability issues. Where are we after the COP15 announcement in 2009, apart from still chasing our tail? Kyoto will likely expire and we’d need to know what the alternatives can be. If the CDM market is no longer there, where then is our role in the greater scheme of things. Apart from palm oil trying to outdo European lobbyists allegations of destructive practices, and thereby inculcating sustainability principles in RSPO, (again looking tenuous at the moment), what are the other motivating factors to preach and practice sustainability.

6.       Again, the western world and their corporate representatives, are no saints and are just as hypocritical in using carbon footprints and declarations of carbon neutrality. This isn’t a question on moral obligation. This is purely a marketing and business perspective.

7.       To force the issue out in the open is to say that business, finance, profits reward green and sustainability practices, the better you are at this the more rewarded you are. This is the position in Canada when they effectively said they will no longer be signatories to whatever the Kyoto protocol looks like post-2012. The materialistic philosophy driving the corporate world now has driven this position. But that’s looking at the corporate world as the most significant influencer of sustainability issues. I would like to suggest that the biggest influencer is really society.

8.       Just like the Arab Spring is condemnation of dictatorial regimes, it will be a matter of time when the aggravation will be directed to the corporates. And when it does, facebook, twitter, foursquare and what have you will determine which companies will be rewarded for their faith in building a better world, with or without government intervention, with or without discussions on impact to profit margin. In the meantime, I would like to see the building up of capabilities into this area and conversant in the policy-making, techno-economic, financial considerations and societal and welfare considerations.

 

stakeholder management model

Lack of emotional fortitude manifests itself in reticence to communicate and 'seize the day'. this reticence then appears to be one of lack of self-esteem, lack of self-worth and such like, almost unanimously appearing to be 'lacking'. So waht starts off as 'tawadhu' then comes across as lacking. Aggregated as a community / society, it becomes a dangerous stereotype. What is necessary to convey is that we all have our capabilities, and there needs to be an ability to support and cooperate up to a point where threatened vulnerabilities need to be acknowledged and a competitive behaviour needs to be demonstrated.


But this is merely a narrative, an excuse for what is an essentially lazy, reactive mentality. Thus, it is necessary to seize the day, set the agenda, form an opinion, convince the stakeholders, and all other related cliches to demostrate proactivity. 

More rants - Malaysia's development model and talent discrepancy

1.       Emotional fortitude is not something I’m born with, rather it’s something I’ve to continuously work on. I guess the quiet leadership book, the short chats that I need to have with myself to maximize the interval between input and outcome, will have a good reference to continually improve this aspect.

2.       Emotional fortitude should follow principles and beliefs. And as much as these are non-negotiable, the over-riding programme should be one that carefully analyses any benefits, good, to overcome deviations, mistaken beliefs, misguidance. This is where the opening up of channels with the Most Powerful comes in. As long as this channel remains closed and no effort is done to open it, the threat of being misguided becomes very real and very urgent.

3.       This is where this current discordance and conflict comes in. While chugging along becomes an issue when coasting along is too self-limiting, then pushing the boundaries becomes an issue when I see things that I cant influence and I cant agree with. And in the end, a different conflict arises when I become unable to assert my beliefs nor able to resolve the discords.

4.       I’ve seen a lot on how the private sector works, influencing key stakeholders, asking for beneficial treatment (I loathe to use kickbacks here), the all-too ready public sector hierarchy to please selected personalities and people, to know that in Malaysia it’ll be very difficult to change the system. In that respect, I’ll have to place on record the very professional and elegant way of my organization doing its work in working within the system to benefit its only shareholder and main stakeholder.

5.       In this respect too, the key personalities that I work with are very “powerful” people in their ability to leverage influence, either through charm or through sheer weight of argument. The flipside to this is my anathema to using personal influencing behaviours and my belief in letting the truth win its side of the story, or getting the “truth” revised to reveal a more powerful truth. At this point in time, I do need to decide to abandon this dogmatic view of things, and see if I can be a part of this, either representing an organisation or representing the principles I believe in.

6.       The talent discrepancy is so obvious because money pulls talents away into where it becomes a powerful resource to train and develop people. The counter-prevailing argument to that is that ideology is a more powerful shaper of beliefs and character. The death of ideology in Malaysia, together with the impotence of amal Islami, makes the talent discrepancy too obvious and too painful to watch. Needless to say that talent development is a costly affair. But the components are in place. The people and the networks must be nurtured to make this system work. We should be working on a global model of development – and this is not to say that we should all duff our caps to the people in suits and the people in overalls are of a secondary level, but rather an admission to say that characters, beliefs and principles should be compared to some of the overarching belief systems being spouted within the globalization, sustainability, capitalistic dogma is being met head-on and overcome through the sheer force of reason.

7.       Being part of the system clouds our ability to reason, and because of that  there is a real need to stay out of the system and work tirelessly, berjuang, to place an alternate, better reality into the world.

Malaysia on a downward slope...analysis

1.       I’m disgusted with Malaysian Insider’s reporting and the comments that it attracts. It’s shitty articles, poorly constructed journalistic pieces, and the racist one-sided tunnel-visioned comments from the kind of readers that it attracts is just too much for me to take. I can take the time to deconstruct the sentiments (not arguments) of a foolish, uninformed crowd, but I do have other things to do.

2.       So, I’m going to ignore them. But, this should be at the back of our minds to correct this unequitable racial-tinged untruths. At least with Utusan, we can still use it to bungkus nasi lemak and lapik stuff. MI just takes away my time and I cant get it back. So, I should resolve to not go there anymore and leave it to the dogs.. and that should be the way we approach Raja Petra and his likes as well, bearing in mind the Quranic injunction for news borne by people you cant trust.

3.       Is Malaysia really on a downward slide? Only if we pay too much attention to the politician and the disproportionate airtime that they are getting.

 

More navel-gazing

1. What differentiates successful corporates to non-corporates?
*Learnable skills. Continually identifying competency gaps and persistently addressing them.
*Articulation of knowledge. Ability to churn ideas and emit short, wise pointers according to differing scenarios, levels of people comprehension. Effectiveness depends on being able to build up the right perspectives to impart wisdom.
*Attitude- or more should be more correctly termed as intention- niat, ikhlas, ibadah etc- how do they figure here? If it's just moral principles and obligations, it's insufficient as a capital for life's preparation for the akhirat, but could be capital for dunya.

2. How to squeeze 300 ppl into a 3600sf lot?
Need to do a layout plan for this. I'm sure it can be done.

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