Talent

There are often questions, How do I manage the company? What are your most important formulae to make it successful? Is there any advices that I can impart to the next echelon. Is this an interview!

To begin with, I am what I am. Like Kopi, coffee is hard to drink unless you acquire a taste for it, with or without sweetening.

I am stubborn and a man of few words. To understand others, you have to understand yourself first.

A good example of my stubborn attitude is if I am right, I will not say a word but to remain even keel, I ignore it. Say I am instructed to employ more staff for sales, I will not take action, because there are so many obstacles locally, that we have to envisage. Look at this crisis, I have to make a choice to sack the salesmen, it will cost us a bomb!!!! We have to visualize, before embarking on a mission.

I believe that in this knowledge age, we have to seek talent to run the company.

I have learnt in the National Service, that there are many techniques and knowledge to be acquired. To tell people that I am only a logistic officer, they will not believe! I learn from others many skills. They will be surprised what other simple skill I have acquired. I have use my talent to acquire those multifunctional skills. I am a willing learner, there are always many teachers. To write that I had the chance to be a commando, when the unit was started. Nobody will believe it!!!!

I run the company and spot talent. then to train them to be specialists, because they have a talent for it. I have senior and junior officers to take care of the customs office, Ministry of Transportation, IT and others. They are very good at it, especially if you acknowledge their talent.

In the Industrial age, people are inventory, they are asset or liability, just like stock in the godown, cash, products and others in the balance sheet. They are being managed. They are within the system.

In the knowledge economy, people must be led. They are are acted upon. They have been educated, and they need leadership, and not management. They possess knowledge, they do think, and are not machines as in the industrial age, a number in the payroll. They are outside the system

i have also acquired many skills and adapt myself in many roles. I have to seek to ask. What do I want?.... Dependency, Independency, or Interdependency.

I run the company on an Interdependency mode, we share the knowledge and time.

Take an example, the other day, our freight forwarding is having network IT problems, the assistant manager had tried her best, but our IT supervisor was busy in the HQ, and we had no other alternatives. I drove through the traffic jam to the port area, one and a half hour, but I resolved the three computers in fifteen minutes. It showed our interdependency mode. We worked together!!
I show the staff, that i may be a senior manager. I lead them, to show that I am also capable to solve their problems at their place.

Talent is not only in children, and it is with us Adults too. Do we want to acquire talent in our Knowledge Economy.

We have to lead talented people with our Talent, and we act on the system with our Talent, and not within the system, as an inventory