Getting CEOs to See the Big Picture

CEO A 


CEO B 

SELF INTRODUCTION EXERCISE
By Hardev Kaur, NSTP, June 27, 2004

The ICLIF, set up by Bank Negara last year, aims to train global leaders among Malaysians. Designed in conjunction with Towers Perrin, a consultancy firm, it brings together the best from top international institutions including Harvard Business School, Stanford Graduate School of Business, Peter Drucker Graduate School of Management, Marshall School of Business University of Southern California and INSEAD.

The programme looks into what the CEO “Wants” to do, “Can” do and “Should” do.

In the self introduction exercise, for CEO A, the job challenge is to produce global leaders, the happiest moment of her life was when she realized that she had succeeded in instilling values of right and wrong and of telling the truth in her daughter. She admires her former boss and she enjoys supervising her children while her husband does gardening.

CEO B, his job challenge is to look after cats, his happiest moment in life was running around Gasing Hill where he grew up, he cooks for fun and he admires William Bruce who has “a hand to man and a heart to GOD.”

From the exercise above, CEO A indicates her happiest moment in her success of getting her daughter to understand right and wrong and admiring her boss who gave her the chance to be CEO while, admiring her husband doing gardening. Probably, she had the extreme joy of elevating her status above her husband's. This is women's way of self-esteem - when she had her husband down-trodden in the garden.

CEO B loves to take care of the cats, not the wife and children and loves running around the hill instead of running around the company and admires having a hand in man's #@&* and a heart to God. He probably admires Anwar more than William Bruce. He's a nice chick!

So, the gathering of the top CEOs of Malaysia and the cases above, although the sample size may be small, but should be able to indicate the quality of our Malaysian CEOs. Maybe, with more and bigger sample size in the survey, we may find out about many more CEOs who may also love to take care of cats, dogs, tigers, elephants, crocodiles and sharks, plus taking care of Ah Loong, Norita, pramugara yang terlampau, mahjong, terbilang-bilang wang yang terlampau banyak, cekap and sapu sampai bersih, sudah bersih mesti amanah, mesti germilang and taktik yang cermerlang.

Excellent CEOs and Hurrah, Malaysia-Boleh and Pak-lah can give them the $10billion worth of projects to ensure success.....and make the millions of car owners pay more for petrol and diesel. Hurray!