Letter To A Young Malay Professional
Letter To A Young Malay Professional
Co-written with Din Merican
(First posted on Malaysia-Today.net on August 13, 2007)
Dear Khairul:
We are touched that you feel comfortable asking us for advice, considering that we have not met you except virtually through this wonderful medium of the Internet. Yes, modern technology is bringing the world together, reducing distance to irrelevance.
We congratulate you on your MBA. It is undoubtedly a major milestone in your life journey, besides being your entry into the world of business. The analytical and other skills you have learned are applicable beyond the field of management. Management after all is concerned with getting things done through people, and about leadership.
You are also now well prepared to benefit from your future experiences. Experience is a great teacher, but only to those well prepared, otherwise you risk drawing the wrong lessons. As that great surgeon William Mayo of Mayo Clinic fame observed, some surgeons repeat the same mistake a hundred times and call that experience. Ask their patients what they think of that!
We applaud you for another reason. You had the humility and wisdom to recognize early that your bachelor’s degree was just the beginning and not the end of your intellectual journey. Far too many feel otherwise; they presume to know everything upon getting that parchment paper. They stop learning. A presumptuous few even feel that they could lead a billion-dollar corporation or advise the prime minister just because they received their first degree from a prestigious university. Then there is preening graduate who mistook his in-laws’ adoration as an endorsement to lead the nation!
Our culture contributes much to these inflated expectations. We generously refer to a leader with only a first degree as an “Islamic scholar.” Never mind that he has nothing original to his credit. Another with a general degree from a provincial university is proudly touted as a “British-trained economist.” There is not even a trace of embarrassment with that extravagant assertion. Our culture is generous to a fault!
It may surprise you that one measure of quality for American universities is the percentage of their graduates who go on to graduate and professional schools. Your professors have imbued in you the right values by your furthering your studies. You are ahead of many of your compatriots, even those from august institutions who somehow missed being educated during their undergraduate years.
Awesome Responsibility of Advising
We are uncomfortable with dispensing personal advice; the burden of responsibility weighs heavily on us. Once when one of us was advising his nieces and nephews, his mother gently admonished them, “Do not listen too much to your uncle, you may end up marrying a foreigner and leaving the country!”
While we may be shy in giving you personal advice, we are not at all hesitant in recollecting our experiences, the paths we had chosen, and the choices we have made in the hope that they might be useful to you. Both of us have similar aspirations and perspectives for our people and country. We are comfortable with where we are. We may not have nor do we aspire for the trappings of success normally associated with our culture. In relating our experiences, that is our caveat for you.
Both of us are of the same generation and gone through similar experiences growing up. Our paths diverged dramatically only in adulthood. Din hails from rural Yan, Kedah, and lived for many years in Alor Setar before proceeding to Penang Free School. His detractors refer to him derisively as a mamak. Bakri is still at heart the kampong boy from the royal town of Sri Menanti, Negri Sembilan, base of the matrimonial adat perpateh society. That gives special meaning to the term “kampong.” It is less a geographic description, more a state of mind, as in “plebian.” Thus in addressing members of the royalty, we refer to ourselves as “Patek hamba!” (Slaves).
Din attended the University of Malaya in the early 1960s. It was a reflection of the caliber of that institution at the time that when he went for his MBA in Washington, DC, he excelled. He returned and worked for such outstanding personalities as Tun Ghazalie Shafie at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tun Ismail Ali at Bank Negara and later, Sime Darby, the eminent economist Agoes Salim of Bank Pertanian, Tun Mahathir when he was at FIMA, Tun Tan Siew Sin (Sime Darby), and Indonesia’s dynamic entrepreneur Aburizal Bakrie and his top manager Tanri Abeng.
Bakri went to Canada and became a surgeon. After a stint in private practice there, he yearned for something more than having a dog, station wagon, and a house in the suburb, and decided to return. However, after nearly three years in the service of the Malaysian government, he discovered that he had fewer headaches when he stopped banging his head against the bureaucratic wall. So he left.
That brief description does not do justice to Bakri’s tenure in Malaysia. It was his most satisfying experience professionally, in part for the privilege of having participated in training some of the nation’s future eminent doctors and surgeons. Bakri also remembers fondly Tan Sri Majid Ismail, the pioneering orthopedic surgeon and later, legendary Director-General. Unfortunately, Tan Sri retired soon after Bakri came aboard. Earlier while Bakri was still in Canada, the late Ungku Omar who was then Dean of Medicine at UKM, encouraged Bakri to pursue research. Sadly Ungku Omar died before Bakri returned. His career might have taken a different path had he came back sooner. However, we do not speculate on paths not pursued.
Our commonality is our outstanding mentors early in our careers. They set the bar high, and quickly shaped our personal values and work culture. Luck played a role, but we also chose to be under such exemplary individuals.
We chose carefully for another reason. We did not feel that we could influence much less change the surroundings so early in our careers. We never underestimated the inertia of the status quo. Once we had some solid experiences, only then did we become assertive. Where we could not change, or if we felt we were compromising ourselves too much by staying, we did not hesitate to leave.
Choose Carefully
Be prudent in your early career choice. Join a multinational corporation, and your talent and hard work would be nurtured and well rewarded. Pick the civil service, and you would quickly acquire the bodek culture, the obnoxious habit of “sucking up” to your superiors. Be active in UMNO Youth, and soon you would be adept at racial taunting and obscenely brandishing your keris.
We see too many bright and idealistic young Malays who are intent on changing UMNO only to be changed by it instead. To us, that is a tragedy; to them, an advancement.
We look in dismay at many young Malay professionals rushing to climb the administrative ladder at the expense of their professional development. When Bakri taught young surgeons he insisted that they first concentrated on polishing their surgical skills and publishing a few papers before being distracted by rapid administrative promotions. Once they took on administrative chores they would be literally consumed by the bureaucracy.
Politics is another great seducer of young Malay talent. We look askance at one neurosurgeon, still a rarity for our community, readily giving up his hard-earned career for opposition politics!
It is praiseworthy that our brightest and talented aspire to lead the nation. However, before they contemplate that, they should first prove themselves by excelling in their chosen profession or enterprise. Anything less and they would be disrespecting their fellow citizens.
We tell our adult children that they would have to create for their employers at least twice their salary in the value of work: one half to cover their pay and the other half for other overhead. Anything less and you would be a burden to your employer, or, as kampong folks would say, makan gaji buta (lit. Eating a blind salary). In our faith, that would also be haram.
No one can guarantee you your job security; only your clients and customers can do that. Ketuanan Melayu (Malay hegemony) notwithstanding, the world does not owe you a living; our leaders are misleading our young to have them think otherwise. There is no substitute for competence, integrity, and hard work.
Finally, you can make a difference. The individuals Din and Bakri served were driven by their strong conviction that they could make a difference. And they did. There were also individuals of exceptional competence and uncompromising integrity whose personal examples spoke louder then their words. They demonstrated best the leadership ideals of our prophet, s.a.w.,: quadrat hasanah (leadership through personal example).
Again, congratulations on your MBA, and best wishes in your chosen career.
M. Bakri Musa and Din Merican
August 2007
(Din Merican is a senior research fellow with the Cambodian Institute of Cooperation and Peace. He was recently named an adjunct professor of global business strategy and a board member of the newly formed University of Cambodia , Phnom Penh. Din Merican had worked in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Bank Negara Malaysia and Sime Darby.)
August 20th, 2007 at 2:34 am
To say bad things about something when you’re not part of the system is easy. To generalize about something when each element in the system is unique and different is also wrong. For me it is cheap talk. To be in touch with reality, you’ve to go inside in the system. To say that civil servants are lazy (’makan gaji buta’) is completely wrong. The fact is that in general and it is already proven that people are willing to work hard if there are rewards and incentives waiting for them. Thus, to say that it is not good to join the civil servant, again is completely wrong. In fact, we need the top brain and the top of the cream to lead government bodies. Well, blaming game is easy, and I don’t like to be part of it.
August 20th, 2007 at 7:40 am
Yo Bakri&Din
Salaam
Awesome Responsibility of Advising
We are uncomfortable with dispensing personal advice; the burden of responsibility weighs heavily on us. ..While we may be shy in giving you personal advice, we are not at all hesitant in recollecting our experiences, the paths we had chosen, and the choices we have made in the hope that they might be useful to you…In relating our experiences, that is our caveat for you.
Note:
Yes, thank you, that was a good line, BakriMusa&DinMerican, and this Khairul should remember that.
Still, is there a strong, stable foundation that he can work on?
Mountaineer: “A strong piton will hold the ropes till the rock take its footing away.”
They demonstrated best the leadership ideals of our prophet, s.a.w.,: quadrat hasanah (leadership through personal example).
August 20th, 2007 at 8:32 am
Dear Bakri,
I read your treatise on KJ and tour most apt description of a very dangerous parvenu within our midst!
Rusdi
August 20th, 2007 at 8:34 am
Dear Bakri,
I read your treatise on KJ and your most apt description of a very dangerous parvenu within our midst!
Rusdi
August 20th, 2007 at 8:13 pm
Dear Azian,
Yes, I agree with you that “for me it is cheap talk. To be in touch with reality, you’ve to go inside in the system”. But the largest collection of cheap talkers is in the Civil Service.
You do not have to be “inside the system” to know the “reality” of what is happening in this once respected and admired institution. I was in the Civil Service when I started out my career in the early 1960s. I know the difference and now, as a member of the public, I can see it more clearly.
Today, there is corruption and incompetence everywhere you look, be it in the AG’s Office, the Foreign Service and the other ministries, in the muncipalities and in the district offices. Even the Anti-Corruption Agency (ACA) is not the same as it was under the late Justice Harun Hashim.
Civil servants are sucking up to the politicians and also playing their own internal political games. In fact, one does not have to be a rocket scientist to know what is happening in the civil service.
Successive Chief Secretaries to the Government –Heads of the Civil Service from Ahmad Sarji onwards — have not been able to fix the service. In fact, they have been part of the problem. There are factions and baronies in the service.
Hundreds of millions of ringgits were spent on the training of and seminars for civil servants. So-called new management approaches from Total Quality Management, Quality Circles, Mission Statements, Balanced Scorecards to Key Perfomance Indicators (KPIs), and the latest being Blue Ocean Strategy and Strategy Mapping, were introduced over the years with almost zero impact on public service delivery.
What are MAMPU (Administrative Modernisation Unit) in the Prime Minister’s Department, and INTAN (Institut Tadbiran Awan Negara–National Institute of Public Administration) doing? Why the need to have a special public-private sector group, PERMUDAH, to look at ways and means to reduce red tape and improve public service delivery? This could have been done by the people inside.
It is a question of sikap (attitude) and also Malay culture at its worst…ampu bodek, slipshod work, indifference, quick money and fast promotion culture. We, the Malays, have now developed the habit of taking and not giving back.
In a corporation, increases in salaries and wages must be matched by increases in productivity. Otherwise, it cannot compete. It must manage or cut cost or go out of business because of competition.
So Azian, you are defending an indefensible and corrupt system. If you are an insider, I ask you a simple question and that is, what have you done? Talk is truly cheap.
Thanks
August 21st, 2007 at 12:56 am
I agree that the Malaysian civil service is pathetic. It is high time that they change the catch word “saya yang menurut perintah” to a performance oriented expression like “saya yang proaktif”.
This pathetic behaviour and practice is common among the administrators, both at the managerial and clerical level. If you go to the hospital you will see doctors and nurses are kept busy, sometimes for a continuous 36 hours, and despite these sacrifices they are also mistreated by the bureaucrat.
Like the government department, professionals at the glc are also dictated by the whims and fancies of the glamorous “human resource department”.
I remember a specialist at Hospital KL told me that he submitted a request for a fax machine for his department but it was rejected by the bureaucrat because it was considered a non life threatening expenditure and hence it cannot be justified.
Therefore if you are a professional, like engineer, nurse or doctor, you may consider looking for a job outside Malaysia. You will be surprised that you will add value to your resume.
August 21st, 2007 at 6:41 pm
Like to relate a recent incident when back in KL.
I was informed that a company in which I was registered as a director has not been filling any company returns for the past 7 yrs by SSM!
Calling the given telephone number to contact the person issued the letter was a pain as nobody seems to be working at the other end of the telephone line. This was the same for the whole of the morning from 9am till noon!
No choice, rush to Putra Place to seek the person at SSM.
Waiting for her to attend to you break one’s patience too as the whole office counter was manned by nobody! Were they allow to take such a long tea(?) break?
Finally when she turned up she just asked me to go to another floor to check for myself about the company details.
I was dumbfounded as I was asked to do my own investigation into my supposedly directorship in a dodgy company that I was not aware of.
My further query brought out the gems from this lady - she claimed that she signed hundreds of such letter daily & she had not time to do anything else!
My reply was she was paid to do a job NOT just to sign letter. There must be some background investigations for some proofs to nail people for any wrong doing in cases like this.
She turned blank as if she didnt understand my reply!
This remind me of the newspaper report when Tian Chua was investigated for the 3-for -the-dinner photo by a police ASP who knew NOTHING about the photo he was to investigate!
Could this be the NORM of our civil servants? All of them are just been stuffed (I mean it) into a government job without proper guidances, trainings. They’re just used to filled a vacancy created more through Pakinson’s law than the need for work efficiencies.
There must be tons of inspirations in the same environment for doing nothing or manual works just to past the day for gaji buta.
BTW I discovered SSM is a money printing outfit where computerisation is a BIG DISGUISE for MANUAL WORKS! Go & see for yourselves.
All those computers & infra….., forget about the wasted human talents ………. JUST ANOTHER CASE OF >>>anther one bite the dust!
August 21st, 2007 at 8:01 pm
c53k,
YES, that’s the norm and that’s Malaysia BOleh for you. Those civil servants treat their offices like a venue for family gathering, a place to gossip than to be working, and get paid! They don’t have much innitiative to be proactive in their work and it seems to me, for them to work a little extra is a big “rugi” - a great loss!
At least these days we see a ‘working’ Immigration Dept nowadays, thanks to the media for its watchful eyes over them.
I had my experience with ROS - Registrar of Society. It took me 2+ months just waiting for their acknowledgment to my NGO’s Constitutional Amendment notification.
When I checked with them, I was informed that their letter was returned by Pejabat Pos for “non-delivery” so they just filed it lah. Apparently the premises was under renovation. Yes, that was true it’s not their fault but then this NGO has a PO Box number, why can’t the letter be redirected to that address, I asked? The answer I received was, “we don’t deal with post office address” !!!!!
This is Malaysian Civil Service! I think we should call them not “Civil Servants” but “Civil Napoleans”.
August 22nd, 2007 at 12:35 am
Jong,
You are insulting the memory of Napoleon Bonaparte by calling our civil servants “Napoleans”.
Azian,
You must have the courage to respond to all the comments made so far on the state of our civil service. We do not have to be insiders to know where the cheap talkers are.
The Harvard Group did a study on the civil service not long ago. The Prime Minister, the Chief Secretary to the Government and the Head of the Public Services Department have copies of this report.
Of course, I do not expect the Prime Minister who cannot read more than a 2-page memorandum to study the report. he is too busy with his corridors and other mega projects. But there is no action from the other two. Maybe these two civil service professionals are too busy playing along with their political bosses to worry about the deteriorating state of affairs in their service.
Surely, after having spent some public funds on this study, the public is entitled to know what can be done to make the civil efficient, honest and accountable and more responsive to the needs of the public.
Talk about transparency and accountability for what? It is time for the public to demand more out of civil servants. Enough of excuses and crap. The time has also come for our political leaders fix the problem.
They can do it, but they won’t because they benefit from the status quo. Why remove the opportunities to make “easy money” .
August 22nd, 2007 at 3:00 am
Azian, you said:
“The fact is that in general and it is already proven that people are willing to work hard if there are rewards and incentives waiting for them.”
- Is the recent 8 billion ringgit Payrise to Civil Servants not incentive enough for them to work hard? Salary increment should not have been made a right but a priviledge, only to those who so deserve it.
What happened to that BN crap - “Cemerlang, Gemilang Terbilang” for Excellence, Glory and Distinction?
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:04 am
Talk is cheap indeed, Din………What have you done in the past after milking the system ha???
To Khairul, I would advise you to begin learning everything about China and India to prepare to ride the next global rennaissance. Hope you are not too dim to realise your brudders Ah Kow and Muthu at home are your resources la!
August 22nd, 2007 at 9:20 am
Short of overhauling the entire system based on meritocracy irrespective of race, which even Din nor Bakri dare to suggest, the prospect is frankly quite hopeless as the world won’t wait for us as what it did to Indonesia and Cambodia la!
August 23rd, 2007 at 11:18 pm
Nafisah,
How wrong you can be about me!! I take exception to your remarks
“[W]hat have you done in the past after milking the system ha???”.
I have never milked the system for my personal benefit. Everything I got was through sheer hard work, and strong will power motivated by a set of convictions which I acquired from my various mentors. I stood up for whatever I thought was the right thing to do and did it in the right way. I worked with the system, always fighting against it. I was never afraid to do it, even if it was at the expense of my career.
Don’t you ever put me in the same ranks of those corrupt Malays who exploited the system, even at the expense of the Malays in the desas. I came from a modest background, and do not have to apologise for it.
I rather you challenge my ideas and views than make accusations which are baseless or without foundation. If you say that both Bakri and I dare not champion meritocracy, you obviously either have not read or not understood whatever we wrote all these years.
Thanks.
August 24th, 2007 at 12:31 am
DIN MERICAN,
for once I’m not impress by your comment and maybe due to long ‘lepaking’ outside the system with extra influences from the ‘great master’ i.e the surgeon of the century.
dont blame the kids who joint civil servant and dont kill their hope!! why should you? You choose not to fight the battle from inside but what have you done from the distance?
u said,
‘So Azian, you are defending an indefensible and corrupt system. If you are an insider, I ask you a simple question and that is, what have you done? Talk is truly cheap.’
let me tell you what we’ve done so far as the researcher for malaysian government without no extra ringgit in the pocket apart from the salary,
1. we have developed the implant procedure using rapid prototyping that reduce the surgeon time in operation theatre from 14 hours to 4.
2. We have developed a system used in fighting fire in high rise building, there were no americans involved, few brown asses, that’s all.
3. We build 25 different machine in 25 different factories within 10 years reducing the number of Bangladeshi worker.
no point listing down all the things but what is important is that we have only 24 staffs in this department and 80% of them are Malays.
We help the Makcik and Pakcik to increase their production of kerepeks and others. At least there is a light in this government’s room.
August 25th, 2007 at 12:58 am
Dear Teman Orang Perak,
I compliment you on the things you have done to make things better. But we are talking about the Malaysian civil service today in the 21st century. What you see “a light in this government’s room”, I see darkness and ineptitude and lurking behind that corruption.
I am of the view– and obviously you disagree– that civil service performance is what I would at best describe as “sub-optimal”. Top civil servants allowed politicians to interfere in the day to day administration of the country.
Today, the civil service is being blamed for poor public service delivery by none other than the Prime Minister himself. It has become the centre of “ampu bodek” culture. Even the present Chief Secretary to Government did not have the courage to defend it against public criticism and political pressure. In stead, he exposed the service he heads to more damnation from the public.
Your fellow teman orang Perak, Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji who was Chief Secretary during the Mahathir Administration, wrote a book “Civil Service Reforms:Towards Malaysia’s Vision 2020″(Kuala Lumpur:Pelanduk Publications, 1996). It is a very elegantly written book with a lots of management jargon and buzzwords.
In his Forward to this book, former Kuala Lumpur Mayor Dr. Mazlan bin Ahmad, then Director-General, Public Services Department, said that Tan Sri Sarji strived “to transform the Civil Service into a customer-focused, mission-driven, performance-based and proactive force that remains responsible and accountable…[W]ith his extraordinary capability to persuade and inspire… public sector organizations have become more adaptable, responsive and flexible to changes”. Bravo!!
Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji said that under his leadership, “[T]he Civil Service in Malaysia is undergoing a paradign shift” (ala Thomas Kuhn). He defined paradigm as “a set of rules that defines boundaries and tells us how to function within those boundaries. Once a paradigm takes hold, it strongly influences our perceptions of things and we will resist new ways of seeing the world and new approaches to solving problems. Only a paradigm shift will force us to reframe our thinking”.
He went on to say “[T]he paradigm shift in the civil service is from a rule-bound bureaucratic tradition to a more proactive, flexible and adaptable mode of operations…We have moved from our conventional and one-dimensional roles as rule-setters and regulators to that of facilitator and pacesetter in national development. We have formed strategic alliances with the private sector in pursuit of accelerated growth”. (Page 21)
That was in the 1990s when the public sector and the private sector came together with our trade unions and became cronies of a powerful state under the label “Malaysia Inc”. Come 1997-1998, that model was discredited.
As you apparently are more in touch with what is happening in our country, could you please explain to me why the civil service is not what Tan Sri Ahmad Sarji had envisoned. What happened since he left the Civil Service to become PNB Chairman and Chairman, Sime Darby Group. Did his paradign shift take root ? Did his successors who he trained let him down? Or was it just a case of “talk is cheap.”
Thanks.
August 25th, 2007 at 7:43 am
As in golf, TanSri Ahmad Sarji’s problem is his sequencing, not in sync with his driver lah.
December 31st, 2007 at 2:51 pm
Oh the indignant tone! I love it when someone outside Malaysia write with such convictions about the ills of Malaysian. I would obviously prefer you’re still working inside the country helping your fellow malaysians the hard way…well then again why would I do that with a nice private practice and a ranch in California!
Save me the history of your past contributions…and thanks for the brain drain….