FOR MISC Bhd, the world's single largest owner-operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, the concept of corporate responsibility (CR) goes beyo

FOR MISC Bhd, the world's single largest owner-operator of liquefied natural gas (LNG) tankers, the concept of corporate responsibility (CR) goes beyond philanthropy and public relations.
The shipping giant's CR programmes propel quantitative and qualitative long-term growth that benefits the group, shareholders as well as stakeholders.
Its CR programmes also support Malaysia's bid to become a prominent maritime nation.
Dealing with the complex and advanced LNG and other types of energy transportation, MISC has long anticipated the present shortage of skilled seafarers.
It has been working on and investing in various educational and training programmes for youths.
It is speculated the global shortfall in shipping manpower has doubled to 20,000 in the last two years.
Group corporate affairs general manager Fiona Clare Pereira told StarBiz that MISC CR-related programmes continued to focus on youth development this year.
“As Malaysia is envisioned to be a maritime nation, MISC is committed towards the provision of efficient human capital to support this vision, focusing on our very own Malaysian Maritime Academy (Alam).
“For the financial year ended March 2007, more than RM16mil was invested in our cadet sponsorship programme at Alam,” she said.
Today, she added that many of the sea captains in Malaysia's maritime-related industries were Alam graduates and MISC was proud to be the contributing factor behind their success.
“And many more graduates of calibre are already in the making.she said.
“Although they may not be on life-long employment with MISC, our CR towards fulfilling Malaysia's aspirations of becoming a maritime nation will always be at the forefront of our commitment,” she said, adding that this also ensured the availability of seafarers for MISC's growing fleet.
According to Pereira, its latest CR programme, “Navigate Your Career” is an effort to prepare university students to enter the real “working world”.
“MISC wishes to prepare them to be more adaptive to the changes and progression of the job market,” she said, adding that the programme was launched last July in various universities across the nation.
She said the three-part programme, “Educate, Engage & Expose - Navigate Your Career”, was geared towards enhancing employment awareness via guidance initiatives imparting soft skills and insights into career development.
This CR programme is inclusive of road shows, an online resource centre and practical attachment.
About 3,000 undergraduates participated in this programme whilst eight students have just completed the student attachment pilot project.
“We believe our latest effort in social development will help create a more buoyant local graduate pool in the near future,” Pereira said.
Also last February, MISC and Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UiTM) signed a memorandum of agreement (MoA) for the establishment of Professorship Chair in marine technology at UiTM.
The chair is tasked with bridging the gap between what the academic institution is offering and the maritime industry’s needs for qualified personnel and technological advancement to meet the present and future challenges.
The establishment of the chair would further enhance research in maritime technology, which would benefit the maritime sector in Malaysia.
MISC and UiTM have also jointly established a Marine Technology Research and Development Database at UiTM.
The database focuses on marine technology research and development data throughout Malaysia.
In terms of health and safety in the workplace, MISC does not confine itself to a specific programme or scheme.
Its corporate health, safety and environment general manager Captain M.K. Ganesan said several programmes usually ran all year round.
“Promoting healthy lifestyle, safety and protecting the environment are some of the programmes that have been rolled out,” Capt Ganesan said.
“Onboard our vessels, we have an ongoing campaign - Zero Incident Zero Accident (ZIZA) - for our officers and crew to be vigilant at all times,” he added.
In the last financial year, 13 ships recorded their third year ZIZA safety performance; seven ships, their second year; and 13 ships passed their first year.
Capt Ganesan said another significant project launched in 2006 was the MISC fuel efficiency campaign.
“The fuel saving measures not only reduce consumption but also environmental pollution.
“Burning one or two extra tonnes of fuel oil on a voyage can have much effect on the overall fuel cost and environmental pollution.
“The cost becomes substantial when this is extrapolated within MISC's entire fleet,” he said.
To MISC, CR is not only about making a positive impact on society and the environment but also generating sustainable benefits to society as part of maintai ning a long-term competitive business.

LIDO BEACH, JOHOR BAHRU 28TH DECEMBER 2008 SUNDAY

WATERFALLS AT KOTA TINGGI, JOHOR 28 NOVEMBER 2008 SUNDAY

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done

Execution: The Discipline of Getting Things Done
by Larry Bossidy (Author), Ram Charan (Author), Charles Burck (Author) "LARRY: My job at Honeywell International these days is to restore the discipline of execution to a company that had lost it..."

Disciplines like strategy, leadership development, and innovation are the sexier aspects of being at the helm of a successful business; actually getting things done never seems quite as glamorous. But as Larry Bossidy and Ram Charan demonstrate in Execution, the ultimate difference between a company and its competitor is, in fact, the ability to execute.
Execution is "the missing link between aspirations and results," and as such, making it happen is the business leader's most important job. While failure in today's business environment is often attributed to other causes, Bossidy and Charan argue that the biggest obstacle to success is the absence of execution. They point out that without execution, breakthrough thinking on managing change breaks down, and they emphasize the fact that execution is a discipline to learn, not merely the tactical side of business. Supporting this with stories of the "execution difference" being won (EDS) and lost (Xerox and Lucent), the authors describe the building blocks--leaders with the right behaviors, a culture that rewards execution, and a reliable system for having the right people in the right jobs--that need to be in place to manage the three core business processes of people, strategy, and operations. Both Bossidy, CEO of Honeywell International, Inc., and Charan, advisor to corporate executives and author of such books as What the CEO Wants You to Know and Boards That Work, present experience-tested insight into how the smooth linking of these three processes can differentiate one company from the rest. Developing the discipline of execution isn't made out to be simple, nor is this book a quick, easy read. Bossidy and Charan do, however, offer good advice on a neglected topic, making Execution a smart business leader's guide to enacting success rather than permitting demise. --S. Ketchum From Library JournalBossidy, an award-winning executive at General Electric and Allied Signal, came out of retirement to tend to Honeywell (and bring it back to prominence) after it failed to merge with General Electric. Charan has taught at Harvard and Kellogg Business Schools. Collaborating with editor and writer Burck, they present the viewpoint that execution (that is, linking a company's people, strategy, and operations) is what will determine success in today's business world. Bossidy and Charan aver that execution is a discipline integral to strategy, that it is the major job of any business leader hoping not just to be a success but to dominate a market, and that it is a core element of corporate culture. Details of both successful and unsuccessful executions at corporations such as Dell, Johnson & Johnson, and Xerox, to name a few, support not only their how-to method for bringing execution to the forefront but also the need for it. Each author addresses specific topics in paragraphs that begin with either "Larry" or "Ram," and this easy style adds to the appeal of a very readable book. Recommended for academic and public libraries.Steven J. Mayover, PhiladelphiaCopyright 2002 Reed Business Information, Inc.
Larry Bossidy is clearly a five-star leader, and Ram Charan is a gifted consultant and teacher. It surprised me that their book didn't work as well as I had hoped.
Execution's title confused me. Hopefully, you won't have that problem. I thought Execution would be all about how to take a strategy and operating plan and implement them well. Instead, Part III makes it clear that Execution is about meeting overall financial objectives through being an effective organization in setting strategies and operating plans to serve customers well while building an organization that can implement the plans for outperforming competitors. Part I, by contrast, makes it sound like Execution is only about implementation, noting that almost all organizations have the same strategies (or can quickly get them from consultants), access the same top talent and can easily acquire and employ competitively effective innovation.
I also thought Execution would apply to all business people. Instead, the context for most of the AlliedSignal (Honeywell International's name when Mr. Bossidy became CEO there the first time) and General Electric examples which dominate the book is that of the CEO or group executive to whom divisions report in a large conglomerate. In this sense, Execution is like reading the latter chapters of Mr. Welch's book, Jack.
The main difference between Jack and Execution is that Execution tries to build a framework for the book's concepts while sharing examples (mostly of failure) from other organizations. Mr. Charan's sections of the book mostly focus on that positioning. Mr. Bossidy mostly tells about his own experiences at AlliedSignal and Honeywell. Mr. Bossidy, of course, worked with Mr. Welch at General Electric for many years. Mr. Bossidy reports that you could take execution for granted at GE, but that it was lacking at AlliedSignal when he arrived. The two coauthors alternate in providing long monologues on the chapter topics and subtopics.
Three aspects of Execution are valuable to almost any business leader: how to hold a strategy review (chapter 8), building an organization (chapter 5) and the "Dear Jane" letter to a new leader (conclusion).
For those who would like to become CEOs and heads of divisions of large, disparate organizations, Mr. Bossidy's many anecdotes from his experiences at Honeywell International about how to do the leader's job will provide a valuable model that can be used repeatedly. In many such organizations, there are no good leadership examples and this book can help fill the gap.
Here's the book's structure:
Part I: Why Execution Is Needed
Chapter 1. The Gap Nobody Knows
Chapter 2. The Execution Difference
Part II: The Building Blocks of Execution
Chapter 3. Building Block One: The Leader's Seven Essential Behaviors
Chapter 4. Building Block Two: Creating the Framework for Cultural Change
Chapter 5. Building Block Three: The Job No Leader Should Delegate -- Having the Right People in the Right Place
Part III: The Three Core Processes of Execution
Chapter 6. The People Process: Making the Link with Strategy and Operations
Chapter 7. The Strategy Process: Making the Link with People and Operations
Chapter 8. How to Conduct a Strategy Review
Chapter 9. The Operations Process: Making the Link with Strategy and People
Conclusion: Letter to a New Leader
Execution addresses these problems. First, many company and division heads have little knowledge about the businesses or the most important functions and processes needed to prosper. Boards, for example, often bring in a brilliant person who has performed as a "role player" elsewhere, and they cannot scale up into the CEO job. When a company has had poor leadership, its processes and organization also become weak and it's hard to get anything done. There are several poignant examples including Richard Thoman at Xerox and Richard McGinn at Lucent Technologies. It's hard to fix that problem. It took years at AlliedSignal and can be quickly lost (which happened in the two years after he retired the first time). That's why Mr. Bossidy had to come back to restore execution (as he means it) at Honeywell International. Lacking these perspectives, the business system is misdirected (see The Fifth Discipline).
Second, many leaders make bad assumptions about their circumstances. Acting on those assumptions makes matters worse.
Third, companies plan to pursue strategies for which they lack the processes and organizations to implement. The strategies need to match the ability to execute.
As a solution, you as leader must:
"--Know your people and your business--Insist on realism--Set clear goals and priorities--Follow through--Reward the doers--Expand people's capabilities--Know yourself."
I was uncomfortable with many of the examples. The unending praise of Dick Brown at EDS didn't seem to make any sense knowing that EDS's stock melted down and he was asked to leave. He was in big trouble when Execution was written, having encouraged his people to grow by taking on large unprofitable new accounts. It seems like he might have been executing the wrong strategy, one that couldn't be executed. Most of the "failure" examples are anonymous which makes them less credible and less compelling. Finally, Dell is heralded for executing very well (which it certainly does). However, in describing how the company has evolved its business model to outperform competitors, Execution fails to notice that its business model innovation has been essential to success. No competitor has this business model. Execution's assumption that everyone can have the same strategy ignores research that shows that business model innovation creates unique strategies and superior execution compared to making the old business model and strategy more efficient.
Unless you are shooting to be CEO of GE or Honeywell International, I suspect that you would do better to read Good to Great for getting ideas related to improving effectiveness.
After you finish this book, ask yourself what one thing you could improve would make the most difference in your organization's performance over the next week, month, quarter, year and three years.

DO WE HAVE A MALAY PROLETARIAT?

Do We Have a Malay Proletariat?\
Tuesday, 25 November 2008 22:15
Most of what I have written so far concerned “other places”. This time, I shall try to present my views of the situation in Malaysia. I do so with unease not only because the subject is bound to be controversial, but because it is actually a very difficult and complex one.
I begin at the time of the 1st elections in Malaya because it has direct and powerful consequences for the present. The country was under an Emergency. UMNO and MCA formed the Alliance and agreed to work together to form the future independent government (MIC joined a bit later). This was an alliance of the town and country. UMNO represented the aristocrat and landlord classes as well as civil servants. It was mainly based on land, status and position, while MCA comprised mainly of the merchant class as well as planters and miners.

As can be expected, things are never static. Although they formed an alliance there was also competition and mutual suspicions between the partners. UMNO which is rural and agriculture based cannot hope to overpower the town based mercantile and moneyed classes (in spite of the small numbers that these classes represent). From the start UMNO suffered insecurity and fear. 51 years of independence have not succeeded in removing this fear. The only way for UMNO to compete was to win the support of the masses of farmers, fishermen and agricultural labourers. This it did with spectacular success and UMNO has remained the dominant partner in government ever since even if it slips up and shows its true class character every now and then through arrogance, corruption and abuse of power.

In the meantime, the communists whose support came mainly from the urban labourers and students, transport, dock and mine workers as well as rural squatters (towns’ people displaced by the Japanese occupation) were being pushed back and isolated. The urban working masses came under an oppressive weight that they could only escape from by getting an education or starting small businesses of their own and as the country progressed and developed, their places were filled by agricultural labourers and displaced small farmers from the rural areas. This I believe is the Malay proletariat. The government succeeded in dispersing a large part of the urban labouring classes which were the main support of the communists, but have created in its place a Malay proletariat.

After 51 years of independence, the experiences and value systems of this working class is no longer strongly connected with rural conservative values. In addition, the education system is churning out thousands of young men and women who cannot find jobs. Most of these people now have some trouble going back to the rural areas and hang about the towns because they no longer fit into the rural areas. Of the few that do go back to their villages, they bring with them new values and experiences – experiences that teach them the brutal fact that they cannot depend on the patronage of feudal ties and that they have to fend for themselves like their working class cousins, who can be thrown onto the streets without jobs and without any back up at any time.

However in spite of their new “awakening”, these people have no organized structure and are subject to influence of the government mass media as well as conservative religious bodies linked to the government. Still, the 12th GE saw a swing of support against the government which I believe to be partly from this group, where we saw a very clear town – rural divide.

In desperation, UMNO is now re-visiting the old concepts of Ketuanan Melayu and NEP to re-capture the support of this group of people in the hope that hope itself and promises can turn the tables. It is also offering goodies such as subsidies and minimum pensions to sweeten the package. Not content with paltry actions, it tries to limit the damage by importing foreign labour in the hope that the size of this group will not grow to unmanageable proportions.

As far as Ketuanan Melayu and NEP are concerned, UMNO is playing with fire. There is a parallel in Cambodia that we could all learn from if we wish to be honest with ourselves. When the Khmer Rouge emptied Phnom Penh of its 1 million residents and 1 million refugees and sent them into the countryside to grow food, a phenomenon arose which I think was beyond their control and which they probably never bothered to control. The rest of the population of Cambodia (also about 2 million) who were from old Khmer Rouge bases in the rural areas started to differentiate and discriminate against the newcomers from the towns. They called themselves the “base” people (for people from the Khmer Rouge rural bases) and new arrivals from the towns were the “new” people.

In a situation where the civil war had seen burning of food stocks by the retreating Lon Nol troops as well as general carnage and destruction and where food was already scarce, where 2 million peasants had to feed themselves as well as additional 2 million city dwellers and refugees, where there was discrimination between “base” (rural) people and “new” (town) people, a tragedy of epic proportions was on the cards.

A second tragedy occurred about 3 years later, the events being shrouded in mystery and may have involved international intrigues. What is well known however is that there was a power struggle and Khmer Rouge bases in the east were suspected of siding with the Vietnamese. The population was shipped en masse from the conflict zone to other Khmer Rouge bases in the west. This time, however, the tragedy took on really sinister proportions. The people from the east as well as the west were both from Khmer Rouge bases, so they could no longer discriminate on the basis of “base” people and “new” people. What happened was the discrimination now centered on “loyalists” and “traitors”. This time round, the discrimination took on murderous overtones.

For us in Malaysia, the differentiation between “bumiputras” and “immigrants” as well as loyal Malaysians and Malaysians of questionable loyalty and where UMNO continues to be seized by insecurity and fear, fill me with utter dread. Granted, the situation is not as serious as in Cambodia, but no good comes out of a divided population based on race discrimination. I hope that the new Malay proletariat will find its feet and bring us out of a dangerous rut by doing away with absolute power and bringing about a balance of power. Such a proletariat will have big reservations about the merchant and moneyed classes but at the same time also strongly opposed to bureaucratic corruption and abuse of power. I think we have the beginnings of a Malay proletariat. Do we now have a Malaysian proletariat? After all if the moneyed classes cannot unite due to competition for property and status, the lower classes have a chance to unite based on common struggle against the excesses of the rich and powerful.

By batsman


Comments (5)
...written by Motherchell, November 25, 2008 22:43:07
Oh yes they do! --- what ever the Brits burnt and threw away they picked it up for future enclosed dominion. They had their trumps. They knew slavery of the sorts we find in Patail, and Musa --reinforced their believe with strength amalgamated from the Petronas wells ! or we would be like what we find in Congo or Burkina Faso urbanely .Though after 50 years we are so similar ! http://sjsandteam.wordpress.com
...written by Just Gan, November 25, 2008 23:08:16
'In an article in Utusan Malaysia on 20 Nov, former Prime Minister Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad called on the Malays to adopt a more proactive attitude in defending their rights. "Nowadays we only see the Malays defending instead of attacking," he said. "We need to defend our position, and like the English saying that the best defence is a good offence, we need to be on the offensive to defend ourselves," he said at a Perdana Leadership Foundation talk. Mahathir said instead of just defending their rights under the social contract, the Malays should start talking about the benefits enjoyed by the other races because of the social contract. Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra gave out one million citizenships to non-Malays without any question, he said. "If they want to revoke Malay rights, we too want to revoke the rights given to them," he said.' - extract from another article on MT. With his kind of lunacy being propagated by a despicable low down specimen calling itself a human being, all for the sake of ensuring a win for its imbecile offspring in the forthcoming UMNO election and ensuring the continuance of its tyranical legacy through that imbecile, what more can the Malays, in particular, and Malaysians, in general, be subjected to to quickly descend into calamity and disaster. There is no limit to what this thing will resort to fulfil its greed, selfishness and egotistical self-centered cowardly low-down behaviour. If only someone could shut this thing's orifice from spewing such venom .....
...written by Spear Bing, November 25, 2008 23:18:52
It's the UMNO proletariat who is suffering from siege mentality as a result of its perverted belief in the permanancy of UMNO's 51 year rule of the nation. But natural law dictates the rule of impermanence in this universe, of transient existence. There will be revolution as a concomitant consequence, but more significantly the forces of evolution will take their rightful place in bringing about transformative change in the political landscape of the nation. UMNO of UMNO this too shall come to pass.
...written by Spear Bing, November 25, 2008 23:36:24
Dear Just Gan, With 10 million hits registered so far on his cedet blogsite, TDM has issued his own injunction that he has earned the respect of the rakyat, and as such he has earned the right to lash out his verbal vitriol as he deems fit. Such is the enigma of a person who identifies himself with an egoic mindset, hallucinated by his conviction that the world or rather UMNO owes him a living. No amount of criticism will shun him from saying his piece and the one and only incident that will make cease his verbal diarrhea is when he forgets to breathe......... period. Salam.
...written by temenggong, November 26, 2008 00:22:29
This is a good and interesting comparative study, worthy of serious consideration. I would think that Hindraf, or rather the Indians are the new proletariat. There is some malay proletariat but it would be outside of urban Malaysia. Chinese and the urban malays are the bourgeoisie.

MANAGERIAL STYLES - ELEMENTS LEADERSHIP

Initiative
Inquiry
Advocacy
Conflict Resolution
Decision Making
Critique
Synergy

CONCEPTS AND MODELS OF PROBLEM SOLVING AND DECISION MAKING