Speech at Financial Sector Talent Enrichment Programme (FSTEP) Prominent Leaders Sessions

Bismillahirrahmanirrahim,
Assalamualaikum wa Rahmatullahi wa Barakatuh,
Salam Sejahtera and a very good afternoon,
Salam 1Malaysia,
YBhg Datuk Muhammad Ibrahim,
Deputy Governor of Bank Negara Malaysia,
Yang Berusaha Encik Lee Khee Joo,
Head of FSTEP,
Ladies and Gentlemen,
Rockefeller Centre is one of the most famous landmarks in New York City. Its construction started in 1930, and it was then the largest private building project ever undertaken in modern times. It was financed solely by John Rockefeller.

2. Another famous New York landmark is the Carnegie Hall, which until today is considered as one of the most prestigious halls in the world for classical music. There are also Carnegie Halls elsewhere, Carnegie Museums and Carnegie Library. And many more bearing the famous name. All funded by Andrew Carnegie.

3. John Rockefeller came from a very poor family, did household chores and earned extra money raising turkeys, selling potatoes and candy. He went on to establish Standard Oil Company, is credited for envisioning what we now call philanthropy, and was the first billionaire in human history.

4. Andrew Carnegie had a similar start. His first job at 13 was to change spools of thread in a cotton mill 12 hours a day, 6 days a week in a Pittsburgh cotton factory. He went on to establish Carnegie Steel, at one time producing more steel than the whole of Great Britain. Despite having made billions, he donated most to charity and only had USD30 million in personal wealth at the time of his death.

5. There are more. Ursula Burns, Chairman and CEO of Xerox, came from a neighbourhood full of drugs and gangs. Sam Walton, founder of Wal-Mart, had to milk cow and deliver newspapers and magazines. Our own Tan Sri Lim Goh Tong of Genting started as a carpenter, while Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar Al-bukhary started by selling meat and vegetables.

6. These are fabulous tales. People who started with very little and ended up making billions. No privileged upbringing, no silver spoon. Just good-old-fashioned hard work and street-smarts. And quite consistently, because they came from a difficult background, many decide to give their wealth back to  society.

7. Of course, for every Rockefeller and Tan Sri Syed Mokhtar, there are thousands and more who start with poverty and end with poverty. But the lesson here is – where we end up in life is less about how we started it, and more about what we do with it.
Ladies and Gentlemen,

8. It gives me great pleasure to be with you this afternoon, in what I understand to be a premier programme to groom skilled talent and future leaders for Malaysian Financial Institutions. I was also informed, for the first time, this programme is joined by 9 participants from overseas. Every one of you must be proud of yourself to be in this room today. To be in a select group that is given tailored training by no less than Bank Negara itself. Syabas to you and your parents for having guided you to this stage. At the end of this programme, you will finally be stepping out from an ordered and controlled environment to a world of your own design. From a campus life that is structured and steered by the University, and now by the FSTEP. From a personal life thought-out and arranged by your parents. From a life where your sponsor dictated your financial limits and spending. And now, you will be stepping out into a world that is eager to welcome your expertise and your plans to develop your organisation, society and your country. Our country.

9. What I’d like to share with you today are the lessons I have learned in my 40 odd years of serving our beloved Nation. Things I learned along the way, things I tried to practise. These are neither gospels nor a list of ‘to do’s’. They worked for me and many others, and possibly could work for you too.

10. After all, I haven’t done too bad for myself. I came from an obscure kampung called Cherok Paloh in Pekan, Pahang. Has anyone heard of Cherok Paloh? I don’t think so. From a kampung no one here has heard of, to become the most senior Civil Servant for six years, and now the Chairman of the only Malaysian company in the Global Fortune 500, not bad, I must say. And not in a shy way!

11. This is not about boasting. There are some important lessons in it. Firstly, it doesn’t matter where we come from, what matters is what we do with our lives. Secondly, although it doesn’t matter where we come from, we should never forget our roots. Not once did I forget Cherok Paloh. In fact, I am where I am today because of Cherok Paloh. We’ll come to that later.

12. Now, back to ‘not forgetting our roots’. Our presence in this room today is the collective result of a series of people, events, decisions and opportunities that lined up our path that brought us here. There would have been many junctions along the way, and a combination of different turns could have resulted in a few thousand alternate paths. But here we are. Because of the people who guided and nurtured us, the opportunities that was given and the challenges we chose to face.
Being Grateful is Healthy

13. I always found it very powerful to take a retrospective look at our lives every now and then, and to count our blessings. Feeling grateful gives positive energy to ourselves as well as those around us. It also drives us to keep improving things around us as a payback for the blessings we have received. Research has shown gratitude has many benefits – it improves our immune system, our mental health, our relationships and team morale. It also helps us sleep better at night. It must be the cheapest prescription in the market – free. Interestingly, it is one emotion, or state of being, that is said to be internally generated and doesn’t require an external stimuli. Usually we are happy, sad, angry or frustrated because of something that has happened to us or something said or done by others. But gratitude doesn’t need anyone or anything. It can be generated at any second we want it to come. Being alive, having our sight, our limbs, the capacity to think. The list is long. The short of it is, being grateful gives us the drive and a healthy state of mind to become better at everything we do. No grudges, just positive hope.

14. Here is a quick fact to be grateful. According to the ‘Global Rich List’ website, if I earn RM3,000 per month, I am in the top 5.35% of the global population. There are 6.6 billion people in the world who earn less than me. Imagine that! With RM3,000, here I am complaining that houses and cars are too expensive and I can hardly afford an overseas holiday. Forget about getting a new iPhone every year. But then, there are 6.6 billion who earn less, can afford even lesser than me. I am definitely grateful for that!
Gratefulness is Not Complacency

15. I must also state unequivocally, being grateful is not being complacent. When faced with a tough situation, a grateful person will acknowledge ‘it could have been worse’; and grateful for the lessons learnt so as to avoid the same in the future. A complacent person, on the other hand, might say, “This is out of my league, I should get back to where I really belong” or just accept it. Complacency has an element of resignation, gratitude doesn’t.

Ladies and Gentlemen,

16. Let’s now go back to Cherok Paloh. No one here has heard of Cherok Paloh, but most Senior Civil servants – the KSUs and the DGs – were very familiar with Cherok Paloh by the time I left the Service in June 2012. Cherok Paloh is a very small kampung where for most, their livelihood depended on the rubber smallholding. Once a year, when my relatives had to pay the ‘cukai tanah’, they had to travel a long way to Pekan town where the land office was. And since it’s so far, they practically had to take a day off. That meant no income for that day. So what did they do? They went to Pekan when it rained, because you can’t tap the trees anyways when it rains. Zero ‘opportunity cost’. But to get to Pekan, they had to cycle for a distance, cross the river twice on a boat and cycle again. Sometimes, they might reach the office 10-15 minutes late. So what does the Peon at the Land Office do? He told them to come back the next day. Can you imagine that? A whole day of travel, arrive 15 minutes late and you have to come back another day! That peon at the Land Office gave me the cause for my career. I wanted to make lives better for the likes of my brothers and uncles. I wanted to be the peon who will say, “It’s okay. You have travelled the whole day. I can work an extra 10 minutes to get this processed”. That’s it.

17. I am sure everyone here has their own ‘Cherok Paloh’. Cherok Paloh as a concept. Something that drives us to improve – ourselves, our family, our society, our country. I urge you to hold on to your Cherok Paloh. It gives meaning to what we do and motivates us to overcome challenges. If every one of us have that seed inside, to be the better peon, the better taxi driver, the better bank executive – the better version of whatever we encounter – imagine how much better our Malaysia would be!

Focus on Your Circle of Influence
18. But it is very common to hear people say, “Yes I want to improve but they are not improving. They are a stumbling block. They don’t see what I see.” ‘They’ could be the parents, the company, the government or many other things. Of course there are many things which are not under our control. But there are many more which are under our control. Many of us will be familiar with the concept of ‘Circle of Influence’ and ‘Circle of Concern’ made popular by Stephen Covey. In his famous book, ‘The 7 Habits of Highly Effective People’, Stephen Covey lists ‘being proactive’ as the first habit. Instead of reacting to or worrying about conditions over which one has little or no control, Stephen Covey says proactive people focus their time and energy on things they can control. They focus their efforts on their ‘Circle of Influence’. They work on the things they can do something about: health, children, and problems at work. Reactive people, on the other hand, focus their efforts on the Circle of Concern – things over which they have little or no control: the national debt, terrorism, the weather, the price of oil. He posits that having an awareness of the areas in which one can influence decisions is the first step to becoming effective. I agree.

Think Beyond
19. But the ‘circle of influence’ does not have to dictate our ‘sphere of thinking’. While being realistic in drawing my circle of influence, I have always been very adventurous with my sphere of thinking. A key principle here is to think beyond ourselves, beyond our current portfolio. What would my senior colleagues do in this scenario? What would my Sec Gen do? My Governor? My Minister? The Prime Minister?
20. When I was the Malaysian Trade Commissioner in Sydney, Australia between 1985 and 1992, one of my responsibilities was to submit periodic briefs and reports to Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) in KL. If I were to have done just that, I would have been doing what was expected of me perfectly fine. But I thought I must do beyond that. There was the Malaysian High Commissioner, the Deputy Chief of Mission and other Malaysian officers with whom I shared the office in Sydney. Somehow it didn’t sound right that my seniors in MITI would know more about Malaysia’s trade with Australia than the Malaysian High Commissioner to Australia. Forget about the territory between Ministries. Wouldn’t the Prime Minister want our overseas missions to have seamless sharing and integration of information so that we can work effectively and respond immediately on any queries? If I were to have been travelling and the PM’s office needed trade information from Sydney, no one else could have provided that information. At that point, no one would have said, “Well done Sidek for keeping to the procedures and submitting the report only to KL and not sharing with others in Sydney.” No, that’s not it. We must think what our customers and stakeholders want, not only what our immediate bosses want. If there is a conflict between the two, we need to resolve that.

Collaborate and Share
21. I just talked about sharing and disseminating information. But doesn’t ‘Information equal Power’? Actually it doesn’t. If the PM’s office had to call me during my vacation to get some information, that is not ‘power’. That is ‘foolishness’. Information, in itself, is of no value. The power is in an outcome that is derived by using the information. If information is kept hidden in our drawers and hard drives or only in our head as supposed power, it is useless. Today, knowledge expands at the speed of light. Yesterday’s information is not only history, but in many cases, it is obsolete. So the information we keep may just be a repository of obsolete junk. But when shared, information takes a trajectory of its own. At best, someone can act on it to give us competitive edge. At worst, misleading or false information can be debunked and thrown away.
22. The problem is ‘personal glory’. Information hoarding happens because some worry about who will claim credit for the outcome. Do we perform our responsibility for personal glory? Or we do it because we are entrusted with the common good of the organisation? Of our country?

Ladies and Gentlemen,
23. I will now like to touch upon a number of factors which were very important in guiding me along in my life – at both personal and professional level.

See the Bigger Picture
24. First is, as I alluded to earlier, to see myself as a member of the organisation. Not the unit, section, department or the division. That naturally meant I must think like the Minister or the CEO. What would the CEO say or do? What outcome will be in the best interest of the organisation, even if it’s not the best outcome for my unit? When I was the KSU of MITI between 2004 and 2006, there was a building in London that was in the asset books of MITI but was used as Tourism Malaysia’s Office. There must have been historical reason why it was under MITI, but I couldn’t find a logical reason why it should stay that way. If it was used for Tourism purposes, let the Ministry of Tourism manage and maintain it. It sounded quite straight forward. But there were others who objected. There was a matter of prestige attached to ‘owning’ the building. But it also came with a lot of convoluted accounting treatment to pass the cost to the Ministry of Tourism. I referred to it earlier as being in MITI’s asset books, not as something that was owned by MITI. Because it wasn’t. It was owned by the Government of Malaysia. I couldn’t have seen that way if I didn’t climb the walls of MITI to see beyond. So MITI passed the asset to the Ministry of Tourism. Many of the Blue Ocean projects undertaken by Malaysia are also premised on the same principle.

Get a Mentor
25. Second is getting a mentor. As much as possible, get a mentor from a functional area that is different from yours, so the mentor can also add breadth to your learning. I have had many great mentors, too many to mention. All along, they showed me how much more I could become. There were times they took the role of a friend, sounding board, critic or a motivator. They didn’t make the decisions for me. The decisions were mine. But I was wiser for their counsel and wisdom. Thomas Edison was quoted to have said, “Genius is 1% inspiration, and 99% perspiration.” What mentoring does is give us the benefit of the mentor’s genius without having to sweat. They have done the sweating, made the mistakes and learned the hard way. So that we don’t make the same mistakes. Sure, mistakes are great for learning. But let’s make new mistakes and not repeat the old ones!

End in Mind – Develop a Career Plan
26. Third is to have the end-in-mind. This is a lot easier if we start our career thinking beyond our immediate unit and see pass the ‘mental border’ of sections and divisions. If our career objective is to become the CEO of the bank, from day one, we should have the line of sight of our actions on the broader organisation. If we can’t see it, get others to help us see the bigger picture. After getting a feel for the organisation by speaking to colleagues from across functions and with guidance from a mentor, we should be able to come up with a career plan in the first six months. Think big. In 15 years, where do I want to be? What will it take for me to get there? Which different functions should I be exposed to in order to get there? Career plans are not cast in stone. They will change – they should change – as we mature in the organisation. Tweak it continuously, keep it dynamic. But that doesn’t mean the original plan was useless. To quote the Chinese philosopher Lao Tzu, “A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step.” Many a successful careers started with that single page plan. I am sure you will not regret crafting your own plan sooner rather than later. When you finally become the CEO in 15 – 20 years, you need not be nervous. You can settle quickly into the position as you would have had 15 years of preparation.

Financial Discipline – Tame the Greed
27. Fourth is financial discipline. I do realise we are in a room full of financially competent people, and this message may seem obvious or redundant, or both. But we also know the 2008 financial crisis was brought about by the financial wizards of The City and Wall Street. We may be intellectually aware of the pitfalls of greed, but I believe no one is emotionally immune from it. Beyond awareness, taming greed is a lot of hard work. There are three key financial advices that I received that have served me well:

 The first is a quote from Einstein. “Compound interest is the eighth wonder of the world. He who understands it, earns it … he who doesn’t … pays it.” In simple terms, the sooner I save and invest, the greater the returns would be. Not incremental, but compounded. We don’t have to wait for a large sum to be able to invest. Every ringgit counts. The first investment can be as little as RM100. Have the discipline to set aside a small percentage of your income and let the eighth wonder work its magic.

 The second is to be wary of debt. An anonymous quote says, “Debt is so ubiquitous that modern man drives a car on hire-purchase, on a highway built using corporate bond, using petrol paid with credit card”. In many ways, debt is a necessity to manage our lives. But, there is debt and there is debt. We need to be vigilant not to cross that line that will doom us into eternal debt and bankruptcy. BNM’s 2012 report states only one third of credit card holders settle their balance in full every month. The other two thirds are essentially carrying the most expensive personal loan. We should use credit card as a convenience, not as a loan. Pay it off fully every month. If you can’t, don’t spend it in the first place.

 The third is on the perennial debate about house vs. car. What do we buy first? Ideally we should purchase a property before a car. We understand in some cases, a car is a necessity. But there are also people who buy a car before a property although both their house and the office are accessible by LRT! That is hard to understand. Now we have PR1MA initiative and the MRT Line 1 will be ready by 2017. So with more affordable housing and better public transport, I hope more of us will be encouraged to buy a house before a car. I know of an acquaintance who bought an apartment in 2008 for RM360,000 and it’s worth RM840,000 today. If he had bought a BMW 3 Series for the same price in 2008, that car would be worth RM150,000 today. Some food for thought!

Service Orientation
28. Fifth is service orientation. I spent over 38 years in the Civil Service. All of you are in ‘Financial Services’. What does it mean to be in a services sector? I believe there are three key aspects to service orientation, they are:
• Engagement
• Client-focus
• Sense of urgency

29. Engagement is about listening. A service is not a service because the provider says so. It becomes a service only when the customer feels ‘being served’. Otherwise it is only a process involving two parties. Therefore, service requires us to listen to our customers about their needs and expectation. And do something about it. Each individual’s financial situation and requirements are unique. Their grasp of the financial products will also vary. Service orientation requires us to spend time to understand each individual’s unique needs and propose solutions that meets their financial goals best. If we are driven purely by our sales target for each product and pushing products off-the shelf rather than tailoring products, then it becomes a financial product, not a financial service.

30. Client-focus means not being driven by processes or KPIs, or anything else besides the client. Companies exist to create value by serving customers. Everything else – the policies and guidelines, processes and KPIs should be subservient. If they don’t complement the main goal of serving the customer, then we should change that. Never take the focus away from the customer. If we do, our customers will take the business away from us.

31. Sense of urgency is about being responsive. It is not about rushing decisions. But I could never understand why someone would delay making decisions just to make oneself appear important. It doesn’t show importance, it shows incompetence! Every phone call, email, letter and query should be treated as urgent. The fact it is brought to our attention means someone is awaiting our response to move on with their job. Open it up, give due consideration and respond, fast. If it can be done today, do it today. If it is a request for approval, and if we are not going to approve it, the least we could do is to have the courtesy to let them know that quickly. And tell them why it is not approved. They can move on with alternative options. As Collin Powell said, “bad news is not wine, it doesn’t improve with age”. And if the request will be approved, why not deliver the good news fast? Any delay in responding means we are delaying someone else’s input and output. We are delaying them in reaching their goal. We are delaying our organisation in meeting its goal.

Integrity
32. And lastly, my favourite topic – integrity. It is about being honest and truthful and having consistency between principles, expectations, words and deeds. In public and in private. Especially in private. When no one is watching. Integrity is not just about avoiding corruption. That is but one small aspect. There is much more to integrity. We must be honest with how we spend our time at work. Objective in making our decisions. Fair and firm in managing our teams. Integrity must be the core of our being. It must be the foundational value of our personality, from where our thoughts, words and actions originate.

Ladies and Gentlemen,
33. Those are some of the key values and principles that have served me well in my career. I hope you find it somewhat useful in guiding you as you chart your own career path. One word of caution – everyone starts their career with grand ambitions and ideals. But along the way you will be confronted by three demons called security, predictability and familiarity. They will seek to consume your ambitions and ideals, and make you a passenger in your own life. If you can shake them off and take the driver’s seat, then you will be in control of where you are headed in your career. So watch out for the demons!

34. On that note, I wish you all the best in taking charge of your career and becoming a better version of yourselves every day.

Wabillahitaufiq wal hidayah, wassalamu’alaikum wa rahmatullahi wa barakatuh.