Talent: Be at right time & at right place

I believe in the above statement....

No matter how excellent you are if you happened to be at the wrong place at the wrong time, your will be nobody. And of course with a little know how and know who, and being at the right time and the right place, you may end up somebody!

For instance, real example, Tun Hanif Omar, ex CPO of Malaysia. He was very young when he was appointed as CPO because the incumbent at that time was killed, he was made the CPO at a very young age (28 if i could remember it well)...because no one else more capable than him was identified....how lucky.

The recent son of a leader of a communist country was made the successor after his father died...how lucky he is at the age of 28, he was made the head of state. Our PM was also appointed as the youngest Chief Minister (was it 23?) when his father passed away long time ago. Well, not a very good example right? But the CPO case was truly the case of being in the right place at the right time.

The point is, somehow you need someone as your mentor or sponsor to promote you to higher authority especially if you want to be promoted fast. To be in the fast lane requires you to know where to go, and whom to click with. Tun Daim for instance, had a few mentees he personally developed, and now they are millionaires. But hope they'll not forget who they were before and contribute back to the nation.

In a lot of companies now, there's a special Unit namely Talent Management to manage the high flyers. The Unit is responsible to identify, manage, develop further or create more opportunity for the selected talent within a company to excel and to create better or accelerated path for them to grow. Nowadays, the system or process is getting better and better, and if you can perform well and has teh potential as a leader, you can get special treatment by your company. However, you need to be at the right place and at teh right time too to get in the system. You have to compete and to find someone who is passionate enough to take care of you as a mentor and develop you further as well as create you the opportunity to be selected as talent. And if yiu were selected, you also need to perform and get someone to assist you to performa and retain you as a talent. Life is great but it's not easy....

Transit & KAFA for School Kid at Office Area

I decided to open a Transit for school kids and KAFA class at our office complex in Taiping after our success with the childcare centre in 2000. Main reason? My kids needed KAFA education and i didn't have maid at home :D; but then again, it actually benefited almost 180 students and 120+ parents near the office complex...the respond was unbelievable!

I later decided to open a transit for school children, and later negotiated with Majlis Agama Islam Perak to open KAFA class since we have mosque in our office complex in Taiping. We appointed 2 teachers, Tahfiz AlQuran to run the KAFA school. I apponted one old lady to do the housekeeping (to make sure the mosque was always clean with so many kids around, not to distrupt the mosque). The parenst could also opt for lunch provided by the KAFA school management (and pay extra) or just pay for the KAFA class without lunch/food. So if their kids went to morning school, they could come back after school straight to KAFA class or in the morning before they went to school, they would go for KAFA class in the morning, take bath there and went to school direct after KAFA class if their school were in the afternoon.

Initially I observed that the kids were playing a foll when praying with adults. I discussed with the ustazs and requested that all KAFA students to pray separately with the ustazs to observe their movement during the prayer. At the same time, I asked the ustazs to asked the kids to recit the doa and surah clearly all at once so that everybody especially the smaller kids could follow. One of teh older kid was made the Imam to lead the prayer. Ustazs were supposed to observe and taught them the right way to perform teh prayer step by step.

They were also asked to recite Yassin and I challenged them to remember (hafaz) Yassin and other simple Surah by reciting those Surah loudly togather. Kids like to learn that way, loundly and with everybody, not one to one. And they will remember better when they hear and say especially when everybody was doing it. In a short period, they could 'hafaz' a few Surahs already and I was greatful to contribute to their success in 'hafazan', even a few simpel Surahs and Yassin, Alhamdulillah.

Establishing Childcare Centre

I had the opprotunity to manage and administer directly Childcare center at our office when i was in Taiping (our regional office for Northern Region). I was there from 1998 till 2002. It was a great experience managing the centre. When i started my job there (that was not my only task), the childcare centre had about 5 staffs and 15 children. The stiuation was not satisfactory at all to me.

After a while, I found out that the food was ordered from our cafeteria operator, and interestingly it was foods for adult, hot and spicy. The kids were given very limited access to the food coz the staffs would reserve some for them to take home (fringe benefit i guess...). There were not many activities and teh supervisor was not very friendly (at least to my expectation) and was in control of the whole situation. In fact she was the stmbling block for me to improve the situation.

The number of kids were reduced coz parents were not happy at all with the whole situation. I kept the situation for a month and close the classromm for a while. These situations had supported me with strong reason to let go the supervisor and her good friend cum follower and the rest remained.

What did i do to improve teh situation after a month? I appointed new supervisor from my existing office staff and changed the menu immediately to child-friendly menu, with some extra foods for adult (enough for them to have lunch and definitely not to take home). I splitted the childcare into two units as per guidelines by teh welfare department, for kids below 2 years, and kids between 2-6 years. There were dedicated staffs to handle these groups and it was based on their preferences/choices. I also hire one staff as housekeeper, to do the cleaning and stuff, so the childtakers were specilised in their jobs without having to do the cleaning and other house chores. My focus at that time was to improve teh situation especially for below 2 yrs old category and between 2-4 yrs old category. There were no preschool due to lack of manpower and expertise to handle.

The new supervisor handled the situation well and the childcare staffs were given a timetable. All kids need to follow the timetable with activities suitable for kids. We made it fun by having a 'swimming' session in a small moveable pool, sing a song time and video time after bathed in the afternoon and play outside when waited for their parents to pick them up (prior to that kids were not allowed to play outside because parents were complaining their children were not tidy up and clean when they picked them up...what?? Yo parents, kids need to play ok? If you don't like my way, take the hiway!! Haha...

All their work were then posted in a simple gallery outside of the place where parents normally came to fetch their kids. Before this all their works were palced nicely in a folder and to be handed over to their parents at end of year....what the hack? The parents would not appreciate those when they were ready to for holiday at end of year and then to prepare their kids for new school. So we capture the parents there and then. They were then allowed to bring home their work daily. So parents could then see their kids progress daily. Every month we even invited our panel doctor to visit us and provide medicine to teh children if necessary. I didn't allow teh childcare staffs to give teh kids medicine themselves without teh supervisor around and with the parents permission.

Kids were happy and parents talked to other parents, there were a lot of request to enroll their kids. I needed to expand. I then decided for the childcare to move to a bigger place. there were a bungalow for teh Office Complex Manager but nobody wanted to stay there. So we moved to the bungalow after it was renovated and fire escape staricase was built for safety.

There were parents who sent their kids as early as 630am in the morning and picked their kids after 730pm. I issued a circular for parenst to pay to the childcare staffs thru supervisor overtime claim. They needed to compensate the staffs tehmselves. Some parents were not happy but wh wanted to work for FREE?? Later the parents stopped sending his kids early at 630am and instead took his kids for brakfast and sent them around 8am (actually the mother worked in Ipoh so to make his (the father) life easy, he sent his kids straight to the childcare after sending his wife to the bus station to take express bus to Ipoh...).

After much discussion, wedecided to open preschool and later appointed 2 teachers for 5 yrs old preschool and later 6 yeras old preschool after we had enough kids enrolled. We also hired part time english teacher,  mandarine teacher, ustaz to teach AlQuran and computer teacher to teach the kids computer, all were scheduled in the afternoon. So in the morning the went for normal cyllibus. I also sent the teachers to attend fast learning technique in Ipoh to learn about the new technique. The preschool was also a success.

Overall, based on the respond, I would consider my effort a huge success and in fact, we had to reject some kids due insufficient space. What a great experience indeed... :D

Industrial Casses

I had the opportunity to handle a few industrial cases last time and it was really interesting and taught me a lot about life. Summary of cases that i handled and what actually happened:-

1) staff asked money from potential customers - amazingly he lied to his own neighbors and collected money from them as potential customers while the promotion didn't state that employees could collect money from anyone including customers without authorization. His case was investigated but his neighbors (almost all of them involved) refused to become our witnesses. We would not have a case without any witnesses. However. luckily during the day of the inquiry, we managed to get support form the witness's superior (government agency) to force the witnesses to testify in our domestic inquiry. He was then dismissed based on two witnesses and one other charges were dropped since the witness named did not turn up. For me, even one witness testified against him would be more than enough. It's not the amount in question but the honesty and trust. He then filed his case at Industrial Court and this time I stand as witness. It was not a good experience even though you only stand as witness because you will be questioned by not only the company's lawyer but also by the defense council appointed by the claimant (ex staff). I managed to answer all questions and luckily the Chairman of the Industrial Court was with me when the defense council asked loose questions which I refused to answer. It required skill, knowledge and experience to avoid you from being trapped by the lawyer. I was confident that the company won the case, and we did!

2) My colleague replaced me to represent a company during conciliation at Industrial Department in Ipoh. When he came back, he told me he was screwed by the Industrial Relations officer in charged for not well prepared for the session. Somehow the session was postponed coz the union who was supposed to attend did not turn up. I attended the next session and the IR officer summon me to be in his office. He was surely not very nice and arrogant/stuck up. I responded seriously and acted arrogant too coz i did not see any reason for him not to treat me well. I responded to his question by saying it's company's right to terminate him and we did all it required by law to provide him natural justice. We had witness and he pleaded guilty, and the punishment (dismissal) was justifiable and just coz it involved money. There were no more trust between him and the company and the punishment should serve as example to other employees. Even tough we did not charge him on criminal breach of trust, CBT (coz if we did we had to proof him guilty beyond reasonable doubt, and our objective was not to charge him a criminal charge, but enough to serve him well and set example to others. The IR officer mellowed down after that (he knew I was an experienced IR manager myself), and requested for reschedule coz the union failed to attend again. I refused coz that was second time and the union did not even call to request for postponement. I told the IR officer I was wasting company's time and wasted company's money by attending the session twice when the union as if refused to attend. The officer agreed with me and I left the office after that. I did not receive any more letters from IR office related to that particular case again after that.

3) I had the experience negotiating with an ex employee I terminated due to poor performance. He was a senior manager when he was not confirmed to the position and terminated due to poor performance. The IR officer called me to negotiate settlement but I told him direct that there would be no settlement coz the company had taken the rightful and necessary action before he was terminated. I knew already he'd not ask for reinstatement even though conciliation at IR office was for terminated employee to claim for reinstatement. I did not mention about compensation at all during first meeting however the IR officer asked me to reconsider. I used delay tactic by saying I was not willing to consider settlement at all coz there was no case. He initially claimed 6 month salary as compensation but for a service of less than one year, the amount was ridiculous. He asked me to consider and I told him I needed approval to agree on any monetary settlement. In the next conciliation meeting about almost two months later, I told him that we only agreed to pay him 1/2 month instead of 6 month salary he demanded. That was only a token and I did not really agree that was a settlement. After much discussion, we finally agreed with only 1 month as token, which was indirectly also agreed by the IR officer. The case was finally closed.

There were a  lot more cases I had the experience to handle, and each case was unique. I helped my company to settle a lot of cases either at IR office or out of court if the case was already registered with the IR court by convincing the claimants and his lawyer not to prolong the case further. Some cases took more than two years of hearing and still not settled. Furthermore, almost all cases involved low rank employee, hence settling out of court was not a big issue/amount of money. We pay more to lawyers than compared to the settlement amount :D. I was quite successful and lucky when I handled IR matters back then, Alhamdulillah.