Respect

I always has respect to those people who are willing to share their wisdom and experience with the younger lots. Today I met this Global bank CIO and this encounter itself really impressed me. I believe it wouldn't be pure luck if someone can achieve such rank. Yet he is so humble and soft-spoken, and share his experience and view with us as if we are peer though we are not. He reminds me of another great figure Dato' Sri Idris Jala. I had shared numerous times with my friends how amicable is his personality. I still remember the day we share the same lift, though i'm nobody in the company then, he actually greet and asked how is my work.

However, in Malaysia there are never short of people who will like to show their dominance over you, there never short of people whom will tell you right in your face that "who is the boss here?". If they can ever understand, we are just happened to be in this situation, there are reason why sometimes one is another boss, or, one is another customer; but that doesn't mean one is more superior than another, more so one is allowed to treat another brutally. I hope one day, majority of us will learn this.

At the end, I will like to take my hat off to this CIO whom i met and the like of him in our society.

A world with unprecedented competition

I had this discussion with my brother-in-law recently. Our topic reaffirm my view that the world has become even more competitive than before. There is no more comfort zone for business. Every company is competing neck and neck with each other.

The PC price is dropping, phone price is dropping, TV price is dropping. Oil, land and food are different because they are limited resources. But most other businesses, manufacturing and services no longer enjoy such luxury. Another 10 years, Telco may no longer made money from fixed phone line. You are not number #1 or #2 business, you will be losing, especially so for high tech company like Google (search engine), Apple (iPad), Facebook (social network).

Where will HP and Microsoft heads to? See how Nokia and Cisco lose their glamour considering not so distant ago, they were still reigning the world. IBM had able to turnaround in the 90's because they change and change in the direction, so Elephant can dance, but only if it try.

To customers, it's not good news that they have less and less choice. They only have either less than a handful to choose, say, if they want to buy servers. To vendor, it's not good news, for anything priced above zero is too expensive. For the world, it's so much monotonous as everybody is only flocking to iPhone, or like me owning an Android.

The world no doubt had become a competitive one, and we no longer can go back to the days, when my father works hard, but he can come back from work before sunset, and every family members group together to have an early dinner.

Suddenly, i remember my Sales lady told me about the story that her neighbor left all his belonging and go for "a walk", and he doesn't know when he will be back.