ROWE for an honest living ?

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A WRITER'S LIFE By DINA ZAMAN

The traditional economy of working long hours no longer works in a global economy that does not recognise time zones and deadlines.

MUCH has been written about the number of holidays and company leave days Malaysians have. What is apparent is the effect on productivity. Thus, begs the question: What is true productivity?

A number of columnists have shared their views. Is it true productivity when employees leave late simply because of the following reasons:

> The boss is working late or there is an unwritten code that until the boss leaves, no one else can; and

> The longer you stay at work, even if you are on Facebook, you are a good worker?


Peer pressure is a factor; another are long meetings with no set agenda and goals.

Perhaps Malaysian companies and business owners would do well to look at the US and Europe. Despite their worsening economies, a movement that addresses work-life balance is gaining ground.

Why Work Sucks and How To Fix It, written by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson (www.gorowe.com) is about creating a results-only work environment (ROWE). Hot on the heels of lifestyle gurus such as Tim Ferris of the 4-Hour Workweek, Ressler and Thompson write about and offer solutions to the never-ending circus of meetings, schedules and clock-ins.



The traditional economy of working long hours from Monday to Friday, and also weekends, no longer works in a global economy that does not “understand” time zones and deadlines.

Home life, chores like doing the laundry, missing the children’s school concert — there has to be a better way to make a living.

You may wonder what is the difference between a flexible work arrangement and a ROWE.

Simply put, with flexi hours the employee needs permission and faces limited options. It is management controlled, requires policies, focusses on time-off, and there is high demand and low control.

ROWE offers the worker the following: No permission is needed and the working boundaries are unlimited. The employee manages his or her KPIs, and this requires accountability and clear goals.

If these are not met, out you go. ROWE focusses on tangible business results and it is high demand with high control.

Employers should view ROWE as beneficial to their businesses. They stop paying people for activities (Facebook anyone?) and start paying for outcomes.

They stop paying people for a chunk of time, and start paying them for their work. The employer must set clear terms of references on what needs to be done on a daily, weekly, monthly and yearly basis.

“Then it is up to the employee, with the coaching and guidance of the management, to meet those goals. If there are problems along the way, it’s the work that comes under scrutiny,” say the authors.

The big question is whether we Asians can adapt to this.

Asian businessmen and conglomerates have a different view of hard work, discipline and meeting profit margins. Despite the available technology, burning the midnight oil at work and networking while juggling a personal life still seem to be the practice.

It is common to see employees carrying two or three mobile phones and hooked onto almost every social media site, all in the name of keeping abreast with business trends. Is it any wonder why we are stressed?

Many will argue that with the wealth we are seeing now, there is little to complain about. People are more educated, healthier and hold down jobs.

However, economic growth and human development do not always coincide (UNDP Human Develop-ment Report 2010), and this is quite evident when one observes the current lifestyles of Malaysians.

Something must be amiss when many Malaysian professionals take up multi-level marketing jobs and other side businesses (i.e. tuition, catering) just to feed the family.

Young parents, seeking a better future for their children, take up consultancy or off-site projects just to be able to afford the tuition and activities their children need.

Holidays see tired families barely able to enjoy themselves. Stress-related illnesses are on the rise. The breakdown of relationships is on a steep increase, and thanks to limited time and resources, friendships are via social media like Facebook. This is not healthy.

More holidays do not mean that one’s life will change for the better when the fundamentals such as low pay (or not being paid what is worth) and archaic management per se are still practised.

With inflation on the rise on basic household goods, the Malaysian worker will have to grind even harder yet probably save little.


> A WRITER'S LIFE By DINA ZAMAN - The writer is working on religious histories and communities of Malaysia. She can be contacted at editor@thestar.com.my.

Change or be changed!

Image by Danny Choo via Flickr

WE all know that people and businesses who don’t adapt get phased out. Generation X, of which I am part of, has seen the evolution of technology transform how we live our daily lives.

From the VHS tape to the DVD and Blu-ray discs, and from snailmail to email, there are numerous examples how one way of doing things has given way to a faster, better and cheaper methods.

The bankruptcy of Kodak is the latest proof of how businesses can become irrelevant if they don’t keep up with the times. Research In Motion Ltd, the maker of BlackBerry phones, is feeling what Nokia has gone through. The digital age is moving along at breakneck speed and is transforming a multitude of industries and leaving an indelible mark on people and businesses.



There are companies that have done well to make changes on the fly. Most famous is Apple and before that Corning, which was – and maybe still is – famous for its cookingware rather than its fibre optics.

The need to transform is also not lost on corporate Malaysia. A lot of the big banks have done so and have become a lot better at what they do today. MMC Corp changed from a miner to an infrastructure player and the likes of Genting and IOI have expanded dramatically in the business they are in to become world giants today.

That transformation is also seen in the big institutions in Malaysia. The Employees Provident Fund restructured its portfolio from owning 400-plus stocks, some of which most punters will not touch today, to a leaner portfolio of around 100. Its narrower focus has allowed it to take the plunge into private equity and property and, as a result, the returns it can make for depositors should also improve in time.

The same can be said of Khazanah Nasional Bhd. In 2004, when Khazanah first started under new “management”, it had a bunch of old assets sitting in its books. They included stakes in some of the largest companies in the country, but sitting idle and waiting for results was not the way to go.

Khazanah restructured its portfolio, and from a bunch of companies that was heavily leaning towards utilities and telecoms, it invested in new businesses and industries. New investments were in part funded by monies from asset sales such as the divestment of Khazanah’s legacy stakes in Pos Malaysia and Proton.

As a result, Khazanah’s returns improved. During a recent briefing with the media, Khazanah revealed that if it had just sat on it and relied on the government-linked companies’ transformation programme alone, its returns would have been a meagre 2% a year.

But it did not do that and instead invested in new businesses which it felt will bring better growth. Those new investments brought in a return of 22% a year.

One such investment is the hospital business. Integrated Healthcare Holdings (IHH), which consists of hospital investments such as Apollo Hospital Enterprise Ltd and Parkway Holdings, recently made a big acquisition in Turkey when it bought Acibadem.

Healthcare in the demographics in which IHH operates will be hugely lucrative. India, South-East Asia and now Turkey have the desired young but ageing population with growing incomes.

IHH is slated for a massive listing and the changes that some entities in corporate Malaysia have undertaken should be a showcase of how transforming when it needs to be done should be the course of action.

● Deputy news editor Jagdev Singh Sidhu wonders when the retirement age in the private sector will be raised.

Call for a damn good shot: Light not founded Penang and Raffles, Singapore! Hang Tuah.., mere legends?

Myths, prejudice and history

Question Time by P.GUNASEGARAM

It is next to impossible to make history objective, but we must give it a damn good shot.

LEGEND is a lie that has attained the dignity of age. – HL Mencken The very ink with which history is written is merely fluid prejudice. – Mark Twain

Remember Jalan Birch in Kuala Lumpur, near the Merdeka Stadium? It’s been called Jalan Maharajalela for many years now, Birch becoming a victim of a programme of Malaysianisation of road names.

Image via Wikipedia

But Birch also became a victim of Malaysianisation of history – from hero, he became a villain, and his killer, yes, Maharajalela, became a hero in the flash of a road sign change.

Few things can so poignantly illustrate the change in historical perspective as a country changes.

JWW Birch was a British resident (adviser to the Sultan) in Perak in the 19th century. The British used a system of residents to control most Malayan states. A local called Dato Maharajalela assassinated Birch.

Although the reasons why he did this are obscure, Maharajalela is now hailed as a nationalist who opposed colonialism and died in the process – he and his accomplice were hanged.

Hence his elevation to hero status and Birch’s relegation to villain, a representative of an occupying force.

I remember my early history textbooks post-independence put Maha ra jalela in bad light until years later when the historical perspective began to shift.

We studied in our history books that Sir Francis Light was the founder of Penang which is ridiculous from a Malayan/Malaysian perspective because Malayans must have known the existence of Penang long before it was “founded” by Light. To this day, Wikipedia states that Light founded Penang. How confounding is that.

Captain Francis Light:  The statue of Captain Sir Francis Light at Penang, Malaysia

When the British “founded” places, it meant they then established a system of governance with rules of law. There is a court system and a police force. Prior to their “founding” there was no such legal system among the locals.

Then, there was Sir Stamford Raffles who similarly was said to have “founded” Singapore conveniently and erroneously erasing the arrival earlier to that place by a prince from Palembang, Sang Nila Utama, some 500 years earlier.

Image via Wikipedia

It seems like even Singaporeans believe their history started with Raffles. I was at a performance put up by Singaporean MBA students in 1991 which started off the history of the country from the time Raffles “founded” it in 1819. How unfortunate!

It was with great amusement that I read many years ago of a stunt pulled by an American (Red) Indian.

After arriving in Italy via a commercial flight, he promptly announced that he had founded Italy.

And what right did he have to make that outrageous claim? The same that Christopher Columbus, an Italian who sailed on behalf of the Spanish monarchs, had when he proudly claimed that he had discovered the Americas (at that time Columbus thought it was the East Indies) in 1492, a land already in habited by millions of others.



Now, Prof Emeritus Tan Sri Khoo Kay Kim has controversially raised lots of heckles and temperatures by saying that Malay warriors such as Hang Tuah and Hang Jebat were mere legends – myths invented by fertile minds for the amusement of others, much like the Greek gods.

He is, however, a renowned historian with no political ideology, racial or national axe to grind.

To his critics he has this to say: “If you don’t agree with me, bring out the sources to show I am wrong. You cannot simply say you don’t agree. I am saying that these things were not true because no reliable sources confirmed they existed.”

That is a clear indication as to how we should go about clarifying history.

History must be based on facts. It must seek to recreate - without any ideological, national, racial or any other bias - what happened to who, what, when, where, why and how, the journalistic five W’s and one H.

Otherwise it remains a myth and legend.

Just as in the case of Hang Tuah, one should seek to ascertain whether Maharajalela was indeed a hero by trying to establish, based on facts, his motives for killing Birch.

Otherwise it becomes a mere speculation and interpretation which is not history.

We are a relatively young country and yes, we would need to rewrite history from the perspective of Malaysia and Malaysians. No, Light had not founded Penang and Raffles, Singapore.

There may be many questions we can’t answer but we must make an effort to find them. And we need a proper system of archiving so that future generations know things the way they were.

History in school must not be a tool for nation building or used for any other agenda but to paint a true picture, as far as that is possible given all our collective prejudices, of Malaysia and of the world.

It needs to have balance, fairness and most of all truth about everyone’s contribution to nation building.
It must not seek to aggrandise one race or religion at the expense of others.

It must have enough of a mix of subject matter to ensure Malaysians have sufficient appreciation of Malaysia and how it has come to be where it is as well as an unbiased understanding of the state of the world. Anything else and it would become poor propaganda instead.

The best way towards this is to have a curriculum drawn up by historians and true educationists and to put in place a rigorous means of verification if we need to change history or at least what we learn of it.
You can interpret history but you must not rewrite it without factual basis.

It is next to impossible to make it objective but we must give it a damn good shot nevertheless, if we are not to live in and perpetuate a lie.

Independent consultant and writer P Gunasegaram (t.p.guna@gmail.com) says we need an accurate history before we learn anything from it.

Hang Tuah part of Malay cultural heritage

I REFER to Prof Emeritus Khoo Kay Kim’s statement declaring that Hang Tuah and Kris Taming Sari are the figments of somebody’s imagination based on the lack of credible evidence to authenticate their existence. As such they are not historical facts.

Image via Wikipedia

But these two elements are part of the Malay cultural heritage and have been embedded in the annals of the Malay civilisation, initially through oral tradition and later recorded in literary, dramatic and scholarly works.

Together with Puteri Gunung Ledang, Nenek Tempayan, Mat Jenin and Lebai Malang, they have adorned our lives through the retelling of their adventures and foibles in literary, dramatic and cinematic works.

They provide us with the opportunities of exploring the moral and ethical percepts of their actions.
Such traditional characters are ingrained as part of our psyche.

Many of us were brought up with Hang Tuah representing the epitome of loyalty, bravery and humility, character traits of such universal and noble stature.

In one swift swoop, Prof Khoo demolished part of our mores and lore citing the lack of concrete evidence to corroborate their existence.

As such, he suggested that they cannot be included as part of the history of the Malays.

But history itself is not beyond reproach. For historical narrations are a conglomeration of facts and fallacies that are given credence by those in power who tend to benefit most from such accounts.

And again, history was written by the victors who neglected the contributions of the vanquished, except those that portray them in a negative light. Thus, the “facts” were slanted to favour the powerful and the ruling elite.

Look at the account of the American Indians in the history of the American West. It portrays them as barbaric and evil and the white man as humane people who civilised these savages by putting them in reservations.

Likewise, the skewed perception of the aboriginal people in the annals of the Australian history.

In the same vein, a “historical” account of Palestine by the Jews would differ markedly from that of the Palestinians.

Similarly, the descriptive exploits of the Christian Crusade extolling the bravery and virtues of King Arthur would not tally with the account of the Muslims praising Sallahuddin Al Ayobi and the Arabs in the defence of Islam.

Thus, oral and recorded history is perceived from the perspective of the recorder who is not a disinterested party.

As for Hang Tuah and his companions, they have for so long been part of our cultural history. So too is the Kris Taming Sari which may not just refer to a single physical entity but rather a recognition bestowed on those that possess mystical and supernatural aura.

MOHAMED GHOUSE NASURUDDIN, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang   

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Malaysian History & Legend; facts & fallacies; myths, heroes or zeroes?