PEMANDU

Permanently Enslaved Mentality And Nurtured Debilitating Unrest. PEMANDU. No, I am just squibbling. There is no meaning to it. Is that the right word? Maybe. MYR 36 million to the consultants. Justified, of course it is. Anybody can just about justify anything nowadays. Of course, I am thinking it from my own perspective. My career has provided me with working with consultants. At one time, there was the same consultant who advised that we should not invest outside of the Asia Pacific but to limit our investment strategies to only the countries within the region. Somehow, no one questioned the consultant on the time frame. Recommendations are provided based on current facts and future expectations based on current facts. Circumstances do change. What is a recommendation now, is simpLy pure idiocy in the next two years. As expected, there was no time frame provided and the gullible management accepted it. However, one sees every other operator investing every where else. By limiting ourselves to a small room, we have unwittingly enslaved our mentalities within a limited scope of business expansion. The consultant did not give a time frame nor was it ever asked to justify with research facts on how this should be so. All I have seen are powerpoint presentations. Anyone can put words on a powerpoint slide and speak with much confidence in the presentation. I have seen mistakes and lies and I have seen gullible people accepting lies and mistakes as gospel truths.

In the past we had never depended on consultants. We managed fine and with better performance. Having a consultant is like having to pay someone to nail the coffin shut with you inside. I am weary of consultants with the powerpoint slides and with nothing else to show.

Now, there is some unrest. "We need to have Mergers & Acquisitions!" Somebody said vociferously, from the unrest of seeing no additional profitability other than pathetically surviving on organic growth. Another person came and said the same thing and with the same fervour. "We need to have Mergers and Acquisitions!" And it felt like it was sang in the same fervour as witch hunting. True enough, somebody came to me for advice on M&A. So I said, "M&A is just the vehicle, an engine for the achievement of a strategic objective. So what is your strategic objective?". Of course, that query could not be answered. There was never any real strategy for the past four years and the person responsible for it is now in PEMANDU. It worries me, no doubt. If a football player from a small village is so bad at football, how is it that he can be appointed to play football for the country? It worries me. Mind you, I am not referring to Idris Jala.