Thursday 28 Mar 2024
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This article first appeared in Forum, The Edge Malaysia Weekly, on October 24 - 30, 2016.

 

“In today’s multicultural world, the truly reliable path to coexistence, 
to peaceful coexistence and creative cooperation, must start from 
what is at the root of all cultures.”
 — Vaclav Havel, first president of the Czech Republic

Budget 2017 was presented by Prime Minister and Finance Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak last Friday. While the various pronouncements were probably expected by the many experts in the media, I cannot help but feel that calls for the rakyat to tighten their collective belts amid global uncertainties and exhortations to better manage public finances are perfunctory appeals, at best.

An instrument designed to improve our collective lot as Malaysians, enhance our national competitiveness and improve our resource reserves, the national budget is an important apparatus to disseminate the government’s economic intent — a map, as it were, to where it wants steer the nation’s economy in 2017.

Despite the overwhelming messages of support for its contents, I believe what we need are more details of the various operational measures to make these items a hard-biting reality.

Make no mistake, we live in turbulent economic and political times and crafting a good budget document for the nation is important. Even more so when the ongoing perception is that the general election is being planned for an earlier date than late 2018.

The budget document telegraphs the intentions of the ruling government, its areas of priority and monetary and fiscal focus in light of prevailing socio-economic conditions. The slowdown in the growth of the Chinese economy, the weak global commodities market and even Brexit will impact Malaysian businesses and the nation’s economy directly and indirectly next year.

While we cannot control external influences, we can batten down the nation’s hatches in light of the looming storms and strengthen what is internally weak. We can, for instance, improve negative perceptions regarding governance and manage our national resources better, and we do not have to reinvent the wheel to do this. We can study history and learn valuable lessons from those that came before us.

To manage resources effectively is a concept, says Daniel Wren in his book Evolution of Management Thought, that can be traced back to the sixth Babylonian King, Hammurabi. That ancient manager-king issued a code of 282 laws (the Code of Hammurabi, about 1760BC) that governed business dealings, personal behaviour, interpersonal relationships, wages, punishments and a host of other societal matters.

Of interest here is that he mandated how the treasury of the state of Babylon was to be administered. Hammurabi’s Law 104, for example, was the first historical mention of “accounting” and accountability. A very clear example of business-to-business thinking, it dealt with the handling of receipts and established an agency relationship between the merchant and the agent. And it showcased the need for transparency in any official dealing with the government then.

Another law provided very early consumer protection. Hammurabi prescribed a clear-cut consequence for any builder of a house that collapses on the owner and kills him — “that the builder should be put to death”!

It is interesting to note that Wren’s study of the evolution of resource management revealed the same complex critical factors that challenge anyone today who has tried to convert resources into results.

The Chinese general Sun Tzu for instance, really was struggling with the principles of managing a 600BC army then. Sun Tzu wasn’t planning to write a book (for which he is now rightly remembered), get a consulting position in the service of the emperor or go on a speaking tour. He just wanted to get things done — simply, effectively, correctly and now.

These same challenges haunt the Najib government, and the national budget that was presented is but a communication tool to share its collective vision.

As many working managers and CEOs will tell you, “getting work done through others” is a difficult task. Anyone who has tried to manage knows that managing resources is never simple, is only sometimes effective, may or may not be done right the first time and can never happen fast enough.

Managing resources may not require one to have a degree, but it is complex. “Management thought and practices did not develop in a cultural vacuum … managers have always found their jobs affected by the existing culture,” Wren says.

Given the elements of any culture (economic variables, social norms, politics and so on), managers have always had to think first about current norms — and only then — move forward.

I reiterate: The targets in Budget 2017 — well thought-out as they are — are not something the government can score easily. They require many hands working collectively to achieve. It requires unity of our people and of effort. Our prevailing socio-politico-economic state must be addressed decisively. The disruptive misdeeds of a cadre of hate-mongers must be given a hard look too.

The continuing divisive nature of our political landscape is woeful and the hooliganism on recent display is shameful, if not downright uncivilised. These regrettable developments do not augur well for the efforts to achieve our many noble goals.

At the risk of sounding naïve, let me end with a wish — maybe, just maybe, we can get our political parties to call for a truce on matters relating to our welfare as citizens and work united and collectively for the benefit of our children and our children’s children. We are after all, Malaysians first and foremost.


Zakie Shariff is co-founder of hCap Associates, a talent search company

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