Creative at heart

One thing I learned about our Group CEO Dato’ Zamzamzairani Isa from the teh tarik session this morning that he was just old-fashioned at heart. He believes in building good relationship with whoever you work with, focus on your job and not climbing on top of other people’s heads on the way up, “because that is just not the right thing to do.” I love the way he simply said it, “not the right thing to do.” There is no need for reasoning, because clearly it is not the right thing to do.

Most of what he mentioned during the session made me relate back to the writings of the greatest adman in UK in my opinion – Dave Trott. When Dato’ Zam talked about building good relationship with competitors even if they are competitors, I thought of the time Trott talked about predatory thinking and pictures of two UPS trucks in in one FedEx truck flashed into my mind. Or locally speaking, more like how Malaysian Airlines is competing with Air Asia on the low cost flights throne taking Air Asia’s fiery red corporate colors and designs and incorporating them into their ads. When Dato’ Zam mentioned about adapting to change, the only change is constant, he says, I quickly thought of the rock logic & water logic.

When Dato’ Zam mentioned that after all these years he was doing a lot of stuffs in his tenure, he is still an engineer at heart, I totally can relate of how all these years I spent doing this and that (which I shall not mention) but in the end, I am still a Creative at heart – looking at every thing as a whole, conceptual, jack of all trades but master of none. Perhaps that's why I suck at spreadsheets.

But Dato’ Zam says, it’s OK. “I am not complaining, I am happy just being pragmatic. We need that.” (in the end it still goes back to Dave Trott’s ideas anyway).

I’ll talk about the helipad visit some other time, but I can assure you, it was fun fun fun! (Photo thanks to Khalid the corporate event photographer)