 Selamat pagi, saya Mohamad Sabri Mohamad Rawi, dan selamat datang ke bilik perkembangan. Bersama saya, Iklif Leadership and Governance Centre. Hari ini, kita mempunyai Md dan sebuah CEO dari Aziatah Group Berhat. Sebelum ini, dia sebuah CEO dari Maxis Communications dan Md Digital Equipment di Jalan Berhat juga. Dia seorang member of National Innovation Council dibuat oleh Prime Minister Malaysia dan juga sekarang, dia seorang member of INSEAT East Asia Council. Ladies and gentlemen, it is my pleasure to welcome you, Datuk Jamaluddin Ibrahim. Datuk, welcome. Thank you for coming and thank you for agreeing to spend some time with us this morning. My first question for you today, Datuk, is when you were first appointed as Md and President of Aziatah, skeptics were doubtful whether you would make a difference. But in less than three years, you have transformed Aziatah into a darling of the stock market and the analyst at large. Similarly, when you left Maxis, you left it at its zenith. How did you consecutively transform two companies into highly successful organizations, Datuk? Please share with us your secret. Frankly, there's no magic. In fact, that's the word I want to use. There's no real magic at all. There's no secrets at all. It's all about getting the right strategy and be coherent about it and getting the right people. Again, as you've seen, every book, everyone talks about the same thing. But let me perhaps elaborate a bit. When you talk about strategy in Maxis and be coherent about it, let me illustrate. In Maxis, for example, Dan, we wanted to build a premium brand. Right from the start, it's a core of the whole strategy. So what does it mean? It means getting the right people, paid them competitively, maybe way above others perhaps. The brand itself, you invest a lot in a brand. So a lot of people say you want to build a big brand but don't want to invest in a brand. So you invest a lot in a brand. Even our advertisements, we don't have silly people looking so silly and really degrade the brand. You've seen so many ads that it's okay for some ads as some products because that's the kind of nature that they want, that kind of brand proposition. But if you want to have a premium brand, you don't have silly people who look funny but look so stupid. They will degrade the brand. So little things like that are very important. And similarly, when we build customer center, we hire the best people and make sure we have the best customer service, physically the best customer center, the best service, and so on and so forth. And even when it outsource, you're extremely careful. People like the word outsource for the wrong reason. If you want the outsource to reduce cost, it's fine. But if you are a premium brand, you don't necessarily want to reduce cost per se because at expense of customer service. So all these things must jive, must be coherent. And in the case of Zeta, one of the key strategies we have is the first major decision we made was to grow organically instead of inorganically. I think I inherited a pretty good set of footprint. I think DM has done an excellent job to build a footprint. So my job, then I look at the operation and say, the best thing now is not to expand aggressively but to nurture what I already have. No point in expanding when you don't have the best organization. The best performers in all the respective markets. So what we did was to again to be coherent if you want to do that to make them perform and get the best team. So we made a major revamp within less than 2 years 50% of top management team across all groups were kind of changed or basically changed, right? We have a new set of management team and some were, not because they were not good but they were sent to some of the places where they can fit in and very better for the company for them. So and then we pay competitively, despite being GRC we managed to attract and pay people very competitively. I mean, you have a good set of people you empower them and so on and so forth. I hope you see what I mean that this is having the right strategies one thing but being coherent about it is even more important and again the second part is giving the right people in the first place, right? Getting the right management team motivated employees so if you can see it applies in all cases and just a matter of being the execution and being coherent about it. Yes. Dr, when you first appointed I remember you describing it as a call for national service one more time and express your reluctance actually to assume this position stating that you rather spend time with your family and do other things that also have a great interest to you. So how will you put aside that emotion now and finally get to focus the job at hand and do a very fantastic job at the end of the day as well? Well thank you. You know I've sacrificed a lot of my personal time family time during my days in Maxis even before Maxis so when I wanted to live in Maxis enough is enough I wanted to have a break and at the same time perhaps then we were looking at something new and different and maybe not too time consuming affecting both my personal and family life that was the idea but of course what made me change my mind was the fact that it was a national service and there was dangling from me but I do this for country okay okay and also because one thing I really wanted to do is develop talent people talent and I think that I could contribute to the nation in a different way to develop talent and I was told that I could use Azeta then at TMI as a platform to develop people not just in Malaysia but across the countries that we operate so I thought wow okay that's maybe a good platform and of course then the first prerequisite was to get my wife's permission so to speak we all do but in this case especially so because I told my wife Aina I want to and I think and I make it very clear if she didn't agree I wouldn't have accepted the job now to pass further that that itself help me to kind of get away from that emotion of doing something else right having said that you know when we created this vision I got excited with the vision and I could imagine just days before I joined what we could do with this company and I think the our chairman who's also the our shareholder times 3 hours man gave me one single one two words of mandate make this company a regional champion and I thought about it I said wow maybe we could do that maybe we could turn a GLC to regional champion a local company to regional champion I guess that got me excited and when I think and think about it you know before you know it all I was here and build the company again okay how many kids do you have by the way? I have six six from very small to pretty well 30 years old already 30 plus years old it is hard to get yourself away from your family maybe at that the stage of development and growth I suppose very hard yes and you travel a lot because of your job you probably have traveled thousands of air miles overseeing different companies as you turn now it's like in six or seven or eight countries now on the subject the personal energy how do you keep your energy levels high? we are in nine countries and it has been quite challenging traveling quite a lot not just to these countries but for you for you to stay on top I have to travel to other places too to Europe to US and we have to do a lot of travelling because of investor relations I do a lot of that and made all investors cross the world again mostly in Europe this part of the world and also in US and I'm also a board member of JSM worldwide so we have our board meetings also elsewhere outside this region so back to the question it is very challenging if it's one thing I don't like my job it's travelling frankly and I've been very clear I don't like to travel I try to when I travel I reach certain place I try to get whatever meetings I have to do and come back so in a way that allows me to to minimise the time away but having said that I still spend almost 50% of my time outside Malaysia a lot of time so what I'll do all the time is that to minimise whatever I could and just to avoid travelling during weekends how do you keep your personal energy level high do you have a special regime that you go through every morning or share with us actually well first I have to keep fit so I do spend some time keeping fit I do go to the gym running or jogging or running once in a while perhaps about 2-3 times a week not enough for sure only because I'm travelling because I'm not very disciplined when I travel but bottom line is I do keep reasonably fit that's very important the other is all about when people say about vision internalising the vision I guess I've internalised to the extent that I said I want to achieve that vision for the company for the country so that that certainly energise me you know sometimes we are down say okay you're so tired when I think about it gosh but I want to make this company great company and that keeps my adrenaline going again I think that sounds fantastic because in Eclipse we also believe that there's only so much that physical energy can do for you you know after that you need to tap into other sources of energy and usually it is the emotional is a spiritual energy that that's right yes that's fantastic stuff coming from you well on the subject on the topic of diversity you're in 9 countries now how do you go about managing various teams in these organisations in these different regions it's not easy when I manage Maxis and prior to that in other companies predominantly one country and you have you have the pals you can feel the pals because you are there physically most of the time and here we have 9 countries it's almost impossible to get the same kind of pals so again to be therefore it's again no secret about that just the concept that we build is we build a framework and that framework is about agreeing on the overall strategy of the company each of the all the operating companies agree on couple of HR principle and philosophies because it's extremely important to us how do you manage people how do you pay people how do you measure and get them motivated and some financial discipline and principle so this is how we manage how finance how do you measure returns and so on and so forth and governance so those are the 4 principles within the framework that we develop and then we have a mechanism to what we call performance management processes and system so how do you manage the performance and empower them and that's how more or less how we do things and I think it comes with the overall concept of situational leadership I'm sure you're very familiar and this is actual situational leadership at its best because you empower them you have the overall framework but there are times when you have to back off even more because they are doing extremely well there are times when you have to come in and micromanage to some extent because they are not doing as well or there are a couple of issues to be resolved so it does vary but bottom line is empowerment I think it's fantastic because your subscriber base is now in excess of 200 million is that correct about 220 million 220 million, wow as a Malaysian I have to say I feel very good about this I feel very proud about what we have done so far with Aziat but coming back to the issue about spirituality and emotional energy and things like that would you say that spirituality plays a big role in the journey as a leader does it position you does it provide you with the right balance and center as a leader absolutely it has to be right because there's a physical world there's everything material world and all that but you need the spiritual world or spiritual feeling to guide your conscience to drive you at the same time and it's not just about conscience but to drive you give you the energy that we talk about but I must profess I'm far from being religious if that was your man I'm still working on it but but coming from a spiritual as a driver that's certainly very true Friends are important to you as to our humanity of us all and I heard that you do keep in touch with many of your friends still it was said that you would go the extra miles for your friends in a world where many leaders have no close friends would you cite friendship as an essential component of leadership as well if you look at the broader concept of leadership it's about influencing people it's about building relationship with your peers with your subordinates with everybody you work with and also people externally and being always in touch in touch with the ground so to speak so if you think about it therefore friendship allows you to do that firstly it gives a good practice you can't tell your friends what to do can you influence them what to do friends give you feedback sometimes your peers or your subordinates won't give you and friends also allow you to keep in touch so to speak what's happening on the ground I have friends frankly it's from high ranking people to men on the street and I love it because especially the people who are men on the street ordinary people and I feel very ordinary just like anybody else it feels good and I guess at the end of the day it's also friends allow you to kind of an outlet for you after a hard day's work the last thing you want to do is to talk about job about work so it gives you that outlet so to speak so it's not so lonely at the top after all it's quite lonely sometimes but you can't share everything if you want to do something you can't even share with any especially when you involve people you want to replace people you want to move people there's a very few people you can talk to to do that finally my last question to you today some may say that you have a charm life I do too I agree with that a lovely wife six children a few grandchildren to talk it out great friends and you are very successful and well known proper personality that's what you are how do you manage it all is it possible to have it all because I have been told it's not but apparently I was wrong so share as your secret first I'm lucky to have a good family very lucky I don't think it's possible to have them all you can't expect that I think that's the first mindset because trying to have it all in every sense of the word extremely difficult so if you trying to work 12 hours 15 hours per day and trying to have them all almost impossible but having said that it's possible within the constraint of whatever time I have is to optimize quote-unquote whatever you have whatever I have so I make sure that for example I travel a lot as I mentioned earlier and I work 12 more than 12 hours easily to sometimes 15 hours per day but during weekends the opposite I try to minimise if not try to not have lot of work or even zero work at all so I try to avoid travel sometimes I can't avoid for sure but in many cases I try to avoid meetings if I really have to do it it's like Saturday morning and that's it if I really have to do it but most of the time I don't have meetings during weekend a bit of work I try to do it maybe Sunday evening but I try to make sure the weekends are quite free and I have to sacrifice too because I used to play a lot of golf every week I now don't play golf every week anymore I only play golf when I travel with friends of course but I play golf more for the enjoyment of the company rather than golf itself so I don't play much golf and there are certain things that I have to do to adjust and also to balance it a bit perhaps I make sure that there are important events family events or my kids events their sports day I will try to be there almost all the time maybe not all the time school results I try to be there many times but maybe not all again but those are the kind of adjustments that I have to make to balance a bit not a perfect balance but I would say a reasonable balance between work and life not so easy that's fantastic if there is anything you would do differently in your life so far the one thing is there such a thing what would that be if there is sometimes I do think about it what would have been different no I can't even think of what would it be I'm contented with my job my anyway my life and nothing more more I could ask for Thank you Dr. for your time Thank you Thank you I'm honored to be here too Thank you very much Thank you