Editor’s Note: Of Leaders And Flux Capacitors

If you haven’t had a chance to play the Leaderonomics game Thinkonomics, do reach out to any Leaderonomer for a quick introduction to a happy little box, chockfull of questions that give you pause, questions which may reveal things about yourself you never knew.

This week’s issue is brought to you by the question:

“Time travel – if I could go back in time, what would I change?”

Based on a recent study, we take a look at leaders of a century ago, and how they have evolved over time to leaders operating in today’s environment – in order to predict the traits that leaders must be equipped with in the future. Gazing into the future, we can begin to make an informed decision on our personal development strategy.

At the national level, TalentCorp has taken steps to analyse and assess where we, as a nation, have come from with regards our talent pool and how we can prepare to achieve our vision of the future. Based on their findings, we have great insights into what we need to do as individuals to develop our people and indeed ourselves.

To achieve Vision 2020, TalentCorp has developed a strategy to meet Malaysia’s talent needs; to provide the support necessary for individuals and organisations to work together berganding bahu to reach our national aspirations.

Indeed, TalentCorp has collaborated with industry partners and government agencies to meet our talent challenges head-on. In this week’s issue, we see just the tip of the iceberg of the plethora of programmes and initiatives that have been developed and fine-tuned with various public and private partners locally and abroad.

Still an economist at heart, seeing the implementation and impact of effective measures that increase the productivity and efficiency of individuals, organisations and our economy at large keep me energised.

With all this time travel, Tara Thiagarajan also reminds us to focus on the here and now in her article just to the right of this one!

We would be remiss if we didn’t share an instalment of Movie Wisdom. From the Life of Pi, we learn about having a strategy, about being nimble (quite literally!) when circumstances change, about having courage and perseverance, and also about having hope.

All these valuable lessons (and more) can be applied to us in our daily lives, and in our pursuit of Vision 2020 and of being an advanced nation.

Have a fabulous week!

KAREN NEOH
Editor

Published in English daily The Star, Malaysia, 28 March 2015