By ANG HUI MING
A number of years ago, we started noticing a startling fact – the majority of new businesses set up, would fail within three years. Of the few that succeeded, less than 1% continued growing and scaling and ended up becoming large organisations.
As we explored this phenomenon further, we realised that many businesses grow for a while and then hit a plateau; at this juncture, they are not able to scale or grow further.
Malaysian leaders who made it
At the same time, we came across businesses such as EcoWorld, who managed to grow from a small venture four years ago, into an RM8bil business today. A huge, phenomenal growth.
We also met CEOs like Digi’s Albern Murty, who has been with Digi for many years watching it grow from a small telco, into one of the biggest and best telecommunications company in the country.
We observed how Vishen Lakhiani grew MindValley into one of the most respected and recognised tech companies in the world. And, as we heard from these leaders, we realised that what the companies and leaders did was not magical.
They just did things differently. We realised that every leader should learn how these organisations addressed business model issues, leadership issues, process and structural challenges and also built a special culture that defined their organisations. There were no magical formulas; merely simple business fundamentals executed well.
Let’s gather all the great minds!
So, as we interacted with many SME CEOs and shared with them these insights, we knew we had to have a gathering of great minds to share this with every CEO aspiring to grow and scale their organisation.
Hence, the kick-off of this special SME CEO Conference 2017. In partnership with MDEC, Alliance Bank, Microsoft and the Human Resources Development Fund (HRDF), we got together leaders who have succeeded in their quest for greatness, and brought them together to share with 500 CEOs, the challenges and struggles that they have gone through and how they overcame them.
Partnering with SME advocates
Our partners too, were carefully chosen as each of them are contributing greatly to the SME space. MDEC is supporting more than 3,000 tech SMEs and have high-value programmes such as Leadership Dojo, helping SMEs grow and scale.
Alliance Bank has won numerous awards as the Best Bank for SMEs numerous years running and their Alliance BizSmart competition is a much-anticipated one among SMEs and start-ups.
Microsoft has developed numerous collaborative tools for SMEs including Microsoft Teams and their Office 365 products to help scale and grow SMEs, while HRDF continues to support SMEs with numerous upskilling and multi-skilling programmes as well as funding opportunities.
In fact, for this conference, HRDF will be sponsoring 10 lucky SMEs attending the conference with a full one-year digital learning management system that offers more than 100 learning courses and programmes.
Learning organisations will constantly grow and scale. Organisations that do not learn will never be adaptable to changes in this VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex and ambiguous) world. So, HRDF continues to play a significant role in driving the learning agenda amongst SMEs.
See you there!
We really look forward to this conference and if you are a CEO, business owner, director or leader of an organisation, we hope to see you there.
The entire conference is HRDF claimable so do sign up and learn from the great leaders who have succeeded and grab this great opportunity to network and meet 500 other leaders like you.
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