Vision: Turning Dream into Reality

Second day of the Strategic Thinking, Planning and Implementation Module involved even greater participation from the participants. Today, we were asked to categorize all the visions that we created the day before into several lists. Here are the vision categories that we had come up with for the company.

1. State of the Art Technology
2. Conducive Hi-Tech Working Environment
3. Trusted and Reliable Supply Quality
4. From Local to Global
5. Professional and Enhanced Working Environment
6. Customer Service Excellence
7. Gold Mine

The class was also asked to conduct the SWOT analysis briefly but I think what Tuan Syed really wanted us to learn was not detailing the SWOT but rather listing up the contraditories to achieve our visions.

VISION-->CONTRADICTION-->STRATEGY-->ACTION PLAN

We managed to list many contradictories to achieve the vision but not before we were asked to analyse the Cash Register Problem.

The Cash Register problem is just to prove that if one is to decide on his own, he or she tends to make more mistakes as compared to a collective decision. I thought this kind of a case study is very interesting indeed as it proves that a person is best to work in a group and achieve more in this manner. From the contradictory list, we were again asked to classify them into several categories. From the list, there are things that we believe easiest to resolve albeit there are also things beyond our control, e.g. External factors vis-a-vis political interference.


During lunch time I sat next to Tuan Syed in the dining room. To my surprise, he is actually the brother of a friend of mine whom the last time I talked to was in 1988 during the company's Out-Bound School programme. What a small world !..just curious, Tuan Syed if you are reading this, is Tuan Syed Osman Al-Habshi your brother ?