A RETURN TO "RIGHT VALUES" URGED

       Thai business leaders joined a vice dean of the University of Pennsylvania's Wharton School to give their views on leadership in challenging times at a conference last week, hosted by the Siam Cement Group. The Nation's Pichaya Changsorn reports.

       The world that is waiting for us is new and strange. Things have changed too far and too fast for anyone to fully comprehend those changes.
       So says Thomas Colligan, vice dean of Wharton School's Aresty Institute of Executive Education.
       "We are currently preparing students for jobs that don't yet exist using technologies that haven't been invented in order to solve problems we don't even know are problems yet," he said.
       Speaking on the topic "Leadership in a Changing World" at a Thailand Top Leaders' Forum hosted by the Siam Cement Group last week, Colligan drew on advice recently delivered to Wharton students by Google CEO Eric Schmidt.
       Schmidt said that very soon all of the world's information would be translated into all of the world's languages, so we will be able to find out what everybody really thinks. Moreover, we will be able to develop new insights into what other people care about, and they will be able to do the same with us.
       According to Colligan, Schmidt said that within 10 years, people would be able to have the equivalent of an iPod in their purse or on their belt holding 85 years of video.
       "This means that if it's given to you at birth, you're going to be frustrated all the time, because you'll never be done watching all the videos. That's how profound this technological revolution is."
       Still, in a world where everything is remembered and everything is kept forever, Schmidt told the Wharton students they should live for the future and the things they really cared about.
       "And in order to know that," Colligan said, continuing Schmidt's advice, "even the chief executive of Google said: 'You're going to have to turn off your computer. You're actually going to have to turn off your phone and discover all that is human around you'."
       To navigate change in this challenging period, the Wharton vice dean suggested business leaders get down to basics and attain the right values and right attitudes, such as keeping one's word, transparency, basic honesty and the courage to do the right thing.
       Leaders must seek points of view horizontally and vertically within their organisations and from outsiders, including customers, vendors and competitors, to help them make better decisions.
       "Don't forget that Tiger Woods has three coaches," he said.
       Human-resources professionals have a duty to provide the right leaders, with the right skills, at the right time, holding the right values and attitudes, and working much faster than before, he said. And in a changing world, executives should have "peripheral vision", with expertise in negotiation, persuasion and winning others over.
       Speaking at the same forum, Siam Cement Group (SCG) president and CEO Kan Trakulhoon said agility, or an ability to move rapidly and effectively, was a major challenge for leaders in current times because the strength of an organisation no longer guaranteed its survival.
       SCG is sticking to its four core business values - fairness, dedication to excellence, a belief in the value of the individual, and concern for social responsibility - even though it is embracing a more open and challenging culture in an effort to become an innovative organisation, he said.
       Kan urged Thai business leaders to prepare for "Asia rising" and adjust their pay scales in bid to tap talent from Western nations that would soon be moving to the region.
       Toyota Motor Thailand chairman Pramon Suthivong said his company had succeeded in its cost-reduction initiatives, introduced after the emergence of the global economic crisis late last year, mainly because of its ability to communicate and engage participation of staff at all levels.
       Last November, the company initiated a "Challenge the Change" campaign, encouraging staff to join forces in cutting costs. Among its first directions was that every department and unit explore redundant jobs, dissolve those functions and either move staff to newly established units that did jobs of more benefit and value or send them for retraining, he said.
       "SCG has succeeded because it has blended the good elements of the Western, Thai and Japanese cultures," Pramon said.
       Siam Commercial Bank's president Kannikar Chalitaporn said a "Change Programme" introduced by SCB eight years ago had made its staff familiar with change, so they were able to adjust well.
       Unlike SCG, which had a policy of "promoting and developing from within", Kannikar said it was sometimes necessary for SCB to take in veterans with "hands-on" experience in particular areas into which the bank was moving, rather than training novices from inside the bank.
       "Before hiring, we tell them straight: 'We're hiring you because you have something new the bank does not have. You must deliver on that point. If you don't, you're not worth the wage, and we would rather hire existing staff'," she said.
       Federation of Thai Industries chairman Santi Vilassakdanont, who is also a senior executive of the Saha Group, said people were a very important factor. The Saha Group has grown because its people trust one another.