Have a Meaningful Chinese New Year - Wednesday in The Star

Have a Meaningful Chinese New Year

Make Malaysia GREAT:

Let’s act with text and spirit*

In our last advertisement, we suggested that to be happy, we must make the Goal our goal. Be it the nation’s goal, the company’s, the superior’s or the family’s – make them our own. To take this approach to a higher level, we must learn to take action with text and spirit.

   

1. What is text and spirit?

Text is the technical part of our action. It is the task or job at hand – like writing a report, answering a call, giving a lecture, and feeding a child. At the office, it is usually detailed in a job description or Standard Operating Procedure. Spirit is the soul of the task - the part that add life and attractiveness to our action such as writing a report that begs us to read, answering a call with enthusiasm, giving a lecture with passion, and feeding a child with love. Text provides logic and reason – the Basics. Spirit provides passion and meaning – the Beauty.

2. Which is more important text or spirit?

Both are! When we act with text, we only use our head. With spirit, the heart gets involved. With only text, we give the minimum. Add spirit, we strive for the best. Together text and spirit multiplies our potentials, effectiveness, and productivity. Text may get the job done, but spirit makes you happy doing it. A group of people acting in tandem with text move like machines. A group of people acting with text and spirit is a united force moving forward that can move mountains.

3. Why we must pay more attention to spirit?

Because it is hard to codify the spirit. When you start a new job, the organization will give you a job description. By itself, it is a dead document. You will need to breathe in your spirit to make the document meaningful and create productive actions. It is the same with a marriage certificate, business contracts, our constitution, the lyrics to our national anthem, and our Cita-cita Rukunegara. They are all waiting for us to breathe in our spirit to make them meaningful and make a difference.

At zubedy, our programs and activities draw strength from our shared values and traditions. We believe that at heart, all Malaysians want good things for themselves and for their brother and sister Malaysians, simply because our nation cannot prosper as a whole if some of us are left behind.

You and I, we need to act with both text and spirit and to Make Malaysia Great!

Let us add value,

Have a meaningful Chinese New Year.

*The idea presented in this message is part of our Making A Difference through P3 program’s core concept.

Benny Loh Kee Seng (1947 - 2017) was a friend, a mentor, and a National Sales Manager of a multinational company. He was a living example of a leader who led with both text and spirit. During his leadership, the team worked hard, played hard and always delivered results over and above targets.