The Edge Malaysia, August 15, 2005

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The Edge Malaysia

August 15, 2005

HEADLINE: My Bit: The coalition for a Change Agenda

BYLINE: Rais Hussin

BODY:
"What God writes on your forehead
you will become" - The Quran
I have used this column over the past few months to make a case for Malaysia as a hub for this region's flow of people, data packets and voice minutes.
The location is such a natural that it's almost as if God decreed it.
He may, however, have to wait a while for us to come to grips with the concept. We appear to have everything in place - the infrastructure, location, and lifestyle, everything except access to the end-user. So, domestically, almost 99% of the population has access to little more than basic voice while overseas users continue to prefer Singapore and Hong Kong as hubs for no other reason than our self-imposed limitations.
Attempting to correct our course not for the first time and two decades too late, one can see Malaysia Inc running out of ideas. We tinker fitfully knowing fully well that, after decades of lost time, tinkering may not suffice. The world did a number on us while we slept and a telecommunication network is now no longer essential to access customers. That's both good and bad news. Good news for aggressive suppliers of telecom services who can now use third party broadband to bring dial tone, TV and games to the broadband enabled end-user. Bad news for the typical Asian licensed provider of broadband access who must wait until hell freezes over before offering anything other than simple Internet access over broadband.
Until now, owning a network meant competitive advantage and a serious barrier to entry for the new comer. This competitive edge is fast eroding both for fixed line and mobile services. Malaysia should steel itself for an onslaught by foreign suppliers of dial tone and entertainment who shall soon use Malaysian infrastructure to steal Malaysian customers.
We'd best wake up to the need for an overhaul before our broadband backbone infrastructure is rendered more useless. Merging Time with Jaring, for example, is not going to stop American SIP (Session Initiation Protocol)-based services like Lingo and Vonage from offering Time and Jaring's customers with telephone services over Time and Jaring's broadband infrastructure once they zero in on the Malaysian market. Like I said, we'd better wake up to the need for an overhaul instead of tinkering with the light bulb while a tempest blows outside.
Any talk of overhaul, though, raises hackles across Malaysia Inc. Its mere mention is reason enough for personal attacks to start. The best way to kill a new idea or an agenda for change is to attack the proposer. Knowing this, intelligent people have learnt to hunker down and avoid suggesting radical solutions. Malaysia, of course, is the real loser from such timorous behaviour.
Lobbying across Malaysia Inc with my agenda for change, I haven't come across a single person who does not wish Malaysia well. Not a single Malaysian who would rather see business go to Singapore. While each has his own idea on what the goal is and how to approach it, a common desire is to see Malaysian success thread across individuals. Good ideas, then, are not killed by some evil mafia out to get us, but by people like you and I who wish Malaysia all the best even as we subvert good ideas should they militate against our own agendas. It's called being human.
Professor Samuel Bacharach of Cornell University's Institute of Workplace Studies advises that if you have a Change Agenda, list the people who can support or kill the proposed change. Then work diligently to align yourself with like-minded people, co-opt the ones who can swing over to your side and quit beating your head against the obstacles raised by the diehards whose agendas can never allow them to agree with you.
According to the good professor, different perspectives fall into two broad categories: those with different goals (tinkering and overhauling), and those with different implementation approaches (planning and improvising).
While most managers, according to him, will for any number of reasons have their agendas based on either tinkering or overhauling as a goal, they would also, by virtue of their nature, be more comfortable either with a planned or ad hoc approach towards these goals.
When we consider "Goals" and "Approaches" together, we find that people have one of four possible agendas when it comes to a change proposition (Diagram 1).
. Traditionalist Agenda - wanting to keep things the same as much as possible.
. Adjuster Agenda - people who are open to incremental changes.
. Developer Agenda - people who are open to large-scale change but only if they can be pursued in a very measured way.
. Revolutionary Agenda - which suggests that large-scale change has to happen and that the initiative has to happen now before opportunities are lost.
In the context of the Malaysian hub, this gives hope to people who have solutions to get us out of our funk. If Bacharach is right, then there is no great battle to be had between people who advocate such change and those who would resist. The conflict would only be over the Change Agenda and success would be determined by the agenda owner's ability to create a coalition by winning over as many decision-makers and those who influence them, who are not in the same box as the Change Agenda.
But before we decide who is in which box, let's see where our Change Agenda fits. Very simply put, the proposed change stems from two ground realities. One, that in spite of ploughing fibre optic cable across the length and breadth of the land, it fails to connect to the domestic end-user in any measurable quantity. Two, that in spite of being geographic dead-centre to regional traffic flows and in spite of an envious quality of life, Malaysia has failed to obtain a location advantage over Singapore or Hong Kong.
The Change Agenda suggests we touch both bases with one stroke. That we re-calibrate our thinking within Malaysia Inc to usurp the region between India and Australia as our addressable domain for travel and communication services. That Malaysia becomes a cost-effective pit stop for airlines and an enticing transit hub for its passengers. That it becomes cheaper to route a telephone call from Myanmar to Indonesia via Malaysia than to connect directly. That Malaysian-based Voice over Broadband and Internet TV services provide broadband-enabled homes in India, Australia, Indonesia and the Philippines with cheaper dial tone and more fun entertainment than they can ever hope to get from their local providers. The Change Agenda goes on to claim that by doing so, we create economies of scale as well as a buzz that engenders domestic interest for broadband, thus creating a pull effect that can never ever be achieved by just offering Internet access over broadband.
So, where does this agenda fit? It is definitely radical in its approach and some may say dangerously so. It does call for a complete overhaul instead of a tune-up. The agenda, however, is well thought-out and based on ample precedence from outside our shores. It is not pioneering anything here except the need for a different mindset in Malaysia Inc's managers who need to:
. Stop worrying about compromising Telekom Malaysia's market cap;
. Attract cable landings and use backbone to transit overseas traffic;
. Attract data business from the region;
. Set up wholesale commodity voice business on a large scale;
. Offer dial tone and TV content to the region over broadband access;
. Enable domestic push in broadband penetration by encouraging community wireless broadband services; and
. Create domestic pull for broadband penetration through economies of scale and sophistication of offering achieved from regional play.
The change required in our mindset is so radical that precedence notwithstanding, this is a truly revolutionary agenda. If I am to follow the path charted by Bacharach, we need to now understand Malaysia Inc's decision-makers and those who influence them and hence, their perspective. This way, we uncover ways to bring on more allies to support this Change Agenda and reduce the impact of terminal sceptics among these stakeholders.
Peering into Malaysia Inc's innards to identify the stakeholders, one sees the whole gamut, from tradionalists to closet revolutionaries waiting to co-opt radical change to the way we do business. The traditionalists, however, win hands down. All good people, they are naturally suspicious of any change, let alone the revolutionary agenda proposed in these columns.
And so the game is afoot. The owners of the Change Agenda are scouring Malaysia Inc to create a coalition. The stakeholders within Malaysia Inc, who prefer tinkering, oppose this agenda and instead genuinely feel that we'll be better off combining all our backbone assets into one manageable entity and then take it from there.
And while this internal drama is played out, forces outside our borders are imposing changes on the telecommunications industry that render our borders, our regulatory and licensing regime, our fixed line and mobile networks as well as whatever broadband access we have, useless against these predators. May the best man win.

Rais Hussin is CEO of Nexcom, a VoIP player ranked fifth in revenue in Malaysia by IDC