An interesting food of thought for our weekend family dinner with 3 of our grandchildren at Zam Ikan Bakar Restaurant in Cyberjaya when my wife, Zarina asked me to explain about ‘the entrepreneurial mind-set versus the employee mind-set’ that I had featured in newswav based on discussions between my Persatuan Aeroangkasa Myaerosatu with Executive Chairman of FPSO Ventures, Dato' Ahmad Fuad Md Ali, who is also an active Member of Policy Advisory Committee to YAB Prime Minister Dato' Seri Anwar Ibrahim. (https://newswav.com?A2506_t1k0fd?s=A_TUPPjA5&language+en)
I responded, “Focusing our work-life around contribution means paying great attention to what we can contribute to any given situation we care about. Meaning focusing on outcome versus focusing on output, and then relentlessly engaged in only the activities directly related to producing those outcomes in our lives. I could see that business is how things actually get done fast in the world, and how people make money in the world: they build stuff, things that consumers want. This is the pure entrepreneurial mind-set at work.”
I added, “Those in the employee mind-set, in turn, feel satisfied if they just work harder and harder and harder - in school & college, at a workplace, in a business - without paying much attention to whether all that efforts is directly producing any real specific outcomes.”
I remember my best management guru at the Asian Institute of Management (AIM), the late Professor Gaby Mendoza said, “Every child learns at a very early stage that when they're asked a question in school they must first ask themselves a question: What kind of answer does the asker expect? That's the way you get through school, by providing people with the answers they expect. Now, one thing about an answer that somebosy else expects is it can't be creative because it's already known. What we ought to be trying to do with children is get them to give us answers that we don't expect - to stimulate creativity and innovativeness. It should not just simply by sorting for what's needed versus sorting for what's requested.” (https://aim.edu.ph)
Zulkifly Baharom (hajizul50@gmail.com) is a content creator under the Newswav Creator programme, where you get to express yourself, be a citizen journalist, and at the same time monetize your content & reach millions of users on Newswav. Log in to creator.newswav.com and become a Newswav Creator now!
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