10 Leadership Mistakes That Burn Out Your Team

 

Reference:

Jen Blandos’ post on Linkedin

Can We Do With More Efficient Meetings?

 

Walk into any government department and ask to see an officer. The standard reply is almost predictable: “He’s at a meeting.” Are work done through meetings? 

Anyway, meetings are supposed to solve problems, make decisions, and move organisations forward. But Malaysian civil service (or even private sector), meetings have become rituals held for their own sake. They are long, unfocused, repetitive, and often end with no decision made. Everyone walks out with the same unresolved issues they walked in with.

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org

 Why Are Our Meetings So Unproductive? 

1. Attendees come unprepared or half-prepared

Working papers are circulated, yet many participants arrive without reading them. Some flip through the documents only when the meeting begins. How can serious, in-depth decisions be made when the very people responsible for making them have not done the basic homework? 

2. The people in the room lack authority.

This is perhaps the biggest flaw. Too often, officers are sent as substitutes at the last minute — with no mandate to speak, decide, or commit. They are merely note takers. When decisions cannot be made, everything gets postponed to the next meeting… and then the next. 

3. Even the Chair is sometimes not ready.

A meeting cannot be productive when the person leading it has not previewed the working papers, has no clear agenda, or allows the discussion to wander. When the Chair is ineffective, the meeting becomes a talking shop (or a makan shop) instead of a decision-making platform. 

In my previous place of work, some members of the highest Credit Committee in the bank came to the meeting without reading the credit papers.  How do you know? By the way they flip the pages and the questions they ask. 

4. Newly formed “high-level committees” lose steam quickly.

At the first meeting, the big names show up. At the second, a few still attend. By the third, they send junior officers with no clout. The quality of discussion drops instantly, and the urgency that triggered the formation of the committee evaporates. 

5. Pre-council meetings

There is a tendency for the government officers to meet prior to any private sector party is invited into a meeting room. These pre-meetings are held on the same day and usually takes an hour or more before a proper meeting starts. This is highly inefficient. Private sector invitees are held-up for that one hour or more. Worse is when after the pre-meeting, the chairman decides to postpone the meeting because a key officer from a Ministry is unable to attend. He or she has another, more urgent meeting to attend. “Minta maaf” is not the answer. Somebody must pay! 

Today, few are held accountable for poor-quality proposals, sloppy preparation, or empty participation. And because promotions are rarely linked to effective performance at these committees, officers feel little pressure to contribute meaningfully. 

If Malaysia wants a more efficient government and private sector, we must rethink our meeting culture. Trim the number of committees. Reduce unnecessary meetings. Ensure attendees are prepared and are decision-makers. And hold meetings within a allocated time of say, one hour. 

The public deserves better than a system bogged down by endless, unproductive discussions. We must create a culture where meetings are not places to delay decisions, but platforms to make them. It’s time we raise the bar. 

Reference:

Streamlining Meetings: A Call for Real Change in the Way We Work, Pola Singh, https://newswav.com, 28 November 2025

7 Stages Before the Collapse of an Empire!

 

The United States has been a world empire for much of the last century (20^th century). But every empire has eventually collapsed. The question remains: If an empire collapses, how do you avoid the fallout? And even more importantly, how could you benefit? 

1. Hard Money   

Empires typically begin on the right foot by establishing a hard-money system based on reserve assets like gold and silver. Creating a currency that’s backed by hard money, such as the gold standard, is a step toward building an empire. The U.S. economy went on the gold standard in the 1870s, but it was short lived. The gold standard is one in which there is an equivalent amount of gold reserves stored in the Treasury to match the money supply. It wasn’t long before the U.S. began printing more banknotes than there was gold to back it up. 

After more than a century with sound money, the country began inching away from that model. In 1913, it was a 40% ratio reserve, devaluing the currency by over 50%. Things went from bad to worse. The U.S. went completely off the gold standard in 1971 under President Nixon. 

 

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

2. Military Spending 

During World War II, the U.S. economy was fuelled by the sale of military and defence equipment like tanks and machine guns. Gold was used to pay for products imported from the United States, thereby bolstering the gold reserves of the country, giving the U.S. an advantage over the rest of the world.  

While it might appear that war strengthens the economy, that’s a misnomer. It’s only the case if you’re not the country doing the fighting but instead cashing in by selling guns. The Bretton Woods agreement of 1944 changed the dynamic between the dollar and the leading precious metal. World leaders agreed to eradicate the gold standard and crown the dollar as the global reserve currency. Other currencies were then backed by the U.S. dollar, the latter of which was only partially backed by gold, a recipe for disaster.  

3. War Effect  

By the time WWII was over, the U.S. economy had become intertwined with conflict. 

The Korean War, Cold War and Vietnam War followed and the cost of war shot up substantially, whether due to strengthening the nation’s defence or fighting wars overseas (and maintaining 750 military bases). The only way for the U.S. to keep this going was to pay (close to USD1 trillion) for it through currency inflation, or deficit spending, and the cracks begin to show. It wasn’t long before the Bretton Woods system was crumbling as the U.S. struggled to live up to its end of the trade bargain to provide gold for what had become an inflated dollar.  

4. Inflation and the Demise of Purchasing Power  

The dollar was detached from gold and the store of value it represented. It has been downhill ever since, with the dollar shaving off more than three-quarters of its purchasing power since then.  

5. Crisis of Confidence 

Consumers are losing confidence in the staying power of the dollar. Worse, the U.S. debt clock has reached over $30 trillion (and rising), which, in turn, has made other countries uncomfortable about the dollars they hold. Meanwhile, China is doing its best to displace the dollar as the go-to currency for oil trade. However, what could be more likely on the horizon is a gold-backed oil trading. As soon as people start losing faith in their currency, like the dollar, the dominos begin to fall.  

6. Store of Value Assets Endure  

In this second last of the seven stages before the collapse of an empire, fiat currency will fail if it’s not controlled printing! Economies may have no choice but to reclaim a fixed standard so that the currency has some basis for its value. The obvious choice is the gold standard, but it could also be something else, like a digital store of value like bitcoin. The only way for investors to avoid getting left holding the bag is to own hard money – gold, silver or bitcoin. 

7. Governance

In the last phase, governance becomes an issue. The Roman empire was on a downward spiral till Marcus Aurelius tried to stem the tide. Bu after him, the fall was dramatic. So it was for the British empire. Values and proper governance were lacking and India and other nations were “robbed” of their resources. India alone lost USD45 trillion. The U.S. now in a flip-flop era with Trump. What is black is now white and what is right is now wrong. The spiral downward will only accelerate – it is not MAGA but MAPA (make America poor again!) that will reign. 

Reference:

7 Stages BEFORE the Collapse of an Empire, Gerelyn, https://www.thecoinzone.com, 17 December 2024

10 Basic Carbon Terms You Need to Know

 

Reference:

10 basic carbon terms you should know, Raja Shazrin Shah Raja Ehsan Shah’s Post, Linkedin

 

The Story of the Homeless Man!

 

When Safiudeen Pakkeer Mohamed boarded a plane from Tamil Nadu to Malaysia in 2024 to seek a living, he thought it would be the start of a better life. He did not imagine he would make the news by being humiliated for sleeping outside a bank in Kuala Lumpur. All he had sought was a life that would enable him to feed his wife and two sons, aged 11 and eight, and lift his family out of poverty. Instead, the 39-year-old ended up sleeping on the five-foot-way, going hungry, and finally being humiliated in front of a bank, by being kicked and splashed with water.

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

A video clip on the incident brought good samaritan Tony Lian to his rescue, and Safiudeen was taken to a shelter run by Lian. Safiudeen said he arrived in Malaysia in March 2024 to take up a job with a restaurant in Sri Gombak, Kuala Lumpur, where he earned a modest wage as a cook. But his employer withheld his passport and his wages, sometimes for months. He wanted to quit but they would not let him go. They said they still wanted him. Unable to take it any more, he stopped going to work six months ago. 

After he stopped going to work, he had nowhere to go and was forced to seek shelter from friends, until they eventually closed their doors to him, leaving him with a cold, hard alternative – to sleep on the five-foot-way. Fast forward a few months, Safiudeen came across a restaurant, near an AmBank branch in Taman Maluri, Cheras, whose employees were kind enough to feed him. For the next couple of days, he decided to sleep outside the bank, until he was splashed with water and kicked – an incident which was caught on camera. 

There are foreigners, there are locals who are homeless, it does not matter. We need to be compassionate to understand their story. But the bank has no time for this. 

No problem. Just contribute to a Fund for the Homeless administered or initiated by Bank Negara Malaysia (“BNM”). Why BNM? Then it will be administered with an outsourced professional team and all banks will contribute RM10m or more to the Fund as CSR. The Fund will rent buildings (including former hotels) for housing homeless people in urban areas for a period until they are on their feet again. Isn’t that Madani? 

Reference:

Living the nightmare: homeless man outside bank tells his story, Minderjeet Kaur, FMT, 29 November 2025

EVs Depreciate Faster?

Plummeting resale values are threatening to derail the world’s transition to electric transportation.

 

·             Ride-hailing, rental, and corporate electric fleets are quickly losing value.

·             EVs depreciate significantly faster than gas-powered cars, especially older vehicles purchased by early adopters.

·             New battery data and leasing models could finally stabilize the bleeding market. 

The crisis became especially apparent when BluSmart, India’s pioneering all-electric ride-hailing service, collapsed in April amid financial fraud allegations. The Delhi-based company’s fleet of thousands of cars, originally worth over $12,000 each, suddenly flooded the market at about $3,000. 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Electric_car

For Tesla owners in the U.S., their 2023 Model Ys are worth 42% less than what they paid two years ago, while a Ford F-150 truck bought the same year depreciated just 20%. Older EV models depreciate even faster than newer ones.  The crisis exposes the fundamental problem that nobody really knows what electric cars are worth in the second-hand market, as their value is largely tied to batteries with uncertain lifespans. 

A U.K.-based study found 3-year-old EVs lost more than half of their value compared with 39% for ICE cars. Another study conducted by Boucar Diouf, an EV researcher and professor at Kyung Hee University in Seoul, found EVs in the U.S. can lose as much as 60% of their value over three to five years, compared with less than half for traditional vehicles. 

For fleet owners and operators — across sectors from ride-hailing to rentals to logistics — pledging to go green, this value disaster is threatening to derail the sustainability movement.

Florida-based car rental company Hertz, which bought 100,000 Teslas in 2021, reported a $2.9 billion loss in 2024, driven largely by plummeting EV value, according to its February 2025 earnings call. The company was haemorrhaging more than $530 a car monthly by late 2024, due to high upfront costs, steep insurance premiums, and long repair and restoration lead times, according to EV news publication InsideEVs. Hertz dumped 30,000 EVs — Teslas bought for more than $40,000 ended up on its website for resale at prices under $20,000. As of October 8, it listed a Model Y for $27,000. A new Model Y cost $45,000 in the U.S. until earlier this month, when Tesla launched a more affordable version at just under $40,000. 

An April 2025 McKinsey report shows one in five Europeans and just one in 10 U.S. consumers are considering going electric. Fleet operators, though, are making massive bets globally, with companies such as Uber, Bolt, and Lyft pledging full electrification — despite vehicles potentially becoming worthless before the loans are even paid off. 

Battery tech, however, is now proving more resilient than expected. Research from Recurrent shows batteries deteriorate just 1%–2% annually, with only 1% of cars built after 2016 needing replacements versus 13% for older EVs. Most of the recent replacements are also covered by warranties. That’s the good news! 

So, 2026 “will be a year of industry and market readjustments to both lower supply and demand.” And hence one needs to be careful in purchasing an EV. 

Reference:

EVs are depreciating much faster than gas-powered cars, Ananya Bhattacharya, Rest of World, 17 October 2025

Leadership Zones: From Control to Impact!

 

Where you lead from determines how far your team will go. Leadership isn’t a title — it’s a zone. Every leader operates from one, whether consciously or not. And understanding which zone you’re in can be the difference between control and impact. 

#1 The Control Zone:

“If I don’t do it, it’ll fail.” This is where micromanagement lives. Leaders here struggle to delegate and overcompensate through control. They equate success with doing everything themselves — but in truth, great leaders create more leaders, not followers. Control feels safe, but it limits growth — both yours and your team’s.

 

Source: https://www.linkedin.com

 #2 The Doubt Zone:

Doubt is part of leadership — but staying here too long leads to paralysis by analysis. Leaders in this zone often overthink, waiting for certainty that never comes. The mindset shift? “Doubt is data. Use it, but don’t drown in it.” Every decision, even imperfect, becomes a chance to learn. 

#3 The Reflection Zone:

Here, leaders begin to turn inward — observing patterns, learning from mistakes, and trusting their teams. “I document to improve, not to judge myself.” Reflection fosters self-awareness, but it must lead to action. Overthinking is the enemy of momentum — reflection is only valuable when it drives progress. 

#4 The Trust Zone:

“When I lift others up, we all rise together.” This is where leadership begins to mature. You delegate, empower, and communicate with transparency. You trust your team as much as you trust yourself. You lead with heart, not ego. At this stage, you’re not chasing visibility — you’re building something that lasts. 

#5 The Impact Zone:

The final stage. The rare zone. “True change doesn’t need a spotlight. My work speaks louder than my words.” Leaders here inspire through consistency, humility, and clarity. They don’t chase applause; they create systems, cultures, and legacies that outlive them. 

Leadership Growth Tip:

Ask yourself weekly: Which zone am I operating from? If you find yourself in Control or Doubt, don’t judge — just move one step forward. Growth is movement, not perfection. Because leadership isn’t static — it’s a journey from control to impact. And every level demands that you let go of a little more ego to make room for a lot more trust. 

Reference:

Leadership Zones: From Control to Impact, Jaideep Matto, Linkedin

Is Ambank’s Apology Enough?

 

A man believed to be homeless was abused outside a bank in broad daylight in Taman Maluri. This was not just an act of cruelty but a collapse of conscience. The video lasted seconds. The questions it raised will not go away easily. What followed was a familiar ritual in corporate Malaysia: indignation, a statement, and a careful measure of distance. 

AmBank said it was “deeply concerned and saddened”, clarifying that the uniformed guard seen in the video was employed by an external security company, and that the second man — reportedly a nearby cobbler — had acted out of frustration. It is both a legal and moral issue!

Outsourced or not, anyone stationed at a bank’s entrance represents that institution. A uniform is a symbol of authority. Responsibility does not evaporate when it is subcontracted. But the most disturbing element of this incident is not merely the assault itself. It is the vacuum that surrounds it.

 

Source: https://simple.wikipedia.org

If violence against a vulnerable person occurred in full view of the public, was a police report lodged as soon as the video surfaced? Have the assailants been identified by authorities? Have charges been considered, let alone filed? Or are we expected to quietly accept an apology as a substitute for justice? 

Assault is a crime, regardless of the victim’s social status. Being poor, homeless, or inconvenient does not strip a person of legal protection. Being sprayed with water, kicked, humiliated, and driven away is not “crowd control”. It is violence. If such acts go unpunished, it is not just one man being abandoned, it is the rule of law being quietly eroded. 

People stood by as a human being was degraded. One person chose to record instead of intervene. Others watched, waiting for it to end. The modern reflex is to document suffering, not disrupt it. But a camera lens is not a conscience. Virality is not virtue. Recording cruelty does not absolve us from the duty to stop it. 

When Tony Lian, the founder of an NGO that helps the poor, came across the video of the homeless man being kicked and humiliated outside a bank, he felt sick to his stomach. Lian was horrified at the degrading and inhumane treatment of the homeless man. 

Lian, who also runs two small shelters for the homeless, set out on foot to look for the man and walked along the shops at Taman Maluri in Cheras, Kuala Lumpur. He checked every corner until he reached another bank, some 600m from the first bank where the man had been kicked and hosed with water. It was there that he saw the man, who is in his late 30s, lying on the ground, emotionally drained. “I offered him a place to stay and he started to cry.” 

This is not only a story about homelessness. It is about hierarchy — who is seen as human and who is treated as a nuisance. It is about which lives command protection, and which are hosed down and kicked aside in plain view, without consequence. An apology, however well-worded, is only the beginning. Now come the questions that demand answers, not silence. 

Will AmBank move beyond damage control and accept real institutional responsibility? Will they fund homelessness? Will they cajole other banks to do the same? I don’t know why but many lie outside bank premises for the night! 

And will Malaysians choose to act instead of simply pressing “record”? Will the police act? Will the Social Welfare Department act? And will the bankers fund a worthy cause? 

Until those questions are answered with action, this incident is not closed. It is a blemish on our conscience. 

References:

An apology is not justice, Frankie D’Cruz, FMT, 25 November 2025 

“I offered him a place to stay and he started to cry”, Minderjeet Kaur, FMT, 25 November 2025

Indonesia’s High-Speed Rail: Financial Quagmire?

When Indonesia’s first high-speed rail line, the Jakarta–Bandung Whoosh, was inaugurated in October 2023, it was hailed as a triumph of progress and modern engineering. President Joko Widodo (Jokowi) proudly rode the train alongside Chinese officials, marking Indonesia’s arrival in the club of nations with high-speed rail. 

Yet one year later, the celebration has faded into a sobering reckoning. The project, once touted as fully commercial and self-financing, has turned into a financial quagmire. Its mounting debt, sluggish ridership and dependence on Chinese financing have forced the Indonesian government to deploy its newly created sovereign wealth agency, BPI Danantara, to renegotiate the project’s debt with the China Development Bank (CDB).

 

Source: https://en.wikipedia.org 

The Whoosh project’s numbers are stark. Initially budgeted at around US$6.07 billion, total costs ballooned to more than $7.3 billion due to land acquisition delays, technical complications and pandemic-related overruns. The project’s operator, PT Kereta Cepat Indonesia China (KCIC), has reported massive losses, with state-owned shareholders forced to inject capital to keep it running. 

Despite assurances that the project would be funded without sovereign guarantees, the Indonesian government now finds itself indirectly underwriting the costs. BPI Danantara’s intervention is an admission that the line is not commercially viable under its current structure. The agency’s task, renegotiating loan terms and restructuring repayment schedules, is as much about fiscal rescue as it is about face-saving. 

The decision to build the Jakarta–Bandung line, which is only 142 kilometres long, was flawed from the outset. First and foremost, the route is too short to justify the enormous capital outlay. Before Whoosh, travellers could already drive the route in about three hours or take a regular train in a little over that time. The high-speed line cuts travel time to roughly 40 minutes, but once the distance to the remote stations, Halim in Jakarta and Tegalluar near Bandung, is factored in, the actual time saved is minimal, if at all. The ridership potential, confined largely to weekend leisure travellers and upper-middle-class commuters, could never sustain the financial burden of a multibillion-dollar project. The result is a sleek train running at world-class speeds but burdened by unsustainable debt and limited utility. 

A far more logical and transformative project would have been the Jakarta–Surabaya line. Spanning almost 780 kilometres, it connects the country’s main economic artery through Cirebon, Semarang, Solo and Surabaya, cities that collectively account for over 60% of Indonesia’s GDP. A high-speed connection along this corridor would not just shorten travel time from ten hours to under four, it would fundamentally alter Indonesia’s logistics, trade and regional development patterns. It would stimulate new industrial hubs, reduce the cost of goods and integrate the economies of western and eastern Java. In contrast to Whoosh, which serves symbolism more than strategy, a Jakarta–Surabaya line would have real economic impact. 

The government has already indicated plans to proceed with feasibility studies for the Jakarta–Surabaya high-speed project, and this time, it cannot afford to repeat past mistakes. If Indonesia is to regain credibility after the Whoosh fiasco, it must start with a clean slate, free from the shadow of political favouritism and foreign dominance. 

The stakes go beyond economics. The Whoosh crisis has exposed how infrastructure can become an instrument of geopolitical influence. For China, Indonesia’s infrastructure boom under Jokowi has been a showcase of its BRI success in Southeast Asia, a region where the US and Japan have struggled to match Beijing’s scale and speed. 

The Whoosh experience should not be dismissed as an outright failure, but as an expensive lesson in sovereignty and foresight. It has revealed the dangers of political haste and the pitfalls of overreliance on any single foreign partner. Indonesia now stands at a crossroads: it can either repeat the past by rushing into another politically expedient partnership, or it can learn from Whoosh and design a model of infrastructure development that is economically sound, transparent and geopolitically balanced. 

The next chapter of Indonesia’s high-speed dream will determine more than the speed of its trains – it will reveal the pace of its political maturity. If Jakarta can resist the temptation of short-term wins and instead commit to long-term integrity, the Jakarta–Surabaya project could become not only a symbol of progress but a declaration of independence. 

Reference:

Indonesia’s high-speed rail a Belt and Road cautionary tale, Ronny P Sasmita, 4 October 2025, Asia Times

Enforced Disappearance: The Pamela Ling Case

 

Many may remember Pamela Ling who disappeared in broad daylight. A summary of the Pamela Ling case is as follows:

 

·      -On 9 April, on a working day, in broad daylight, an abduction squad using up to five vehicles abducted Pamela Ling Yueh from a Grab car, minutes before it was due to arrive at the Putrajaya headquarters of the Malaysian Anti-Corruption Commission (MACC).

·     -There were at least eight perpetrators. After stopping the car, three of them removed Pamela from the car and took her away.

·    -Two of them were males, dressed in clothing with police markings. The third was a woman in police uniform.

·   -The perpetrators made off with the Grab driver’s identity card; this prompted him to report the abduction to the police.

Source: https://www.sinarharian.com.my

·        -There has been no ransom demand.

·       -Pamela, a 42-years-old Sarawakian resident of Singapore, is a businesswoman.

·     -She is married to Sarawakian businessman Thomas Hah Tiing Siu, who, in 2013, got the “Dato’ Sri” title from Pahang.

·    -Thomas and the Chief Minister of Sabah, Hajiji Noor, have been questioned by the MACC in connection with a bribery allegation.

·    -In January, Pamela was extradited from Singapore to Malaysia in connection with investigations by the MACC. She was remanded for questioning for three days and released on 11 January.

·     Pamela and her husband, parents to three children, are navigating “an acrimonious” divorce. During a previous visit by Pamela to the MACC headquarters, an MACC deputy director ‘encouraged’ her to quickly resolve her divorce from Thomas. 

It is important to note that the police have made statements about the number of witnesses interviewed and about findings from video recordings. In this respect, the police have done better than it did in the enforced disappearances of Raymond Koh, Amri Che Mat, Joshua Hilmy and Ruth Sitepu. But the public remains wary. Because the evidence in those cases – gathered, sifted and assessed by the Human Rights Commission of Malaysia (Suhakam) – showed police complicity, lack of seriousness and lack of competence. Yet, the government failed to resurrect investigations into these cases. The government even continues to conceal the report of the “special task force” it cobbled together to investigate Suhakam’s terrifying findings. 

Suhakam concluded that Raymond, Amri, Joshua and Ruth were victims of enforced disappearance, which is defined as: 

“the arrest, detention, abduction or any other form of deprivation of liberty by agents of the State or by persons or groups of persons acting with the authorization, support or acquiescence of the State, followed by a refusal to acknowledge the deprivation of liberty or by concealment of the fate or whereabouts of the disappeared person, which place such a person outside the protection of the law.” 

Is Pamela also a victim of enforced disappearance? Until the government acts in the cases of Raymond, Amri, Joshua and Ruth, every abduction in Malaysia is presumed to be an enforced disappearance. The presumption will only be lifted if the police prove otherwise. 

In Malaysia, on a workday, in broad daylight, in a metropolis, a person can disappear by an abduction squad and never be found again. In the face of the indifference of the home minister, the law minister, the prime minister and the attorney general, what else can you conclude?

Perhaps, Grab Malaysia may begin selling rides in escorted vehicles. – Caged! 

Reference:

The reason Pamela Ling is presumed to be a victim of enforced disappearance, Rama Ramanathan, Aliran, 17 May 2025