Monday, July 23, 2007

Global, Glokal redefined.

I remember well the launch of ‘Melayu Glokal’. I was at Primula then, working, and looks like all my friends were in nice baju melayu, celebrating in a kind of raya-like atmosphere. Poor me for not being in the circle. TPM was launching the concept and I thought, great, some concept it was. I remember reading Thomas Friedman’s The World Is Flat earlier and I thought the concept was already elaborated.

So much for originality.

I spoke to Nik and had the concept revisited from a satirical perspective.

We both were in a way working as consultants to both local and multinationals. Expatriate multinationals and local multinationals too. Maybe the multi in the local multinationals was not truly appropriate, more like Malaysian gone abroad. Multinationals are normally staffed and led by people of multi nationalities.

We both share the predicament of payment difficulty with some Malaysian companies – despite their size, listing status and global face. They tend to be more difficult the bigger they were. They may be appearing as multinational, international set-up but when in comes to paying consultants and contractors, there was the usual dilly-dally, questions and delays. Not to mention the squeezing of fee quantum. Unlike most truly multinationals where fees were agreed and honored to the last cent. Payments were fixed at say 45 days after invoice and the money directly credited into account. No real chasing necessary. The local companies tend to delight in withholding payments, keeping them in short term FD or investing in stocks – also short term. Never mind if the sub-contractors and suppliers were screaming for some cash-flow to keep them going.

In Nik’s experience, he says the local will never make it in the global challenge – as long as they kept to glocal mindset.

So what’s global and what’s glocal?

Global is when one is ready to honor the contract and pay as agreed. No ‘playing’ with other people’s money.

Glokal is when one is downright selfish, regards contract as mere academic exercise, play with other people’ money. Myopic perpetrator of short-term gain.

That was global and glokal redefined.