In a no-holds barred discussion with the BAM president, our Thomas and Uber Cup teams attributed their lack of success to not having the right culture.

This assessment invited much commentary, mostly negative. But from my distant vantage point, I’d like to applaud them for putting their finger on the right pulse. The team, and for that matter many of our enterprises, lack a culture of performance. Too many simply go through the motions, describe visions, formulate plans and then do little else.

So, how does one go about changing our culture from a lackadaisical one to a high-performance one?

I see two essential steps. First, remove the source that killed the lack of hunger in the first place. Second, provide the tools and enablers to help the person succeed.

Many institutions with the wrong culture either lack one or both of these steps and in some circumstances confuse the two, that is, the enabler to succeed is not to deliver the fruit of success to the individual but rather, just the tools to help him/her succeed.

So, if we want our students to get better, to seek and even create knowledge, the answer is NOT to make degrees more accessible; producing more graduates who the industry finds unemployable is not only ineffective but a waste of our precious and finite resources. On the contrary, we need to heighten the standards required to obtain the degree, AND at the same time employ better teachers and provide better libraries and research facilities.

It’s the same with our commercial enterprises. If we want workers to perform, it is not to guarantee them employment but rather to engage them in sharing the company’s goals, train them and then reward them handsomely when they achieve their objectives.

But what if this culture is not accidental? What if this was by design? In the middle ages, feudal lords had a very ingenious way of keeping the workers in servitude. They denied them proper education but kept them well fed so the workers were too fat or too scared (for fear of losing their food) to revolt. But eventually, peasants will revolt, whether it is Middle Ages England, Industrial Age France or communist China. That is the essential issue raised by the “Red Shirts” in Thailand recently — that the elites have been running the country for their own gains for far too long. 

Contrast that with Singapore. A small country with no resources to rely on, its people have had to create their own success. Singapore today is fast being recognised as one of the capitals of the world, and like New York and London, its success owes much to a relatively open policy towards talented immigrants who are not just capable but also hungry, and are ceaselessly seeking improvement. But becoming a magnet for the world’s talent is merely an outcome. At the core, a place must be attractive and again, talents are lured by dynamic cities with the right performance cultire.

I do some work in the Middle East and many of the government officials I meet in the Gulf vie to be called the Singapore of the Middle East. It is totally understandable. All the Emirate states have very small populations and the only way for their economy to prosper is to import human capital, which they are doing in droves. But they know that their promise of high (tax-free) salaries is insufficient. There must be something more to their appeal, and they all want to be like Singapore.

This desire to remain on top is largely due to a national culture of fear of failing. Indeed, it is so recognisable that the locals coined a colloquial term for it: “kiasu” or “fear of losing”.  Arguably, one could even ascribe their success to the fact that they separated from Malaysia and this mindset and “fear-of-being-on-the-losing end” culture was forced upon them by circumstances. And they have made the best they can from the circumstances.

In a recent interview with Bloomberg’s Charlie Rose, Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong expressed only limited pleasure in the metaphor, for Singapore recognises that it has to stay relevant in order to remain in the winning seat. And to stay relevant it remains pragmatic, even revisiting long-held beliefs like the ban on casinos, so that its economy would keep thriving.

Malaysia probably won’t need another casino. But we’ve decided that we want to be a high-income high-performance nation. We must therefore first dismantle the crutches that caused our lackadaisical culture.

Credit should be given to Tun Dr Mahathir Mohamad for he recognised and attempted to change the way Malaysians think of ourselves. The “Malaysia Boleh” mindset, plus the desire to set various Guiness world records, were the first steps to helping Malaysia see and act beyond our “kampung”. And over the past decade, through notable transformation programmes, many of our corporations have successfully instilled a high-performance culture. The government itself is undergoing the same transformation.

Our badminton players are perhaps right to blame the culture. But hopefully by the next Thomas and Uber Cups, we would have completed that transformation. And if we still don’t win then, I am certain we would have at least put up a stronger fight.

But let’s first throw away the crutches that hold us back from forging a high-income, high-performance culture.

With this, Vincent Chin will conclude his 42 column. He will return occasionally next year to comment on the latest developments in management and leadership.His previous columns in Management@Work can be found under the Management section at www.theedgemalaysia.com

This article appeared in Management@work, the monthly management pullout of The Edge Malaysia, Issue 809, Jun 7-13, 2010.