Thinking with other people's mind

I have not been blogging lately. Mainly, I was busy trying to live my own dreams, writing software and exploring my creative mind. Thinking that somehow, someday, my life was destined for something so much greater than becoming an underpaid researcher trying to solve Malaysia's economic woes by creating tremendous value of research that could possibly bring Malaysia into a new age of technologically advanced country. Yeah right. Well, even superman have the right to dream right. So why not I. But all the technical thinking stretch the left side of my brain a little bit too much, and it starting to give me a terrible headache. So, I'm taking a relaxing time meditating on my right side of my brain with light reading.

They say that “Reading is a means of thinking with another person's mind; it forces you to stretch your own.” So last weekend I decided to buy another book by Jim Collins, the author of the famous book Build to Last. Well that and as a MPH member, I get a 20% discount on books on the red carpet.:) After reading Build to Last, I now know that Visionary Companies was created by normal people like you and me. And I have disregard the common dogma that a Visionary company are created by super affluent people, by charismatic leaders, by geniuses or by politically connected people or sons and daughters of politician--although this is still hard to be disregarded. In fact, most of the Visionary companies are created by timid, technical people who just loves what they were doing and wanted to create a better world for all mankind, and of course womankind.

So the book I got was Good to Great. This book is based on 5 years of research and it is a sequel to Build to Last. Well, it addresses the common dogma that Visionary companies started of with underdog leaders who made the company great and it remain great for more than 50 years to become a visionary company. But what about companies that are not so great now? Will it ever be a Visionary company. I mean will good companies like DRB-Hicom or Mimos end up to be able to change themselves from being Good to Great, and eventually a visionary company. Highly doubtful but I hope the book might show me some ideas about how to make it great....and eventually a Visionary company, or will it just remain a vague vision.....and never end up to have its "ary--(as for visionary) anytime in its existence.