Kam Raslan’s Talking Edge

(Reprinted from The Edge – Options pullout, 9 November 2015 issue)

Dear Kam,
People don’t appreciate that being a boss is hard but it’s all about finding creative solutions. For instance, I had a golf tournament I really wanted to attend but how could I get away from the office? Easy. I paid a consultant to conduct a team-building session for the staff and I went and did something “more important”. When I came back from my golf trip, the mood in the office had completely changed. Suddenly, I was refreshed and happier and I had improved my handicap. Team-building exercises always work. Just saying.
Golfing Around

I’m not exactly the corporate type but I have been involved in team-building sessions with consultants and I have to say, I didn’t enjoy the experiences at all. I found the whole thing to be deeply humiliating simply because senior management were not there. What is the point of having a teambuilding session if senior management are not there as well? Are they not part of the team? Personally, I think that getting a consultant to conduct training can only achieve positive results if senior management sit through and participate in all the sessions as well. If the official reason for the training is to create greater organisational cohesion, then it fails without the presence of senior management because instead, the sessions merely end up reemphasising the vast gulf that already exists between senior management and everyone else. Far from learning anything new, every hour of training merely says that there are bosses and then there are minions, and that the bosses think the minions are stupid because obviously, the bosses believe their learning process has ended and that they have reached a state of corporate perfection. But the little people, well, they’re stupid. Far from being modern, it’s just the same old feudal nonsense.

So, instead of getting consultants to teach your staff, why don’t you go for the training and then come back and you train your staff yourself? They probably still won’t actually learn anything but they will experience the most valuable lesson. They will see that the bosses are competent communicators and that they care about the business, that they have a passion for boring systems or customer service or whatever it is. And if you listen to your staff, then you will probably discover that your amazing new idea has some serious practical flaws and that you have some really talented people out there.

Maybe there are lots of people who love having a day away from their bosses but, personally, I have no respect for senior managers who cannot be bothered to either conduct or participate in their own training exercises. Perhaps, the moral of the story is, don’t ever hire me.

Dear Kam,
My dad wanted to buy a CD and I was like LOL, daddio, that’s so uncool, and then he was like all in my face with like “Asian values” and I was like what-ever. Know what I mean?
Cool Dude

I don’t understand what you’re saying but the other day, I suddenly felt the need to own a copy of Pink Floyd’s Dark Side of the Moon (children, ask your parents). Obviously, I already have the album on vinyl (ask your grandparents) but I wanted it on CD. And then, the problems began because I don’t know how to buy a CD anymore. I don’t even know if CDs exist anymore. When I want something, my instinct is to go to a shop, but are there any music stores these days? I went to two but they had both closed down. It seems that I have to “download” the album and then somebody (presumably Pink Floyd guitarist Dave Gilmour) will play the music down the wires of the “Googletubes” directly into my computer. This sounds even more hi-tech than electric sliding doors (I mean, how do they know when to open?) but unfortunately, if I do this then I will never own an actual physical album. And that makes no sense to me. I need the physical object. At least I have the vinyl.

But just when I am coming to terms with the fact that I am impossibly outdated, everything changes. Amazon is opening an actual physical bookshop in Seattle. The bookshop will have newfangled devices and suggestion matrixes (or whatever it’s called) but it will also have actual books and physical 3D staff known as “human beings”. If Amazon, the behemoth of internet shopping, is turning back to physical shops and objects, then I feel vindicated. Perhaps even the steam engine will now make its triumphal return. And if it does, then the present train journey time from KL to Singapore will finally be halved.

Reprinted with the kind permission of