Tan Sri Mohd Sidek Hassan

Tan Sri Mohd Sidek HassanPasse’ babyboomers?As adults we have grown up believing, and naively so, I would add, that the young inour societies are minimalist and insignificant to the goings-on in an adult world. Wehave been conditioned to believing only grownups make earth-moving, life changing,pinnacle decisions. No one else can manage this seemingly gruelling charge.The exponential growth and progress globally, in the last decade alone, has provedthis theory, Oh so wrong! The momentum to change has altered the dynamicsof decision making; crushing the assumptions the world traditionally operatedfrom.When it once took us centuries to get from dye print press to print and thendecades to telephone, it now only takes months to get from personal computersto palm top gadgets. Singular pen drives can today store the knowledge that couldrun nations and markets.The emergence of friendsters, chatline,messengers, facebook, and twitterdemonstrates that the young have embracedthese revolutionary changes faster thanbaby boomers. That the young have beenmore adaptable to the market revolutions,they have been able to effect and impactchange through these mediums much moreeffectively than us baby boomers.The impatience of the young to yesterday’stheories and the “used to be-s” is fastdefining the growth of technology andeconomies. Their haste to answers, I mustadd, is also directly changing the face ofsocio political environment in markets;developed and otherwise.I am convinced that it isthe strength of educationand knowledge thatwill have you shine asindividuals in a noisy roomof talents. By talents Idon’t mean the listing ofA’s, but that, and muchmore.The learning never stopsThis said, I often take cognisance that in an environment driven by fast changingexternal demands, one that is often out of our direct control, the proverbialquestion of doing the right thing at the right time emerges. The struggle nonethelessis - what constitutes the right thing? Is the right thing for the moment, the rightdecision that would endure the times?161