On 'Cari Makan' and 'Tidak Apa'

Here are some thoughts that I have about two attitudes that we Malaysian have across the board generally speaking. These are the oft quoted ‘Cari Makan’ and ‘Tidak Apa’ attitudes. Undoubtedly, these are attitudes we will need to get rid of to be competitive in the globalization era.

We are no longer competing with ourselves; we are competing with the emerging countries in Asia and Eastern Europe and the developed world for the investment dollars. Whatever business or business model we choose to go into, whatever skills we choose to grow; there will be competition somewhere out there in this world. The competition is getting better at what they do…This is a fact of life.

Now of all times, we need to jettison the ‘Cari Makan’ and ‘Tidak Apa’ attitude.

No this is not another ‘The Sky Is Falling!’ Blog, it’s a dose of reality. We in Malaysia have plenty of smart people and skilled people. They are as good as the best of their peers in any part of the world. The problem is the good people :-

1. choose to put up with mediocrity

2. are lacking in communication skills

My understanding of 'Cari Makan' is ‘Making Money to Eat’. To me ultimately it means ‘To Survive’ mentality i.e. work for the paycheck. This concept might have been okay for the post colonial days. However its way too dated to be relevant today.

Sadly, even today for the typical Malaysian on the street, as long as he/she can ‘cari makan’, he/she will tolerate almost anything. Which leads me, to the ‘Tidak Apa’ (not my problem or don’t care) attitude. To me this attitude is really tolerance for mediocrity gone overboard.

We really need to change our work-style to be more proactive/self-empowering. It doesn’t matter whether the mediocrity is from the top or the bottom…we need to stop putting up with it

Metaphorically speaking, when the ball is thrown to us we need to catch it and keep running with it and then keep communicating with the rest of the team on the next move.

This might sound preachy but the first three things we need to improve on as Malaysians is

1. asking for more work

2. communicating status

3. asking questions...even dumb ones (better to ask dumb questions then to screw-up)

Happy working…