Wild lessons for Corporate Malaysia BY SOO EWE JIN

by **Cals** Mon 23 Dec 2013, 01:43

Published: Saturday December 21, 2013 MYT 12:00:00 AM
Updated: Saturday December 21, 2013 MYT 1:21:44 PM
Wild lessons for Corporate Malaysia

BY SOO EWE JIN

[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Wild: Reflections on business and life
Author and pthotographer: YY Chin
Publisher: Ambank Group

A BOOK entitled Wild and with a picture of a leopard staring at you in the face is probably not a book you will find in the collection of business movers and shakers in Corporate Malaysia.
But this book by Chin Yuen Yin (pic), better known as YY Chin in the banking fraternity, is aptly subtitled “Reflections on Business and Life” for good reasons. It will make the perfect end-of-year present for your bosses.

From young, Chin’s passion for the great outdoors has seen him climb mountains and ventur into deep jungles. His love for nature continues to this day and one of his greatest joys is to embark into the wild to watch and “shoot” animals in their natural habitat.
Chin currently sits on the boards of several subsidiary companies of the AMMB Holdings Bhd Group and reckons that he spends at least four to five months a year going to places off the beaten track in between attending board meetings.
“I go to these places as I am still physically able to do so. In addition to the wild, I also enjoy travelling to countries that are culturally rich and unique. I also sit on a charity foundation (based in Singapore) that entails me to travel to remote areas in South-East Asia to visit charity projects that we are involved in,” Chin tells StarBizWeek.
The beauty of going into the wilds, Chin says, is that you will be disconnected from the rest of the world.
But he concedes that it is now getting more and more difficult to do so.
“Even in a remote place like Serra Cafema, between the borders of Namibia and Angola, the lodge now has access to the Internet,” Chin says.
Having retired as a career banker, Chin says his role as an independent non-executive director, without being involved in the operations of the company, allows him more time to pursue his passion for the wild.
“It helps that I am able to easily switch off between work and leisure, even when I was running a business, and am therefore able to harmonise business and leisure times quite easily,” he says.
[You must be registered and logged in to see this image.]

Putting the book together took more than a year as it involved going through his extensive collection of photographs to finally select the 118 that made it into the book. In addition, he had to select the right quotation to go with each photograph. And that is not taking into account the trials he had to undergo when travelling through difficult terrain to capture the perfect shot.
And this is where Chin’s understanding of the business world makes this book relevant for Corporate Malaysia.
A quote by Albert Einstein sums up this connection very well. “Look deep into nature, and then you will understand everything better.”
Chin says there are lots of examples from nature that business can learn from.
“When I was running a business, I often used examples from nature to illustrate how we can learn from nature. People remember better when they can relate to nature or when you tell them a story and there are many stories from the wild that will help to illustrate a point that you are trying to make,” he says.
Chin’s selection of quotations ranges from the ancient to the modern, and from known management gurus like Peter Drucker and Jack Welch to entertainers likeBruce Springsteen and Elton John. For good measure, there are two quotations from YY Chin as well, including the one on Page 12 (with a hungry-looking lion), “This is a to do lunch or be lunch world. Companies that are not able to produce results will be very vulnerable to predators.
CEOs who lament about their slow-performing teams may like this quote by Confucius which accompanies a picture showing a cheetah with its mouth wide open, “Man who stand on hill with mouth open will wait long time for roast duck to drop in.”
Asked what his favourite picture-quotation combinations were, Chin singles out P10 which shows a picture of a lion in Sabi Sands, South Africa, with its mouth wide open, and that famous quote by Ethiopian novelist and playwright Abe Gubegna, “Every day in Africa a gazelle wakes up. It knows it must run faster than the fastest lion or it will be killed. Every morning a lion wakes up. It knows that it must outrun the slowest gazelle or it will starve to death. It doesn’t matter whether you are a lion or a gazelle. When the sun comes up, you better be running.”
Another favourite is found on P74 which shows a picture of a Bengal tiger taken at the Bandhavgarh National Park in Uttar Pradesh, India, and the accompanying quote by Brazilian author Paulo Coelho, “When you travel towards your objective, be sure to pay attention to the path. The path teaches us the best way to arrive and enriches us while we are travelling along it.”
According to Chin, the one on P10 has special relevance to newbies entering the corporate world while the one on P74 is important to the would-be bosses of companies.
The book was launched last Wednesday in Bangsar.
AmBank Group chairman Tan Sri Azman Hashim said Chin’s book is an example of how to use one’s hobby, in this case photography, to do philanthropic work.
“He has the talent and desire to use his hobby for a good cause, an act that everyone should follow,” he said.
All proceeds from the sale of the book will be channelled to charities namely the Orang Asli Community Learning Centres Outreach Project, Bangsar Village Kids’ for Kids’ Charity fund and Disabled Rehabilitation Centre Nepal.
Wild is priced at RM200 and is currently available either at the Bangsar Village information counter or online at [You must be registered and logged in to see this link.][You must be registered and logged in to see this link.]/.