Raise Your Game: Even Old Men Need To Keep Growing

When Kimberly Clark's HR team approached us about bringing 47 foreign specialists to Malaysia for a critical manufacturing expansion, they expected the usual challenges: visa paperwork, regulatory compliance, and processing timelines. What they didn't expect was the leadership crisis that nearly derailed their entire project three months later. The work permits arrived on schedule. The expatriates settled into Kuala Lumpur. But by month three, productivity had dropped 35%, two senior engineers had resigned, and the local Malaysian team was requesting transfers. The problem wasn't immigration. It was integration. And it revealed a blind spot that costs Malaysian companies millions annually: the failure to lead across cultures.

Over the years, there has been much debate going on over what constitutes quality. Various disciplines have attempted to define the concept, and many have come up with their own definitions. In such a complex labyrinth of definitions, how does one make sense of what ‘high quality work’ constitutes, and how do you go about ensuring you deliver that type of work?