Some people have asked me before, what motivates you to continue pursuing the alumni initiative— my answer wasn’t exactly brotherhood, but it is more about the bigger picture. So you may ask, “What is the bigger picture?”
The bigger picture can be explained in this brief example: Currently I am travelling in a train to the northern region of Malaysia. How I got into this train was somewhat interesting. I am working in Sustainability department of my company, a renewable energy investment firm which is tied to a sovereign wealth fund in Malaysia. What I do at work typically deals with how our (RE) projects impact the ESG; the environment, social and governance aspects. Anyway, I am in the train to meet fellow counterparts from another investment company, which is located in Arau, Perlis. They are an investment holding company, which also invests in renewable energy projects, not entirely, but partially — as some of their investments portfolios. The interesting part here is here is that this meeting came to fruition because of one thing: connection.
An Accidental catch-up
Up north, Khairul Amri, a second batch of my alma mater, has reached out to me in 2015. It was, back then, the early days of the revamp of our alumni and old boys association after a short hiatus. He contacted me and gave some advice about how to make the alumni interesting, and better yet, how we as an organisation can start businesses with our human capital network. However, we were only communicating via social media at the time and there wasn’t much conversation that has taken place, but as with the other alumni members, I could sense his sense of enthusiasm and his vision are similar with mine, and a couple of other alumnus. Fast forward 3 weeks ago, he stumbled upon my company’s official launch of our new biogas plant in Facebook and we then reconnected. This time, we found out that we both are working in the same industry; as what I’ve explained above — in renewable energy. The very next day, I met him and his CEO at his office and with by God’s grace, his CEO told me that my boss had also reached out earlier to discuss about a potential business deal. So then here I am, heading up north for the follow-up site visit on what was initiated by the accidental catch up a few weeks ago.
The Human Connection
From the above, I’m only describing the value of one of the crucial aspect of business, which is the human connection. Human connection is an intangible asset that one should highly leverage when you’re in the business world. It is a component that enables one business owner to trust one another and it is also an important decision-making ingredient that requires several years, if not weeks to be cultivated. Hence coming back to my introduction, the human connection is the bigger picture, and it is what we have in the alumni network of this growing 3,000 plus members — of like-minded individuals who might be from various backgrounds and different ethnicity, but we have the value of human connection which exist thanks to our school in the past.
Now, whatever outcome from the meeting that we will be having tomorrow — one thing for sure is that the bond between stays between us…or at least we’ll just settle with another catch-up session over teh tarik.
-HN, Perlis, Sept 2018
The above piece from the perspective of a representative of the Saser Old Boys Association (Saseroba).
