Truth matters and Theory R

http://www.malaysiakini.com/columns/185566
KJ John
4:19PM Jan 3, 2012
I am a dreamer and am convinced that dreaming and communicating ideas and ideals about a better tomorrow will someday help someone else. That is also my personal public theology about life.

Therefore, I write my thoughts and ideas and publish them for public scrutiny. Not so much to convince anyone else but with the prayer and hope to inform and may be influence the other’s thinking towards the same good ideas and ideals!

I surely believe these are good and true ideas! They are mine today, but some day I hope they are yours too! These ideas and ideals were formed and shaped after many years of thinking and reflecting on the same.

Therefore, I would like to make 2012 my year of integration with integrity within my community of friends and relatives; wherein I try to put together all my ideas and ideals into a comprehensive and mutually exclusive model; which I call “Theory R” based on a challenge that Dr RC Sproul made in his book, “Stronger Than Steel.”

Theory R is about the ideal of living a life of integrity while still well integrated within the rest of one’s community and society. Such integration with integrity requires very high standards of both personal integrity and good habits but also organisational integrity and effective performance.

These are ideals worth pursuing for anyone who is a true believer in any “Other” of eternal significance.

The Star of Dec 31, 2011, carried the story of a Dr Nehemiah Lee and his “Nehemiah Wall”. From the write-up, he appears to live his life quite integrated with integrity.

It also carried a write-up by the Chief Secretary Sidek Hassan, who also articulates ideas and ideals about the nature of public services and personal and institutional values he holds very dearly.  He too appears integrated with integrity.

Finally, it also carried a challenge by two other people; one known and the other less well-known.

Idris Jala challenged Malaysian industries and corporations to think about global competitiveness and not just focus on their market share under the proverbial ‘katak dibawah tempurung.’

Real and lasting value

He reasoned that the Malaysian sky alone is too small within a framework of new kinds of global competiveness. He dreams of one day having a Malaysian brand name equivalent of any well-known Korean product!

Most telling for me and my world view hypothesis was, however, the article by Roshan Thiran who talks about how it is heretics within our organisations that ultimately creates real and lasting value.

He extols Steve Jobs and his ‘heretical experience’ of leaving Apple and returning one day with a positive vengeance and the world is today better for that.

He was a true transformational leader. Roshan defined heretics as “someone whose views, beliefs or actions are in opposition to popular beliefs and traditions”.

A heretic in your company is “someone who simultaneously holds great loyalty to your organisation but has a revelation of a new truth the organisation has yet to grasp”.

Roshan also prays that one day we can create a Malaysian Steve Jobs but more importantly learn to respect and extol such ‘heretics’ within our community and society.

What has all this got to do with truth matters and Theory R? Well, whether it is Sidek’s personal values close to his heart, or Idris’ global vision for change and performance improvements, or Nehemiah’s religious values of integration with integrity, they all believe in one common reality; that there is one truth which is objectively good for all, and the values linked to that truth can and must define the public spaces.

They define the common good. They must define the one true good value.

I call such a truth value the first and foremost R. It is called “Revelation”. As all truth seekers know truth must always be revealed by the ‘Other’; it can never be discovered by logic and reason alone.

Therefore. there is always an ‘aha’ moment for all such personal discoveries and knowledge of truth when the complete and comprehensive truth of such a matter or non-matter become real and known to the knower.

Then, in the language of Michael Polanyi, one can say, I know how to ride a bicycle for the first time ever. Polanyi’s book “Personal Knowledge” is worth a good read!

Willing and voluntary actor

When one knows the truth; that knowledge will also set one free to say: “I who understand truth of the common good in that situation and can become responsible for the truth that I do now know in a very personal and real way.”

Such a personal responsibility statement makes one move away from assuming the role of a mere agent (i.e. playing a role) to becoming a willing and voluntary actor in any given situation.

In my experience and personal knowledge to date, whether with Sidek’s colleagues, or Idris’ corporate CEOs, or Nehemiah’s construction industry partners and competitors, most do not move beyond being agents of a particular worldview and merely “playing a role”; what Thomas Kuhn calls the “old or normal paradigm”.

It is called “the mainstream worldview”, if defined especially by the ‘Occupy Movers and Shakers’ of Wall Street.

Therefore, what each of these “heroes of The Star newspaper” believe is that they can shift paradigms based on their personal Theory R, or their current, even if limited worldview, and their personal knowledge of such truths.

In fact, my friend Deputy Minister of Higher Education Saifuddin Abdullah defined this experience and personal knowledge in his address to a group of us interested in Education, Marginalisation and Poverty at the MiDAS@UCSI Truth Matters forum recently.
His off the cuff keynote addressed, in Kuhn’s language, the older normal paradigm and the new not-yet-mainstream paradigm of virtual reality. Kuhn first called and labelled this phenomenon “a paradigm shift”.

But, even Kuhn recognised that “a paradigm shift” involved fundamental and radical shifts in worldviews almost equivalent to a religious conversion. See this concept of a paradigm shift in his book entitled “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions.”

Please see http://des.emory.edu/mfp/Kuhn.html for a more detailed analysis of the full thesis, for those interested.

All it really takes is change in mindset

Hammer & Champy (1993) applied such a process of reengineering as “the fundamental rethinking and radical redesign of business processes to achieve dramatic improvements in critical, contemporary measures of performance, such as cost, quality, service and speed”.

Therefore, my question to the three mainstream The Star heroes, “where is the starting point of the paradigm shift you are seeking to try and engender?

I agree that our nation is stuck in the middle income trap. I agree that the Public Services Department has become incompetent and too bureaucratic and, in fact, even “idiocratic” (my coinage through these columns), so why is it we are still buying their loyalties through further “financial incentives” when all it really takes is a mindset change or paradigm shift?

Is money and perks the real source of the problem of the public services incompetence and non-accountability?

Or, it is simply the lack of good moral public service leadership who can say to ‘no’ to ministers and anyone else “yes minister, but... you have not considered two other public policy options on this issue of concern.

Can you please consider all options before we make the most rational and optimum choice of policies for the common good?”

Folks, if we can nurture such good, upright and moral public officials, we can “revert to the constitutional values of old and seek to serve only public interest and the common good!”

But all this calls for a Public Services Department which is not only professional but also morally and ethically upright and can say ‘no’, if and when such a negative response is needed.

But, unfortunately today we still sign off, “saya menurut perintah”, and it is falsely and wrongly assumed to mean blind loyalty to the current bosses of the day.

I say “it is elementary Mr Watson, elementary”. May God bless the Public Services.

KJ JOHN was in public service for 29 years. The views expressed here are his personal views and not those of any institution he is involved with. Write to him at kjjohn@ohmsi.net with any feedback or views.