EFFECT ON CORPORATE STRATEGY, PERFORMANCE AND SURVIVAL

Noor Fawazi Md Noor Rudin

Attached at SilTerra Sdn. Bhd

Universiti Teknologi Malaysia

Leader Technical Experience and Cognition are Critical to Leader Performance

As a fellow of the CEO@Faculty Programme 2.0, I considered myself the luckiest young university lecturer selected in this programme. To meet the programme’s magic tagline “Coached by the Pros,” I was offered with an unmissable opportunity, a dirt coaching by Dr.  Kader Ibrahim Abdul Wahab, the Chief Operating Officer (COO) of SilTerra. Being attached to SilTerra was an excellent opportunity to learn the leadership value from Malaysia’s volunteer top corporate figure. The opportunity was used to learn the corporate leadership value and the organisational implications of top management’s processing information, or cognitive style, in multiple contexts. Not to mention his long experience in industries, and knowing Kader, who obtained his Ph.D. in semiconductor manufacturing from UniMAP, and an MBA from UUM, his background and expertise undeniably best fit his top affiliation. During my first meeting with the top management, I was indeed to take this golden opportunity seriously and explore any potential collaboration with SilTerra shortly. The first meeting was the first learnt lesson on cognitive value, which supports inspiring new local talents to stay aligned with SilTerra’s vision, weight, and culture.

Kader has more than 27 years of experience in the semiconductor industry. He used to be involved in diffusion, ion implantation, photolithography chemical mechanical polishing (CMP). Apart from operations, he also headed the finance, procurement, and logistic division. Before joining SilTerra in 1998, he was attached with Motorola Seremban as a bipolar wafer fab engineer, in-charge of diffusion and wafer testing/probing. Since then, he was promoted to be a technical staff member on 1 April 2001, to Senior Manager on1 February 2003, to Director on1 April 2005, and to Senior Director on 1 April 2010. He was appointed as the Executive Committee in November 2014 and was promoted to COO in May 2015. Kader has been working for SilTerra for more than 22 years. His self-confidence and best strategic direction have invited others to stay aligned with Silterra’s vision and target. During the 12th IEEE International Conference on Semiconductor Electronics (ICSE2016) at Pullman Hotel Kuala Lumpur, Kader was invited to deliver his significant insights on the future of Malaysian made Integrated Circuits.

In general, technical experience and cognition influence not only the leader emergence and performance, but also the whole organization where the extensive knowledge and experience affect the long term success of an organization.

Inspired Leader and Leading Others: Impact on the Vision of a Company

The leadership definition captures the importance of being able and prepared to inspire others. Put simply; the leader is the inspiration for and the director of the action. They are that possess personality and leadership skills to make others want to follow their direction. This leadership, “leading others” element, can be observed during my attachment at SilTerra, where all SilTerra family tends to be inspired by the management team. Thus, following their direction is the priority. This fosters a collaborative environment and drives teams in the same order.

“Cost Saving Concept” is a concept introduced by the management to optimise financial investment at SilTerra. Being a member of Subfab Technology (SFT) and Workshop Spare Part (WSP) modules, I noticed all family members of SilTerra clearly understand this concept. Initiatives that align with this concept were designed so that the organisational objectives can be achieved. For example, SilTerra spent a million dollars purchasing new dry pumps and wafer moving arm robots in production. For maintenance and repair, SilTerra has to spend more to pay the vendors since no local talents could maintain house maintenance. As an initiative, the group tried to learn from the vendors and, at the same time, put more effort into a technical experience to troubleshoot the dried pump and robot system in the house. As a result, this effort leads to cost-saving, where early maintenance and in-house troubleshooting can be done. This concept is expanded to other modules and seems significantly affect the financial investment in SilTerra. This cost-saving concept appears to be very helpful and might be SilTerra’s safe strategic planning towards facing unexpected disasters during the COVID-19 pandemic. On safety issues during MCO, SilTerra is a committee that is being an aware corporate citizen on its employees’ and workers’ safety and well-being and all those dedicated to ensuring its safety well-being. As a result, the family of Silterra is strongly motivated to stay aligned with the business strategy set up by the management regardless of the uncertain time during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Creating an environment that promotes and encourages changes in an organization such as working corporate implement concepts is good. This is where professional leadership value comes in.

Personal Effectiveness towards Organisational Commitment

Leadership is influence; therefore, becoming a real leader requires the right attitude and behaviour in dealing with people in any organisation or society. Supportive leadership behaviour directly influences employee performance. At SilTerra, there is always an opportunity to create forums or discussions to express the staff’s perspective against SilTera’s system. When there is an issue or conflict, each module leader will understand the problem and bring the top management issue to identify the solution or strategy for improvement. Every member always puts their primary concern to support their modules, and of course, the top management will oversee the needs for each module. For strategic relationships, SilTerra always has outdoor social activities and internal gatherings during festive seasons. Taking advantage of the Environment Health and Safety (EHS) meeting, positive social interaction ever happens, creating an environment for mutual and long term sharing.

Last year, SilTerra was recognised for its excellence by the Employees Provident Fund (EPF). SilTerra strongly believes that its technology begins with its people. The company strives to provide the best working environment for its employees through competitive compensation packages, career growth opportunities, and attractive rewards and benefits. Facilitating retirement security is part of the company’s overall strategy in attracting and retaining the best talent. This achievement is an affirmation of SilTerra’s commitment to the welfare of its people.

In the same year, SilTerra was also awarded as the ‘Employer of Choice’ by the Principal for its Role in Advocating Corporate Retirement Planning. From time to time, Kadir keeps stressing SilTerra’s efforts on facilitating workplace retirement plans through payroll deductions. In terms of implementation, he said that cost is not a barrier to adopting these schemes within the organisation as deductions to these schemes can be treated in the same manner as those done for Zakat and EPF. He also highlighted some of the attractive features of the PRS, which encourage employee retention through rewards as part of the loyalty programme, thus creating a win-win situation for the employer and employee. This demonstrates the benefit of a “win-win situation for the employer and employee” towards gain and convinces to advance the cognitive.

Leadership Journey Reflection

All of the experiences at SilTerra became part of my dynamic management and leadership approaches. And my connecting style evolved throughout my career based on exceptional occasions, engaging relationships, and unexpected discoveries along the way. Building relationships and connections became a critical competency throughout my career. Leadership is about using the head and the heart. It is about motivating employees and gaining their commitment to driving performance. To summarise, it can be concluded that the three primary leadership values are the key to lead an organisation.  To move the leadership suit with an organisation’s objective, a clear understanding of vision, concept, and strategy are essential. Leading others requires a value that can inspire other members and an opportunity to bridge the bridges among team members. Impact and influence are needed to gain support from an organisation member.

Bibliography

Kemal M. Surji (2015, August) Understanding Leadership and Factors that Influence Leaders’

Effectiveness. European Journal of Business and Management (pp. 154-167)

R. Scott Pochron (2009, December) A Leadership Journey: Personal Reflections from the School of Hard Knocks. Integral Review (pp. 264-272)

Silterra’s News and Events Announcements

Biodata of the Writer

 

Noor Fawazi Md Noor Rudin is a Senior Lecturer in Mechanical Precision Engineering at Universiti Teknologi Malaysia. He holds a BSc and PhD in Mechanical Engineering from Hanyang University, Seoul, South of Korea. As a young academic staff and has strong enthusiasm to learn and explore new fields besides building new perspective in academic and research career, he joined CEO@Faculty Programme Cycle 3. It is indeed an unforgetful experience where he develops good communication with SilTerra on behalf of UTM for future potential collaboration. Being coached by the top level management, CEO, COO and Deputy Director, and not to mention the supportive family of SilTerra, is a golden opportunity and really changes his views on how to face difficulties in order to successfully execute a strategy.