In my Facebook I wrote that I could not agree more that among the good things we can learn from the Japanese society is precision. I made this comment in response to the observation by our Prime Minister during his recent visit to Japan as widely reported in the media.

Based on my personal experience having lived and worked in Japan for more than three years, I have indeed discovered this for myself. This was in the early eighties when Malaysia started the Look East policy in our effort to learn the Japanese work ethics and values to transform our industry. I remember when dealing with Japanese officials involving the visit of their delegation to Malaysia and the preparation on our side for Japanese media to cover the visit of their VIPs to Malaysia. I was the Information Counsellor, obviously the job of media relations fell on my shoulder. They refused to talk to me on telephone because they were quite skeptical about conveying the message in English over the phone for fear that the message might not be clearly understood by me. Instead, they insisted to come to the office and talked to me in person. They came with their plans written in detail. It was obvious they would not let things go. They came with an inquisitive mind asking me a lot of questions and expecting me to respond to questions, some of which were not even thought about or on something I considered rather petty. But to them it was a serious matter and they were not taking chances as they wanted to ensure precision in their job.

Precision indeed exists in almost every aspect of their life such as punctuality of appointments and events held, the train and bus schedules, organization of major events and programs, delivery of goods and services, etc. Looking back after more than 20 years since looking east, it makes me wonder how much are we learning from the Japanese. No doubt it is an on-going process which requires us to make it a continuous effort or a habit to achieve progress.

If we want to move towards a developed nation status we have no choice but to change our attitude. We need to adopt a culture of excellence and the culture excellence must begin with precision. Such precision would be reflected in the quality of products that we produce and the services that we offer. This culture particularly among the younger generation should be nurtured from early days, if not at the university before graduating and entering the job market!!!