REDEFINING LEARNING PART I
Implementing e-Learning in PETRONAS (2001-2005)
I had my own dotcom startup where I was one of the Founders and the Chief Technology Officer, and I had been a lecturer. These, it seemed, were the major prerequisites that satisfied Joe Heathcote to hire me as the Technology Lead for an eLearning Project Team that was being put together. So I ditched my single-semester old teaching position at Multimedia University and stalled my PhD aspirations to start my Corporate Journey with IPERINTIS SDN. BHD. in late 2001.
iPerintis itself was a marvel to me - the creation of a Technology Consulting Company borne out of PETRONAS and the PETRONAS Retirement Benefit Fund (PRBF), and led by the capable and far-sighted Syahrunizam Samsudin and Adlan Ahmad. After years as an architect, dot-com founder, and lecturer, it was indeed eye-opening to be surrounded by such talented individuals from PETRONAS, Exxon, Accenture, BCG, AT Kearney, PWC and various other established local and international organisations. The air buzzed with excitement and opportunities, and armed with talent and confidence, we felt that we could take on the world! Having joined the company at the Kompleks Dayabumi office, the sense of possibilities became even more enhanced when we moved to the Twin Towers office itself!
We had to pitch the project to PETRONAS and go against the more traditional consulting companies. In my only experience attending the PETRONAS Management Committee (MC) meeting, a rarity in itself even for PETRONAS employees, I observed Tan Sri Hassan Merican’s (TSHM) process of reasoning with members of his Senior Management Team. That single experience significantly shaped my view of how an Executive Management Committee should be conducted. After carefully listening to varied and multifaceted opinions, TSHM calmly concluded by saying that a lot of the opinions came from the speaker’s own assumptions and experiences, and they forgot that they were not the target audience for e-Learning, but rather the young majority of PETRONAS’ employees who may learn differently from everyone in that room. Thus, we derive the Transformation Golden Nugget #1: Be Clear Who is the Recipient and Beneficiary of the Transformation.
After the e-Learning Project kicked off, there was much trepidation and anxiety among the Education Community within PETRONAS. The loudest objections came from PERMATA and INSTEP, the internal management and technical training organisations, respectively. Queries about their continued relevance and job security were most often raised, and the Team knew that these concerns had to be addressed quickly and decisively. Fortunately, I had the opportunity to address these issues at the Senior Management Forum and assured them that they are the Subject Matter Experts and that we would be working very closely with them to produce content. It was further emphasised that e-Learning was a medium and not the End Result, and that Blended Learning was the best practice in many organisations. Both e-Learning and Face-to-Face Learning have their place, with the latter being heavily favoured for technical upskilling, especially in industries like oil and gas. Hence, Transformation Golden Nugget #2: Identify Objections to Transformation, Engage the Parties Objectively, and Treat Them as Partners through Participation.
Once the e-Learning Project was implemented, the Team moved it forward by forming an operating company, PETRONAS eLearning Solutions Sdn. Bhd. (PELSSB) to run the business and deploy e-Learning to PETRONAS’ 25,000 employees. It partnered with Oil & Gas Content Providers like Atlas Interactive (Jamie Bennett) and sold content to international companies like Murphy Oil. To my knowledge, now the company has been absorbed back into PETRONAS (as was iPerintis) and is now known as PETRONAS Digital. E-Learning is, by now, a significant phenomenon with the existence of MOOCs and major companies focusing solely on it like Coursera and Udemy, and of course also Linkedin Learning.
I would like to pay tribute to the fantastic teammates that were with me along the journey, which includes (not exhaustively) Khalid Hashim, Mohd Ridzwan (Reez) Nordin, Mohamad Azhar Bin Jamal Mohamed , Azizul Ghazali , Iswanudin Mohd Ismail, among others. To the PETRONAS client Mariam Rahimah Mukhtar, Jami’aton Zainal Abidin , Azizah Ahmad (azizaa@illuminda.com) . To partners like Daniel Loh , Kit San, Yong , Zainol Zainuddin from Sage Interactive. And my iPerintis colleagues Syaraff Al Sadat Abdul Mohsein , Affan Nawi , Bernard Sia , Reza Ali , Johan Abdul Razak and many others.