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Jordan Ong Chung Siang - Corporate Leaders Of the Year 2025
Leader at a Glance
Jordan Ong Chung Siang, President of SME Sarawak and MD of WB Resources with over 23 years of experience, was named Corporate Leader of the Year 2025.
Name: Jordan Ong Chung Siang
Designation: Managing Director
Company: WB Resources Sdn Bhd
Industry: Information Technology (IT) and Audio Visual & Lighting (AVL) systems
Country: Malaysia
Designation: Managing Director
Company: WB Resources Sdn Bhd
Industry: Information Technology (IT) and Audio Visual & Lighting (AVL) systems
Country: Malaysia
Jordan Ong Chung Siang - Corporate Leaders Of the Year 2025
Leadership in today’s economy is less about scale and more about coherence. As organisations operate across increasingly complex systems, the real differentiator lies in how well strategy translates into execution over time. This tension between vision and delivery sits at the heart of Jordan Ong Chung Siang’s leadership journey as Managing Director of WB Resources Sdn Bhd and President of SME Association Sarawak. With over two decades in the information technology and professional audiovisual systems space, Jordan has led multi-million-ringgit projects while building organisations that serve sectors ranging from banking and healthcare to government and enterprise. His academic foundation in international business and executive management reinforces a leadership style shaped by operational discipline rather than theory alone. Beyond corporate leadership, his role within the SME Association places him at the intersection of business execution and ecosystem development in Sarawak. In his conversation with The Portfolio Magazine, Jordan examines how leadership expectations have evolved, why execution capacity matters more than intent, and what SMEs must rethink to remain relevant in an increasingly integrated business environment.
What leadership challenge shaped you most while leading a company and an SME community?
The hardest part of this journey was realising that leadership expectations were changing faster than familiar execution models could respond. At WB Resources, clients stopped valuing isolated delivery and began expecting integrated systems, reliability, and long-term partnership value. That shift exposed gaps in team structure, depth of capability, and how success was measured. Projects alone no longer defined credibility; outcomes and scalability became the real tests. Leadership had to evolve accordingly. Decisions began to carry a longer horizon, measured by their relevance over the next five to ten years. Within the SME Association, the pressure looked different. Aligning micro enterprises and mature businesses required moving forward without perfect consensus. That experience sharpened a leadership balance built on inclusive listening supported by clear prioritisation and decisive momentum.
What leadership challenge shaped you most while leading both a company and an SME community?
Right now, the challenge is not confusion about direction, but the weight of execution under constraint. Rising costs, tighter cash flow, and digital disruption have narrowed the margin for error for many SMEs in Sarawak. Most business owners already know digitalisation, cost control, and market diversification matter, yet limited manpower, funding, and technical depth make progress uneven. This gap between intent and action is where momentum often stalls. Within the association, this reality forced a shift from advocacy to enablement through financing awareness, trusted partners, and peer learning. From a corporate lens, another risk keeps surfacing. Technology investments without a clear roadmap often increase cost without improving productivity. Execution capacity, not ambition, is becoming the defining pressure point for SMEs today.
Which recent decision created the most meaningful impact across business and association roles?
One decision that changed outcomes significantly was moving WB Resources away from productdriven projects toward integrated, solution-based delivery. This choice introduced immediate strain. Teams needed retraining, workflows required redesign, and project selection became more selective. Short-term pressure increased, but clarity followed. Client outcomes improved, engagement deepened, and trust strengthened as relationships shifted from transactional to strategic. A similar inflection point emerged within the association. Activity alone created noise without momentum. Prioritising structured, recurring programmes over ad-hoc initiatives built continuity, credibility, and stronger participation. Impact began replacing visibility as the measure of success. These decisions reinforced a simple lesson. Sustainable influence comes from consistency and follow-through, not volume of effort.
“SMEs do not fail from lack of ideas, but from running out of execution capacity at the wrong moment.”
Where do you see the strongest opportunity for SMEs in the coming years?
The strongest opportunity lies in focus rather than expansion. SMEs no longer need to compete on size, but on specialisation, reliability, and integration within larger ecosystems. Regional collaboration and niche positioning are opening paths that scale alone cannot. This requires leaders to move beyond operating in isolation and build partnerships across industries and platforms. Control-based leadership often restricts this shift, while capabilityled growth enables it. From a business standpoint, demand continues to rise for smart systems and integrated technologies that deliver measurable efficiency and sustainability. Capturing this opportunity depends less on ambition and more on process design, integration capability, and continuous upskilling. Execution excellence will separate progress from promise.
What industry changes are leaders still unprepared for, and how are you adapting?
Many leaders remain unprepared for how tightly technology, customer experience, and response speed have converged. Clients no longer tolerate fragmented systems or delayed adaptation. Expectations now revolve around seamless performance, scalability, and reliability. Responding to this shift required deeper commitment to system integration, automation, and internal capability development. Workflows were redesigned, cross-functional collaboration strengthened, and technology investments tied directly to operational outcomes. Within the SME ecosystem, the challenge extends beyond tools into mindset. Technology is still seen too often as a cost rather than a lever. Shifting this perspective requires exposure, shared learning, and practical examples that reduce fear. Leadership today is measured by execution quality, not reaction speed. “Leaders fall behind not because change is fast, but because systems were never built to absorb it.”
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