This year, the focus extends far beyond traditional financial targets. By unifying our regional strengths, investing heavily in our people, and shifting from individualistic market approaches to a powerful collective scale, our Global and Group leaders are building a foundation designed for enduring resilience. Below, they share their strategic blueprints for the year ahead.
Enduring Capabilities, Inclusive Leadership, and Sustainable Innovation
Investing deeply in our own people stands as the ultimate priority for Gladys Goh this year. She believes that real growth is generated by stretching mindsets and giving employees the confidence and space to take full ownership of their roles. A key example is the Strategic Marketing Capabilities initiative, which deliberately invests in stronger product management so teams can think strategically and connect market insights directly to clear customer value. By developing clearer product ownership and more disciplined lifecycle thinking, the organisation is building a capability that will support innovation and growth well beyond individual product cycles.
Equally central to her vision is the understanding that high performance cannot come at the expense of employee wellbeing. Gladys champions everyday leadership behaviours that create space for honest conversations and sustainable ways of working. She explicitly emphasises clarity over urgency and progress over pressure. When people feel trusted, heard, and supported, they bring their best energy to work, forming the true foundation of a resilient team.
Looking toward the future legacy of the Group, Gladys is heavily focused on diversity and inclusion, with a particular emphasis on creating intentional pathways for female leadership and providing young talent with the early exposure and mentorship needed to grow. Externally, she is driving relevance by anticipating customer needs around sustainability. For Nippon Paint Marine, this means focusing on solutions that improve vessel efficiency, reduce environmental impact, and help customers navigate tightening regulations and decarbonisation pressures. To ensure these complex solutions succeed, she is actively breaking down silos by bringing Marketing, R&D, Sales, and Technical teams together much earlier in the decision-making process to guarantee alignment from the very start.
Structuring for Systemic Excellence and Value Creation
Stepping into 2026, the Malaysia Group is undergoing a critical shift in perspective that prioritises standards over scale. Mr. Yaw emphasises that market leadership is no longer determined by size alone, but by how consistently the organisation delivers value and trust. The ambition is for stakeholders to recognise Nippon Paint not merely as a market leader, but as a definitive “Best-in-Class” partner. By establishing discipline through the PDT (Product Development Team) Work Standard, the Group ensures that excellence becomes a repeatable, institutionalised process rather than depending on individual cycles.
To stay ahead of changing customer expectations, the Group is moving upstream by evolving from simply selling products to delivering integrated, outcome-driven solutions. This is heavily supported by “Connect,” the enterprise operating backbone that links strategy to execution and ensures 100% market visibility. This robust ecosystem allows the Group to compete on value creation, earning the right to high-tier pricing and sustaining industry-leading profitability.
Crucially, Mr. Yaw notes that high-performing teams are sustained by structure, not just motivation. By defining clear priorities and decision rights through PDT governance, the Group is removing ambiguity from the system. When teams operate under one standard and one rhythm, pressure is replaced with purpose, creating an environment where performance and wellbeing reinforce one another.
Driving Collective Synergy and Authentic Leadership
Thong Yin is leading a decisive shift for the Nippon Paint Singapore Group by moving away from isolated operations to fully activate the massive scale and shared capabilities of the broader NIPSEA network. A prime example of this strategic pivot is the ongoing integration of HR, Finance, and MIS resources across the entire Singapore Group. By consolidating these vital functions, the division is building a much stronger and more unified operational backbone. Coupled with this integration is an uncompromising focus on compliance and integrity. Thong Yin is championing strict adherence to companywide mandatory processes and Delegation of Authority rules, ensuring that sensitive functions like procurement maintain a highly transparent and arm’s length approach.
Securing sustainable growth in today’s market requires genuine outside of the box thinking and a commitment to breaking down regional silos. Thong Yin is driving this cross functional collaboration through targeted regional initiatives like the Dual Core project. This innovative model allows two different branches to work together seamlessly, where one handles product specification while the actual sales execution takes place in another. She is also spearheading Project Machine, an initiative designed to leverage the highly successful Pro-connect ecosystem originating from the Nippon Paint Malaysia Group and adapt its robust capabilities directly into the Nippon Paint Singapore Group.
Internally, successfully navigating these ambitious structural goals ultimately comes down to authentic leadership. By focusing on being genuine and transparent in her daily management approach, Thong Yin ensures her teams feel continuously motivated, trusted, and fully supported to deliver their best work throughout the year.
