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KUALA LUMPUR: Dagang Nexchange Bhd (DNeX) has signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) with Saudi Arabia-based Ajlan & Bros Holding Group (Abilitii) to explore business synergy between both companies.

Under the MoU, DNeX said both parties will look into business collaboration in such areas as technology, software products and platforms for facilitating trade, oil and gas production and trade, software development, system integration and consultation services.

In addition, the two companies will leverage on each other’s expertise to explore business opportunities and consider establishing a joint venture company (JVCo) in Saudi Arabia to achieve agreed-upon collaborative arrangements.

Group managing director Tan Sri Syed Zainal Abidin Syed Mohamed Tahir said together with Abilitii, the group will explore the vast opportunities in Saudi Arabia namely efforts in the country’s modernisation and digitalisation as part of the Kingdom’s Vision 2030 through its services and solutions in technology consulting and system integration as well as trade facilitation.

“We intend to bring best practice from Malaysia and experience that we had accumulated through our decades-long experience in the sector and find ways to build, complement and enhanced the service offerings available in the Kingdom with the help of Abilitii,” he said in a statement.

“We are honoured to partner with Abilitii, as it enables us to combine DNeX Group’s technical know-how and expertise in the trade facilitation, system integration and oil and gas sector with Abilitii’s regional expertise, access to market and funding.

“Such partnership may also lead to both parties to find opportunities in the semiconductor industry in both Malaysia and Saudi Arabia,” Syed Zainal said.

Donald Trump ’s plan to take his nascent media company public has had another setback, as federal prosecutors have issued subpoenas to board members of the firm that was to acquire it en route to an IPO.

Digital World Acquisition Corp., a special-purpose acquisition company (aka a blank-check firm), said in an SEC filing that the subpoenas are part of probes of the company by the Department of Justice and the SEC. The actions “could materially delay, materially impede, or prevent the consummation of the business combination,” the filing warned.

The initial product of Trump’s ambitions in media and technology is social media platform Truth Social, which has been operating for the past few months but to little effect. It has not drawn users away from other social media platforms, as was its initial intent. Trump was banned by Twitter after his statements and behavior on January 6, 2021, after the assault on the U.S. Capitol.

Trump Media & Technology Group Corp. and Digital World agreed to merge last October, projecting that the transaction would close in the second half of 2022.

Shares in Digital World, the publicly traded vehicle for the Trump deal, declined 9% in morning trading.

Today’s update from the company noted that the federal investigations had been previously disclosed. But last Friday, the company disclosed that it received a grand jury subpoena with “substantially similar requests” to the previous subpoenas.

The focus of the probes, the company said, is Digital World’s due diligence related to the Trump company as well as communications regarding and due diligence of potential targets other than Trump’s firm. Investigators are also looking at “relationships between and among Digital World (and/or certain of Digital World’s officers and directors) and other entities (including ARC Global Investments II LLC, Digital World’s sponsor, and certain advisors, including Digital World’s underwriter and financial advisor in its initial public offering),” the filing said.

For many people, poetry brings back the memory of being in seventh grade English when they were taught to try to solve the riddle of a poem: the meaning was hidden within the strange and complex syntax of a poem and you had to figure it out in order to get an A on the test.

Poetry may still feel like a secret code that’s tough to break, but contemporary poets will tell you that what you learned in your English class was the wrong approach. Poetry was never meant to be a riddle, but an experience. An experience that cuts through the noise and gets to the heart of the matter. Poetry moves and connects people with few words, distilled imagery, and thoughtful language.

Poet Audre Lorde famously defended the utility of poetry as the first step in changing the status quo, a goal of leaders from any sector. In order to create change, she argues, new ideas have to be formed in language before they can be put into action. She wrote, “Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence… Poetry is the way we help give name to the nameless so it can be thought.”

Poetry utilizes key communication strategies to create powerful experiences through words for the reader or listener. Learning to pay attention to the strategies used by poets, executives can apply them in their own leadership communications. There are three main strategies:

• Power of Imagery
• Music of Language
• Audience Awareness

The Power of Imagery

A key currency in poetry is the image. A concise image can help the audience experience an emotion or an idea more profoundly than a vague abstraction. Poet Elizabeth Hoover explains, “When you describe something in precise and concrete detail, the reader is invited to build the image in their imagination and is invited to enter the space of the story.”

For example, if you were to say: “I realized today how much my mother sacrificed for me” you are relying on the abstraction “sacrificed.” In an audience of 100 people, this word could conjure 100 different ideas and associations. People might react to this idea blandly, thinking, “Oh, that’s nice that she had the realization,” but they won’t necessarily experience this idea on an emotional level.

A poet takes an abstract idea like “sacrifice” and turns into an image using concrete detail. But which detail? When people can be overwhelmed by details (hence the saying, death by powerpoints), choosing the salient details is an art.

In the poem The Raincoat by Ada Limón the poet draws us a picture to replace the abstraction “sacrifice”. She locates her audience in her childhood remembering how her mother drove her to so many doctor appointments for her scoliosis. Then the poem moves to the present moment where she is driving to yet another doctor’s appointment as an adult, when she sees:

…a mom take her raincoat off

and give it to her young daughter when

a storm took over the afternoon. My god,

I thought, my whole life I’ve been under her

raincoat thinking it was somehow a marvel

that I never got wet.

The image of a mother giving her raincoat to her daughter carries with it so much more than the abstract word “sacrifice.” The audience is transported through Limón’s layered storytelling. They are able to imagine how a mother can protectively shelter her child with a raincoat, and they are able to make the connection that Limón’s mother acted as a shelter for her throughout her life. They also experience the speaker’s own surprise at this sudden realization. The audience’s emotions are engaged through the act of imagining the precise details and descriptions in her poem.

It is important that her image is precise, unique and activates the reader’s imagination. For example, if she had written, “She gave her raincoat to her daughter when it started raining cats and dogs” the cliche deflates the power of the image. It pulls you out of the immediacy of the poem. On the other hand, the fresh language of a storm “taking over an afternoon” invites the reader into the moment. Because most poems contain few words, there is no room to waste on tired or cliched language.

In a business context, powerful, concise images can be shared through storytelling. In business and in fundraising there are many abstractions that need to be communicated to different audiences. For Feeding America, for example, food insecurity is the problem they are trying to solve, but talking about food insecurity without concrete images makes it challenging for anyone to connect with the subject. On their Hunger Blog , they use the idea of concrete images to paint a picture of food insecurity. In one particular story, they are trying to illustrate how desperate people can be when they are hungry. To do so they tell the story of a specific person who once faced hunger and include a poignant detail: “At one point, he sold a gold ring so that he could buy something to eat.” The gold ring is a detail that an audience can connect to. Many people can look down at their own finger and imagine how it would feel to pawn their own jewelry for a meal. Taking it to the next level, a storyteller might include more precise language about the food he bought with the ring money: “At one point, he sold a gold ring so that he could buy a loaf of bread and jar of peanut butter.”

The next time you have an abstract idea you need to help your audience engage with, ask yourself what concrete image you should describe precisely to help your audience feel and connect with this idea. The image should be able to convey the complexity of the idea you are trying to describe without all the jargon.

Poet Ezra Pound instructed writers of his day, “To go in fear of abstractions.” Today’s business leaders could do well by the same advice. We best not to rely too much on ideas and abstractions to carry meaning to audiences, but rather, trust specific, concrete images to provoke the imagination and allow you to connect with your audience on a whole new level.

Learn two more poetic strategies business leaders can use to connect with their audiences.