Author Archives: Kevin L

Net zero actions

Reducing carbon emissions is about doing less things. But our culture and economy is not used to that. Maybe that’s why it is easier to sell the idea that we must do more new things or different things.

New actions from various parties in the economy requires new forms of coordination. We are not familiar with all that and neither are we familiar with the roles, actions and expectations.

In some sense the talents who used to do this sort of work would have come from those with public policy background but because of the manner the economy and talent flows have evolved in the past few decades, these people now come from everywhere.

For those in research, it is knowledge that catalyses actions. For those in politics it is the voice from the people. And for businesses, it would tend to be what constitutes opportunity, these various pockets of objectives, desired outcomes and tools need to be laid out and strung together.

It’s not too late. But things need to be done.

Being entertained

After sharing David Foster Wallace’s speech, I looked a bit more into the things he said about the kind of themes he tend to think and write about. One of the really big theme is some kind of cultural addiction to entertainment, and in some sense, the growing feebleness of the mind – especially the part that deals with deeper thinking and autonomy.

We have in some sense, replaced that powerful autonomy that Victor Frankl described about the choice of our response to external environment/circumstances, with a kind of superficial sense of choice: which shampoo to buy, what clothes to wear, the jobs to desire, etc. We become weaker at assessing which politician deserves our vote, which friends deserve more of our attention, what character and values we want to truly establish for ourselves and kids.

The sheer noise and pervasiveness of entertainment, and the values of banal, basic type of stuff that gains our attention comes to dominate our lives. Intellectual domains becomes devolved to just what is considered professional and sophisticated at work, or some kind of aristocratic indulgences. Ordinary lives, which is often much more transcendental than we care to recognise, becomes just ordinary for the lack of exercising that deeper bits of our minds.

Passing exams

It’s interesting how people are amazed by ChatGPT passing exams. Exams are narrowly designed processes with somewhat clear rubric for determining scores, exactly the same type of process that had been used to train and improve machine learning and artificial intelligence. Never mind that it’s passing Wharton MBA or law exams, these are special situations which are designed specifically to be somewhat ‘gamed’. And these are the situations where machines are in their elements.

The fact that they only pass the exams and not excel, reflects that the variability of the exams and the desire to really pick out top human candidates. This is also a test for the exams-setting as it reflects that they are not at all about just getting the answers right. Rather, exams should be designed and set to be open-minded to ‘surprise me’ type of situations.

We could all become machine-like, ask ‘What is going to be on the test?‘ and then approach it by trying to get answers right to everything. Or we can learn to solve real world problems by acting like humans, accepting our weaknesses and vulnerability, and cracking on bit by bit. Problems are rarely solved by invulnerability – they are typically solved by first acknowledging what we don’t know and moving at the edges of what we do know.

Negative prices

What are negative prices in the market? When you don’t want something and have to pay someone to take it. But why can’t you just “dispose” it somehow? Or “leave it there”? Maybe there are regulations in place. Or maybe there isn’t a place that you can and want to “leave it”

Carbon prices are negative prices; you need to pay someone to take it away. By creating regulations to prevent people from just “leaving it there (in the atmosphere)”, you push the cost of disposal to the polluters and set out the signals and momentum necessary to rewire the system.

Free market doesn’t emerge spontaneously; it requires regulation, boundaries and legal mechanisms to enforce rules, especially explicit ones. Implicit rules are also necessary to keep things together. Question is if we are willing to create a system intellectual property and enforce rights to spark innovation, why aren’t we doing so for climate change?

Use of talents

I wrote about finding talents; but what do you do after finding them? Do you leverage them? Do you beat them into conforming with the system and structures you’ve created? The use of talents is more important than finding them because you’re not going to keep them if you think that the transaction is just about remuneration in exchange for them applying their abilities to your problems.

Conditions need to be created to leverage on our talents better and that can come from remuneration but it also involves the structure of work, processes and the environment created by managers and prevailing cultures.

If you don’t have them, then finding talents might be a waste of time and resources.

Managing cuts

There will be a time cuts come when excesses are deemed to have gone overboard. This applies to overstocking, overhiring, and having the wrong structure to deal with a problem. At some point, what is deemed as a correction occurs. Question is how did things get derailed or misaligned? Why do we not know? Should we think something is amiss when governance mistakes can be buffered by growth?

Maybe something to think about as we go through a period of layoffs, cuts and sense of rising prices and real rates trying to make a comeback. As we manage the cuts that has taken place, it would be useful to ask ourselves to what extent do we want to enable growth irresponsibly.

Fast and mindless growth can hurt twice. First when they forsake and leave some behind. Second when they end up with cutbacks that might leave some folks worse off than if it hadn’t happened.

What is waste?

What constitutes waste for you? Is it when you decide something is useless for you? Or when you throw out something? Where you dispose of them matters because it defines where it goes and it determines what happen to the materials or matter and if it is classified as waste. The overall psyche of our current populace is mostly driven by the out of sight, out of mind approach to waste.

We could change the very idea of waste so that there is better recognition of the value of the material. This helps reduce the waste and encourage reusing.

Or we can make it way easier to recycle. But recycling will have to be different from disposal. And the recycling activity needs to be valued differently.

The real me

When we act out of character, was it us? Or was it the environment? Or both? We should come to terms that as humans, our behaviours are inconsistent and usually contextual. It’s true that the idea of character pretty much assumes there is some kind of consistency and continuity in a person – the way he or she behaves and the moral qualities involved.

To what extent can we consider external circumstances driving one’s behaviour or material outcomes? And to what extent is one culpable. This is not just a question of law and legal proceedings but also in everyday dealings, perceptions and relationship management. What is the story we choose to let ourselves hold on to?

Gestating for scale

I loved my laksa example when it comes to talking about scale and growth. How long do you think a concept or idea needs to gestate before it experiences mass adoption and succeed? And does success mean growth and scale? Or can success mean mastery towards perfection?

Take Toast Box; they took the simple breakfast fare of the Southeast Asian chinese, created a system to deliver it elegantly, and scaled in it a big way. But how long did it take for the kaya toast and half-boiled eggs to gestate in the cultural environment before they were ready for this Toast Box model?

When something is gestating, there is growth as well. The growth may be of a different quality and require a different environment. Just as the pre-mature foetus won’t be able to survive the environment outside the womb independently. This may sound like the “infant industry” argument but perhaps different – I’m advocating that we don’t apply the same standards to evaluating business growth across all kinds of businesses or business ideas.

At the end of the day, it is a question of what capital is seeking. To replicate and produce more of itself without care for the impact to the world, or making a difference along the way