Category Archives: Careers

Questions we ask ourselves matters. Do we base our decision on the answer to “Is this good enough” or “Is this the best”? The result can deeply influence our ability to make other choices and commitments. I’ve been pondering about our power to choose and the manner we ought to exercise it.

Like I’ve said many times, our education system haven’t done enough to encourage questions compared to seeking answers and if we think life is a series of finding answers to problems thrown at us, then we have it seriously wrong. Yet that is what our system continually encourage us to think. Life do throw problems at us but we can choose which ones to solve and which ones to deal with first, or later. We are doing that continuously by procrastinating or neglecting certain problems we face.

Having to account for yourself or suffer the consequences of your choices does not take the power of choice away from you. So all the more we should be exercising the power carefully. The myth is that we can do it all and enjoy the set of consequences we want. The real world is more interesting than that.

Having studied overseas and been exposed to a variety of cultures, even within Singapore, I came to recognise more so in workplaces and social environments the culture’s ability to tolerate differences. In reality, there will always be differences amongst individuals but some cultures require more appearance of conformity than others. Typically, these culture thinks that uniformity is the same as unity.

But uniformity and conformity is so different from unity; there’s a lot more in terms of spirit, morale and emotional connection that matters when it comes to unity. So different cultures requires that differences be presented differently. Confrontational cultures might be more accepting of being upfront with ‘I disagree’ – but for the less confrontational cultures, try saying:

• I don’t understand this perspective, maybe you can explain [the point]…
• Let us review the objectives of this exercise…
• Have you considered some alternatives?

Did you choose the job you are in? Or the course you’re studying? Or the friends you have around you? Or the spouse you’re married to? How many were your choice? Which were results of social expectations or pressure? Whose wishes are you fulfilling in one choice or another?

Often, even when we have the power to choose, we willingly give up this power. It could be because we are unwilling to take ownership of the outcomes or that we feel unequiped to take on the mental load of making a well-reasoned choice. We default to some social expectations or conform to some kind of norm.

That can be a huge mistakes as these commitments can accumulate and affect subsequent options and choices. It is not going to be one-off but a continually-unfolding situation. So what will encourage you to take up your power to choose again?

So some lawyers cheated in Bar exams in 2020. It is all the more ironic and shocking that one of the papers involved was about professional ethics. I’m afraid professional exams and papers including materials on ethics and conduct have descended into a mere tollbooth or barrier to entry rather than serving its meaningful purpose of qualifying the right candidates.

As a culture, we have gradually focused more and more on measureable attributes especially such as competence, at the expense of character. And because character wins out only in the very long term, in a society where speed, convenience, showing immediate results are important, attributes like integrity takes a big hit.

These incidents call to question whether taking exams on code of conduct is sufficient. And whether character is built upon knowing some kind of moral code vis-a-vis believing and practising them.

I’ve an inkling, but no research to back me up, that the prevalence of family breakdowns, rising rates of divorce and dysfunctional relationships can in themselves be traced back to this failure as a culture to invest in and bother with character attributes. Relationships, personal and family are the ones that have to really withstand the test of time unlike a job, a business traction or a year in school. These would naturally suffer more when our view of character has come so low in our thoughts about what makes a successful human being.

Fresh graduates from JCs or Polytechnics are thinking about degree programmes and university choices. They are thinking about their career options that comes after. There is a thousand voices and considerations blaring at them to go one direction or another.

Having a choice is such a powerful thing we may refuse to give it up. And often that can mean not making the choice. Because retaining the power is more attractive. Making a choice involves actually discarding the options which were once present. Going to law school means not being able to study medicine, and choosing to study locally means you may not get to build an overseas network during your college days.

When making a choice, are you focused on what you’d gain or what you’d lose? Because if you care about loss like the way you’ve been taught by the education system to, then you’ll never make the choice. And it is a shame. Keeping your options open does not necessarily make you better off.

I grew up with a diet of Chinese dramas about emperors and nobility or the martial arts world. Often, an emperor or noblemen travels incognito in their own territories. Or a martial arts expert who blends into the cityscape as just a beggar. Great and amazing people who turns up as ordinary. And that kind of being on the ground was actually celebrated, and seen as a positive form of leadership. It was something admirable.

Yet when I’m grown up we don’t seem to be taught to feel this way about being on the ground. Or about being management; there’s always images of cushy offices, well-stocked pantries, brainstorming rooms, being in meetings. Do MBA programmes teach their students how to be on the ground? Or even the benefits of all that?

We don’t hear such stories of management being on the ground in our modern day life often. The latest story I heard that is remotely similar is the CEO of Sheng Siong supermarkets going down to their Tanglin Halt branch to shelf food items when they were shorthanded. And he apparently does the ground work very often. There had been incredible stories about how Sheng Siong staff are cared for, and also care for one another. But if this was never a metric, why would the management bother? Shouldn’t we be challenged to consider being ‘on the ground’ as a metric or attribute leaders need to meet? As a culture, shouldn’t we redefine what good management should look like?

What if learning was a journey and not a place to get to? What if there’s no target benchmarks of grades, no exams to sit for, and just a practice to get better? The beauty of the modern society and system is that we’ve created so many different scaffolding structures to help us learn and be better that we forgot what we were doing them for. We had created so many milestones along a journey so that we can walk it, so much so that we now care only for the milestones but not the journey itself.

So when we join a class to learn something, we want a certificate; we think we don’t need the peer support, the social pressure, the breaks and banter. We think it’s about the training, the content and the knowledge. We forget the interactions, the joy of learning and being uncomfortable.

What can we do to keep reminding ourselves it is a journey and we want to be in the place of tension, to be emotionally committed to the work of learning? How can we see the discomfort as a journey we embark on to be better and get better than one we want to get done and over with?

Should practice be harder than the real test so that we are less challenged by the actual testing? And that we’ll be able to respond well?

How much tension and discomfort should we be subjected to in the course of our education? Should we expect our kids to have it easy? What are our expectations on the teachers? What is the role of parents and how should they set their expectations?

Shouldn’t parents be trained in parenting before they are allowed to be parents? Drivers need licenses, accountants have to be certified and so why do we assume humans can grow into good parents? Do we not want some minimal hygiene level of ability in parenting?

There are plenty of job scams around; and then there are lots of recruitment agencies running around trying to gather a huge database of profiles and just tossing them around to various parties who needs people. I get people contacting me about job opportunities every other week.

But incentives are pretty misaligned. The question is who does the recruitment and HR industry serve? Does it serve the employer, or the employee? Or is it just serving itself? Because “helping you find your dream job” or “finding your dream candidate” sounds compelling and yet from the revenue generation perspective, if people stay at the same jobs and employers hold on to the same people, they do not gain.

The presence of recruitment agency makes the whole process of hiring, handling resignations, searching for another candidate a very negative sum game. Is recruitment really so value-adding to the system? Or is it just really about value diversion.

So when it comes to thinking strategically about jobs, and filling of roles, I’d like to give a brilliant example from Seth Godin’s blog post last month. Look at how it builds up this reasoning and strategic thinking step by step:

The typical online job site lists millions of jobs. And just about every one of them is a cry for expertise.

From the title to the requirements, companies hire for expertise.

Logic helps us understand that only one out of ten people are in the top 10% when it comes to expertise. And that means that most companies are settling for good enough. If the organization needs people with expertise in the top decile, they’re going to have to pay far more and work far harder to find and retain that sort of skill.

So most companies don’t try. They create jobs that can be done pretty well by people with a typical amount of expertise.

That means that the actual differentiator in just about every job is attitude.

This is a demonstration of how you can develop insights about the market, the jobs and work that you’re seeking to do. If there’s a certification, a clear degree-specific requirement on a job role in order to satisfy regulatory needs, then there’s no point fighting over it. Otherwise, things should be negotiable and how you get yourself through the hop would depend on what you identify to the more important attributes the company is actually hiring for.