Category Archives: Life

A recruiter (from one of those search firms) approached me in connection to the position from a prominent company in Singapore (without disclosing who it was). I did a google search on the details of the job description and I found a job posting for that company. The title in the position was lower but the description is the same overall. I’m not too sure what this meant but a friend of mine thought it’d be interesting if I had gone ahead, apply for the job position and tried to negotiate a sign-on bonus given that I helped to save the company some fees from the recruiter.

I’ve written about the business of recruitment before and honestly, I wonder what is the value they bring. Maybe yes, they did create some value in alerting me to the position; but both the prospective employer and employee could just strike a separate bargain without them. Perhaps it makes sense for us to pay the recruiter a certain fee to be in the picture to help us negotiate a better deal with the prospective employer? Or maybe the search firm can guarantee to the company they will search for someone to take on the role again if the current person leaves within certain amount of time, and taking less or no fees off the next candidate who is suitable.

Still, I truly wonder what are the real skills that makes a recruiter his or her living. Maybe it is a niche that can be cultivated. After all, a property agent gets to know a location and the amenities better; they also focus on thinking about different demographics and their needs to serve the people better. And then there are the financial planners or insurance agents; they may go beyond the conflict of interest and think about the life stages of potential clients and what exactly are good products to offer. Recruitment companies needs to cultivate their network of people in the particular field. The difficulty is that people are starting to hop around a lot more and move around in different niches; and at the same time, the needs of the firms are transforming even if they remain in the same ‘industry’ so to speak.

Recruitment as a business is going to get tougher. And corporate customers of these search firms need to know that their bargaining position are getting better.

There has been a lot of activities in the sustainability space. Not just projects, opportunities for various different companies but individual professionals have been presented lots of job opportunities in Singapore and Hong Kong. The situation is a bit of a musical chairs because everyone are looking for experienced individuals but there are only so few of them so then it becomes a competition on salaries.

Companies need to think about the individuals as people and not just human resources; they need to think about what it means for them to progress in careers or how they have progressed. In a bid to hire, they may end up causing trouble for these individuals as they place higher expectations on them even when they don’t really have the actual fit needed (mostly because who they might be looking for do not exist in the market).

Then there are companies who are basically hiring ‘cheaper’ juniors and then using contractors to help train these juniors to hopefully get to a level of competence that will serve them well. Most of these juniors will actually leave in search of other opportunities; others might stay to continue building up the practice.

Ultimately, the question to ask both the individuals and the companies is whether they have levelled up in the process. Because it doesn’t really matter the salary you’re offered or how many clients you manage to take on assignments for. The longer term metric that keeps those good things going, is knowing who you’re serving, what you’re serving them for, and actually being able to serve it.

So there was a recent announcement about how the ministry of education in Singapore is raising Teacher’s pay by up to 10%. Across the board. Well not exactly a proper across-the-board raising because they are going to raise at varying percentages – perhaps based on level of seniority. Then there were genuine voices of concern about work-life balance. I’ve so many friends and family who are teachers and they echo the same thing. The fact that the work load issue is not arising for the first time already reflects that it has not been solved.

So many times, when people are talking about increasing Teacher-student ratio in the classroom, our leadership would talk about how there had been academic studies that teacher-student ratio does not improve academic performance reliably or that it correlates poorly. Yet that should not be the only metric we care about. We don’t want burnt out teachers; it is a caring profession and people need to have that emotional time and space to take care of themselves before they can care for others.

Now if teaching is so challenging, why do we still have so many teachers? It’s because there are so many people in our society and world who are not just interested to make a living; they want to make a difference. And they want to be able to know their work matters. In Singapore, while the system is not perfect as a social leveller, the education system is in many ways the main channel for people to move up the social ladder. Teachers are uniquely empowered to take on this role and give encouragement that really matters.

So policymakers have to know this and be clear in their minds about what the teachers really are there for. Because the more red tape, the more silly structures that prevent teachers from making a genuine difference with their work, the more discouraging it is. The pay raise will help to a certain extent. Giving more time, especially making sure protected leave period during holidays are genuinely protected; and making sure teachers are not over-working. And finally, putting less obstacles in their way of making a difference in the lives of students. Maximise time with students, minimise time with papers, marking, invigilation, reporting or administrative stuff. You’ll probably see the system being less organised from a top-down perspective – but you might see a better outcome.

Where do creative ideas come from?

I could have titled this post with that question. Or I could talk about writing product reviews. In fact, most of my writings are commentary on things; and that’s what product reviews are essentially about. So product reviews or the way I approach it, is exactly the same sort of approach I take towards most of my creative writing or even storytelling.

It starts with observation and close observation. That sometimes get mixed up with ‘thinking’; because we do try to ‘think’ and recall things about our experience with a product, or anything, in order to come up with our views about it. But the truth is that when we interact with a product, that itself already underlies the experience. And we have to be observing it to begin to have an awareness of that interaction.

Take for example, toilet paper that we use daily. What can you say about it? What have you observed?

How often do you think about how many ply it is. Or the texture: is it soft, moist, too dry, powdery? Then the perforation along each section: is it well perforated? Does it tear well or easily? I hate it when the edges don’t tear well and you’ve got this long tiny strip at the end that doesn’t go off. Some of the paper are so poorly perforated, it doesn’t tear well and you end up having shredded pieces at the end.

And then, does the different ply within a sheet stick well together? I hate it when I lift off only one or two ply on top and there’s some left which goes back into the reel when you pull and that creates such a ridiculous conundrum where the different ply sticks to the wrong side or drops off as you tear it. Absolute disaster.

Finally, the core; what is the color of the cardboard; does it smell stinky? Does it feel thick? What can you use with it? How would you recycle it?

If you were to simply engage the world a little more, even with the simplest and most mundane things in life; it can be so infinitely more interesting. And it all starts with observation.

When you discover you’re bad at something, what do you do?

Would you stop and give up? Or find out what exactly makes one good? Or even better: find out how you are bad at it? Then what? What will you do with those truths you discover? Does it just take practice? How conscious must you be in doing the right things? How much are you willing to change your gait, your approach, your habits, and mindset to get it right? Will you hire a coach? Or will you find someone good and ask them ‘coach me’?

Which attribute is making you bad at it?

Is it the time it takes for you to do something? What about the thought patterns and thinking that goes through your mind to figure out what you have to do? Is that the part which is cloudy and hard to make clear? What is a map that can help you? Have you gone out and try and identify a framework or structure for thinking? Who do you normally approach when you encounter such challenges?

If you can work on all these, you’d be able to learn anything and do everything – up to a reasonable extent. But are you willing to do it?

When you’re going through a hard time; most often people will be asking themselves where they’d rather be. And the images of alternative reality comes into mind. And the nice things that you’re missing out on just floats around. And the reality you are going through just sucks a little more. How is that helping?

Better to ask yourself what can I learn from this? To put your brain into that curious learning mode. When we ask a question of ‘why’ in a manner where we cannot answer, we are not actually in a learning mode. Because to interrogate reality requires first that you’re willing to find out the truth rather than to dream up alternative reality that fits your psychology.

When you start with ‘what am I trying to accomplish here?’, you begin to question reality by first getting your intentions right. Then you take the little steps to advance your intention, and put yourself in more reflective mode to be conscious about the things you’re truly getting from the experience. The learnings, and not just the outcomes of doing a piece of work.

The conditioning we’ve gotten since going through the school system is that there are times when you learn, and there are times when you express your learnings. False. Reality doesn’t work like this. Neither does your brain. You learn because you do the work. Period. And if you’re ‘suffering’ from work, that’s really when you’re learning.

When you work for a huge organisation, you spend a lot of time in meetings. Significant number of them are in alignment meetings. What happens in them? People bargain over what should be priority across their teams so that the organisation is not wasting resources moving in different directions. They want to put it down on paper that these are the priority projects and they jointly agree to work on them.

But through the year, things happens and ad-hoc opportunities appear so the different teams jump upon them and the alignment meetings themselves became the waste of resources.

Why not align our intentions instead and make sure that we all sync-up our criteria on what constitute importance, and the principles for assigning something to be priority throughout the year. Especially when they randomly pop up. Isn’t this a better way to organise ourselves? Sure, people’s judgments may differ slightly but that’s not as bad a point for contention than having to throw the work of hours of meeting out of the window?

When I was in the infrastructure business; they always say, you’re this close to being extremely rich and this close (much smaller gap) to being bankrupt. And so the takeaway is that you have to fake it till you make it. You need to make sure everyone believes in the project; that the demand is there, or can be fostered, and the project will be financed, so that the demand can be addressed. And then probably at some point, the project can be sold off to someone richer, with stronger balance sheet and cash position.

I never truly felt comfortable with that. I always thought it was important to build trust on the ground and be candid about the situation. You may start collecting wind data with some wind masts, work with local villages about getting access to their farm land for wind turbines, etc. But you will have to be clear to them about the risks. Also engage the financiers sincerely, sharing the impact of your work and the scale of the possibilities.

Today, in the sustainability world, there are a lot of people taking up leadership positions of Chief Sustainability Officer but really just with a thin layer of credential or experience dealing with genuine sustainability issues and topics. The world is going to learn and catch up very rapidly. And you’ll be tossed 101 different issues you won’t be able to google for answers. Ironically, those positions are not sustainable. You can fake it but it’ll be hard for you to eventually make it.

And it’s going to be bad for mental health. Imposter syndrome is one thing; being an actual fraud is another.

People are stressed, burnt out and resigning. Why do people leave their jobs today. Most of them are working too hard; and there’s this performance workaholic-ism out there. On Linkedin, on TV, by our politicians trying to show they are working for the people; by our civil servants, by the MPs. Welcome to work in Singapore.

There is a game out there. Everyone is trying to out-work one another. Everyone is performing, and no one wants to lose out. The performance-driven-ness in Singapore is really about showing off hard work. The truth however, is we are tired. Mentally and physically. And we all need rest. We confess that. But are we backing down? Before illness sets on you. Before it’s too late.

We ought to get better not just at admitting we need rest and resting. But communicating that enough is enough. There’s always good reason to work more, to do more, to think that it’s about excellence and growth. But it can also be about mental health, and illness, and life. If we can learn to be more human once again, to share about our limits, to care for one another by not just checking in but creating space for one another; for our vendors, clients, consultants, we can really make the future one that is worth living in.

I think it is a red flag when your boss post on Linkedin that he is working during a national public holiday. This sort of public display of workaholic-ism should probably be more regulated as it breeds an extremely unhealthy culture. Especially for those who are taking on higher position within an organisation.

Years ago, one of the number two or three person of an important public institution I worked with passed away suddenly of heart attack. It happened on a Sunday and I was shocked because I just received an email from him the Thursday before where he approved something I was seeking permission for. My friend had a worse shock because he received an email from the person just a few hours before he passed away. And yes, he was replying a work email on Sunday.

Then a week ago, a friend told me her colleague who was with her on an pretty intense work trip just passed on from heart attack after he returned from the trip. That was an emotional time but for most part, people at work moved on. And naturally, someone else took on and continued the important work he did.

So much life gets given away to work but what is lost by the family can never be returned. How can we make a future of work be one where work truly enables a life worth living?