Category Archives: Life

I don’t really like administrative tasks. Do you? They are pretty good for feeling somewhat productive. At least for most of us. Being able to fill up a simple form that gets you through to the next stage, or file a report to get bite sized information to your boss that he can bring to his boss or see a bigger picture than the nitty gritty can feel ‘productive’. But this is part of a longer chain of work that must all take place before real work happens.

Admin that keeps information flowing is useful and productive only when decisions are made based on them and action taken. The reason why consultants are often able to make recommendations that can bring about cost savings in big companies because somewhere somehow, there’s always someone churning out reports that no one is actually reading or bothering with. But no one told him to stop so he didn’t stop. And he is probably afraid to find out that he’s been wasting his time all these while, if he does stop and no one notices.

And people also don’t spend enough effort designing admin and processes that makes life easier for those who are doing the admin work. More importantly, the work ought to be more useful to them than their bosses. We’ve taken for granted that admin tasks are only for those receiving it but someone working on admin tasks can benefit from the discoveries in putting numbers together, aggregating things. If we can create intuitive platforms that generates dopamine hits for little admin tasks done by a worker, that’ll be a greater use of technology than the attention-hungry social media platform.

When businesses think there is a shortage of good employees, it is high time to consider if the issue could be that there’s a shortage of good employers. While the government thinks about building up good manpower and talents for the companies they want to attract; they also need to consider the quality of employers and jobs created in Singapore. One of the reasons for Singapore’s success is the constant fine-tuning of this.

Our government agencies through design and by policy have a deep understanding of the two-sided nature of the labour market. And there’s recognition that in order for there to be employment, have to balance the demand and supply for labour delicately. This means that having some kind of liberal immigration regime is important, so that gaps in our domestic workforce can be closed.

Nevertheless, over periods of very serious dislocations of the skills demanded and supplied by our domestic workforce, there can be problems of foreign labour being demanded more than domestic labour; and with a huge pool of companies based here but unable to find suitable staff. Restructuring the economy is painful business and it is hard to tell whether the situation is temporary or permanent. Being able to continue dreaming about what is the future economy and suite of jobs made available in the economy for Singaporeans is important.

I spent some time listening to what George Yeo had to say about Singapore and his conception of cities. I found his insights incisive and pretty valuable for Singaporeans who are serious about creating a future for our nation. It’s great that we do have people like him, Ho Kwon Ping, Han Fook Kwang, who are providing valuable thoughts to challenge our country to do better and to consider our circumstances with new perspective. I’m thankful also for the presence of Institute of Policy Studies and the work they do in creating such open conversation.

Whilst I had the fortune of spending a few years in Chinese High where such open dialogues about the policies and approaches in school were welcomed, even embraced, I also went through a period where the administration became defensive, practiced “open conversations” merely in name. Town halls that I experienced in my subsequent work life mirrors those assemblies that I had in school. I don’t know how much of my generation was brought up to think and question status quo in these ways, and I fear that as a consequence, such open, public dialogues and airing of intellectual views are going to be limited.

My generation have gotten used to the notion of “open dialogues” or town halls being peddled around as part of our cultural value but what is truly expressed tends to be the suppression of dissent, and questioning of people’s motives for genuine questions asked. I wonder, how many more loving critics (as Prof Tommy Koh would put it) have the courage to emerge as the baton of our country’s leadership gets passed on to the new generation.

Coal is still responsible for 40% of the world’s electricity generated. And Oil was still responsible for 30% of the world’s energy consumption. Meanwhile we think that the world is making big strides towards decarbonisation. Yes it probably is now, and it seems to be so more than ever but the truth is, the world, several decades earlier, had less carbon in the atmosphere, was consuming less energy and certainly not emitting as much carbon dioxide.

The issue is that solar plants, wind turbines, offshore wind are all very visible. Even when they generate not that much power. A single coal fired power plant complex can generate way more power but is typically tucked away somewhere, by some coast where there’s some small jetty ferrying coal from some mines elsewhere.

Electric vehicles, EV chargers, though somewhat uncommon in Asia Pacific for now, are still considerably visible. So are apps showing you where chargers are once they become prevalent. It would seem everyone is trying to do their part for the world. But the ocean liners are hidden out of plain sight. Together with all those bulk carrier vessels ferrying coal from the countries of origin to where the coal power plants are, the container vessels are powered by dirty marine fuels which are typically from oil. Not the nice flowing gasoline or petroleum that runs our cars, not even slightly yucky diesel but much heavier, long carbon-chain fuels which emit more carbon dioxide.

And oh, the trucks moving long distances and carrying the containers which were lifted off those ships, they are also running on fossil fuel. The stuff which a slightly less visible, that the bulk of the real economy runs on, is still pumping so much carbon into our atmosphere. So if we restrict our thinking about energy transition just to electrification and renewable energy, we are seriously losing a lot of the big picture.

How many students are an average teacher in Singapore responsible for? How many teachers have responsibility for a single student over the course of his/her education in that single academic year? Over the years, there’s always questions raised in Parliament (or more recently here) and even internally within MOE about class sizes in Singapore. The answer has always been around considering resourcing for the students, more activities, more inputs, better quality, etc. And the conclusion, explicit or implied, is that we are progressing, improving and please don’t distract us from doing the good job we’re trying to do.

Maybe it’s time to stop giving non-answers? Maybe it’s time to say, look, our teachers are pretty burnt out, we’re making them responsible for too many things and parents are having higher and higher expectations on the schools without playing a stronger part in raising their kids themselves! So what if you send them for classes, or give them expensive toys that stimulates them, or expose them to different summer camps and experiences and so on. What are you teaching them? What are the values you seek to impart and how much time are you spending on that? How much of you; your attention, your capacity, your life are you giving your children? And how much are you outsourcing?

The most important human resource in the society that is responsible for moulding the future is not our teachers but our parents. In allowing the social narrative to load the responsibility on teachers, we are short-changing our children and our future generation. MOE should perhaps start education for parents, training them at parenting and stop shedding their responsibilities for their children to the system. Because that is the most important capability development that our society might need to help our next generation.

It’s 2007, Bear Sterns was suffering from the failure of their subprime funds and there were initial signs of warning on Lehman Brothers. My classmates and I at Hwa Chong were preparing for the A Levels. There was homework and mostly, a completed copy of mine was being passed around to be copied. “Please copy with understanding”, I reminded everyone.

There were two types of people in my class who were copying my homework. There were the ones who thought, “if I was doing the same things as everyone else, then if we are all wrong together, I’m ok”. There were, of course, those who actually copied with understanding, could catch my mistakes and then made their answers better. Some were kind enough to tell me and help me do better though others were more competitive and preferred to get ahead of me in grades.

Are you chasing deniability or chasing excellence? And when chasing excellence, do you think of it only in terms of outcome-based performance, or socio-moral performance?

When I was in kindergarten, we had play time when you get to “drive” around a little plastic car. And there were limited number of those toys so I had to wait for my turn. You don’t actually drive them around, it was basically a chair on wheels with a box around it and a steering wheel that directed the wheels on the chair and you had to move it with your legs. You get to ‘drive’ around the little yard in school for a while before you let someone else do it.

Limited number of ‘cars’, limited yard space, lots of kids, so we got to ration, wait for our turn to play. As we grow up, we are told companies have limited resources, there’s limited manpower and attention, so you get your turn to drive some projects, when it comes. And you wait, to be chosen to drive, to steer the things towards a direction you believe in (or maybe not), forgetting that it was going to be you powering the whole thing to begin with.

Seth Godin have written and spoke extensively about how everyone in the industrial system has been conditioned to be waiting to be picked, to be chosen, rather than to take action. Because we want to fit in, we don’t want to disrupt the system.

Most of us in corporate jobs are doing that basically, waiting for our chance to make a difference rather than just making a living, to be called to take the lead in changing the culture, to be given a title so we could influence others. All the while, we forget that when we do get there, it’ll be our own energies powering it after all. So why don’t we start now?

When I was thinking of leaving government, I was confronted with a dilemma. There was the 13th month Annual Wage Supplement (or whatever else they may call it); if I tender before January, then I would sacrifice that.

But then if I had stayed on for another month, it’ll be only 3 months before I get my annual bonus. That’s a big one, it could be worth 3 months salary, which means basically every month I stayed on, I’m getting paid twice my salary.

Then I thought, if I had stayed till April, I’d be just 2-3 months away from the mid-year bonus. It might not be so high given Covid and all, but maybe it’d be 1-month worth. That means every additional month I stay is worth ~1.5-month salary. And so on, and so forth.

If I practice that sort of marginal thinking, I would almost never leave my job. That sort of financial manipulation to “manage talent” may be smart, but it wins no one’s hearts.

In some sense, value of your labour withheld from you, again and again – then used to manipulate the staff in favour of the service. Because look, you had worked the entire year, but yet you don’t get the annual bonus until April next year when you had worked another quarter. And if you leave any time before that, you lose the ‘bonus’ entirely.

Of course, if your values align well with the organization, all of those considerations are really completely moot. So such a system does not help to ‘retain’ those who would have stayed anyways. Question is, why are we trying to ‘retain’ those who would be staying just for that sort of manipulation? Is it good for the service?

On the other hand, there can be entirely good reasons for such a system of bonuses. It allows the government at the end of the day to decide to pay out more if the economy is doing well and to reduce it when it isn’t. This allows the bonuses to be a very strong valve for them to steer the labour cost of the public service budget. After all, it seem to have had worked well in the past; the tricky thing is whether the new generation will buy it.

To the next person who asks you, “What is in it for me?” say, “You get to give yourself in…’

Because who wants their life to be marked with what they’ve taken away? Shouldn’t you be desiring a life marked by what you’ve given away?

Alternatively, you can ask, “What is in your life, for this world?”

Too much distractions, too many pieces of work, spreading oneself thin. The most successful people succeed because they were dedicating their energies on one thing, that they want to win at. Athletes don’t go for ‘quick wins’; self-respecting scientists don’t try to ‘quick-publish’. Instead, they find their system to practice, to be able to strengthen and gain mastery, to discover and process those discoveries.

Each day, maybe it’s great to start the day deciding what is the objective you want to take on, to deal with. And stick to it; and to keep saying no to other things. A runner don’t go and play football for one season and go back to running every now and then. Even if he loves playing football, he has to keep saying no. A scientist don’t order sodium hydroxide for one experiment and then suddenly decide to use it to clean his lab instead.

You are a professional too. So set up your practice and run your system – to deliver on your objectives. One objective at a time, and deliver each of them.