Category Archives: Life

Amongst Singapore’s government-linked companies, there is much interesting corporate histories that is worth exploring, understanding and appreciating. I wonder why we don’t document this things more, and to learn lessons from them. Sometimes it could be because we think the past is not relevant, or that we don’t want to seem like we are digging into ‘mistakes’ made by CEOs. But I think we are missing great stories and lessons by shying away from these.

Sembcorp is one of the companies I have been looking at for a while. Today, they are a sustainability solutions company with business across Europe (UK), Middle East, India, China and Southeast Asia; focused on Energy, Water & Wastewater, as well as development of industrial parks (China, Vietnam and Indonesia).

It is interesting to note that just a couple of years back, they also do have businesses in South Africa, Chile and Panama – mainly water concessions where they were basically retailing municipal water to ordinary people and businesses. These businesses were divested in a bid to focus.

But this idea of focusing is not new to Sembcorp. When it was formed in 1998, it was actually from the merger of Singapore Technologies Industrial Corp (STIC) and Sembawang Corporation. At that point, the newly formed company had businesses in the area of infrastructure, marine engineering, information technology, and lifestyle. It was a proper conglomerate, a popular sort of business structure in Asia and also early days of nation-building. Network, capital and influence all comes together to allow businesses to be built and expanded.

It might be unthinkable this day but in the early 2000s, Sembcorp actually entered the waste management business in Singapore (which it is still involved in), on top of owning the Sembcorp Marine business, Sembcorp Utilities with the various utilities plants in Batam, Jurong Island. It also owned Pacific Internet (one of the first Internet Service Provider in Singapore), the Delifrance franchise in Singapore, Sembcorp Logistics (subsequently acquired and rebranded by Toll Logistics). You can see what’s with the lifestyle as well as the information technology involvement they had.

My personal favourite in terms of the random mix of business that Sembcorp was, is their full ownership of the Singapore Mint (which continues till today). It wasn’t super clear to me how Singapore Mint which was started by Dr Goh Keng Swee in 1968 ended up in the hands of Sembcorp. This probably warrants a separate article itself but I speculate that it came through ST’s acquisition of Chartered Industries of Singapore (which held Singapore Mint). So ST must have structured Singapore Mint into STIC when it merged with Sembawang Corporation resulting in it residing with Sembcorp.

So what if we know all of these history of corporations? I think it is important to recognise that corporate histories have an impact on the company’s culture, identity, and the complexity. In fact, it probably is extremely complex from a human resource point of view with non-uniform salary scales and all kinds of standards or protocols which are not rationalised. After all, when you’re dabbling with so many different industries, you can always trot out arguments about having to compete in the different spaces. These nuances also help us appreciate Singapore’s nation-building efforts and subsequent impact on local capabilities better.

Have you ever wonder what is it about humour that connects people? When we laugh at something funny, it tends to be something we did not control or contrive. That kind of honesty is a form of vulnerability that brings us together, reminder that things are not always in our control and we are all humans.

Of course, it is also because humour necessarily is about our minds taking a fork in the road of logical processing. And when we find that there are others along with us on that fork, or we manage to get others to jump over to our fork in the road, there’s the sense of togetherness.

Humour is a gift we often forget about. And there’s definitely a role for it to play in life, the workplace, in entertainment and education. So in our individual lives, let us not forget to use the gift of humour to bring joy and laughter to others. Who knows, you might land a job for your humour too.

I went through Seth Godin’s short course on Making better decisions. And in that short interview with Annie Duke, she first pointed out that the mistake people tend to make, is that good decisions leads to good outcomes and bad decisions leads to bad outcomes. And once you articulate that, you immediately recognise that something is wrong with that thought.

Yet we constantly fall prey into that, being so caught up with the concern of making a bad decision thinking it’ll Segway us into a bad outcome when the truth is, a good decision can just as well lead us into a bad outcome if circumstances turned against us. The information available to us when we made the decision may likewise change after we make it. That does not cause our decision to be a bad one.

When we reflect upon our decisions, we almost exclusively evaluate them on the basis of the results we eventually get rather than to appreciate decision-making as a process we can get better in. Because we may abandon the right process just because of that single experience of getting a bad result due to that ‘good decision’. This is probably a really nuanced point about learning in this world that I must keep reminding myself of as I apply new knowledge about things we learn that involves a combination of luck and skills.

I had a good question posed to me today. Someone asked me what happens if I encounter new information or learnt new things that made me rethink some of my stance that I’ve written about before. Well, just because I’ve made a stance before doesn’t mean I can’t change it. After all, when convinced that I’m wrong, the only way to go is to change my mind – isn’t it?

What is so bad about being wrong? Perhaps the psychological trauma is too much? It might hurt too much of our pride? Doesn’t seem to be the case when we stop liking the toy we like when we grow up; or we fall in love with another brand of chocolate instead? So what is wrong with changing your mind when you’re changing your preferences all the time? What is the fear driving it? How are the ideas in your mind shaping your identity?

So think through what is the cost of changing your mind? Is it an internal costs? Is it a cost to your reputation? How can this mind-change be reframed into something positive. Something around the story of growth and personal development?

This is a post full of questions with no answers. In line with my belief that questions are more important than answers, I’m cultivating the ability to ask good questions and get us all thinking.

Are you the sort of people who read the operating manual of a device or machine before touching and working on it? Or do you figure out along the way? Or you treat the manual as a guide you go to only when something goes wrong? How important do you think are the intentions of the creator?

Do you also have an operating manual in your head about how the world works? Or how others should behave, respond to you, and achieve good things? Question is which one of us really expects our operating manuals to be followed by anyone at all, especially when no one has really read the manuals and you have not yet written it? How often do we actively convey our expectations to others? Do we mostly expect others to read our minds? Have we practiced articulating and communicating expectations?

When I was a kid, I consumed lots of self-help books. Mostly in the self-help section of bookstores, sometimes in the library – I certainly helped myself very much through acquiring most of these knowledge for free. One of the biggest things I learnt was that leadership is not about being in the front, asking people to do things, and bossing others around. It is to build relationships and influence with people; and others would naturally look towards you.

Of course, that is the hard part of things for most people. But then there’s also the additional challenge of actually knowing where to go when people look to you for directions. Now that’s where the second part of ‘being influenced’ comes from. It’s good to be an independent thinker but a leader cannot be thinking about everything from ground up and developing every solution by himself. He ought to draw upon the strengths of the team. He needs to know also whom he can approach in order to seek good advice on the way forward on a variety of matters.

This model of leadership places a leader not as a driving force but the conduit. The leader steers but he don’t have to be the fuel, the force nor the front guy.

I wrote about misaligned incentives, but the more specific situation I was describing is the principal-agent problem that is so rife these days. It might have to do with marketing, and influence. More attention is paid to what people say than how people are actually paid. As an economist, I think it is still important to see what is the incentive structure behind people’s actions. Of course, the incentives involves other elements such as sales targets, the kinds of conversation and culture an organisation is having.

As we think about how the new industrialism is going to be weighing even more heavily on production from capital, the value that labour brings will likely be oriented towards selling. This is challenging to me because it has an impact on the distribution of rents and gains towards those with capital, and those with ability to sell. And organisations will have to think of how to incentivise and help their people sell more. This naturally seem to pit the people against the interest of their customers at least in the short term. Reputation and longer-term sustainability needs to be added into the equation.

Insurance policies needs to be designed well, with the best interests of the customers in mind in order to ensure the reputation of the organisation remains good and keep customers flowing. But customer experience at the point of commitment cannot be determinant on the decisions or such products. To me, the sales agent is providing a service and the only way his interest can be aligned to the customer is when he is paid a fixed fee by the customer to provide that service.

I had people I’m coaching ask me why they should put their hobbies or interest in their CV – how is it relevant? To be fair it probably doesn’t matter what you say there though it does show your personality. And to be a bit more candid, your prospective employer probably has a better view of your real hobbies by following or checking your social media account than reading your CV.

Either way, I think your interest and hobbies section shows a bit more of your personal side and your personality. And it allows you to stand out, to be a person rather than just a cog, to allow others to take an interest in you as a human and not just a worker. In fact, if your hobby is swimming, go ahead and state your favourite stroke; if you’re interested in classical music, mention your favourite classic piece; if you enjoy DJ-ing, list down your ideal 5-track mixtape. Go all the way, show you care, and not just have a hobby listed because everyone has it there.

The way you approach your hobby bears a hint on how you might want to approach work; there should be moments of light-heartedness, enjoyment, amidst the seriousness. Your identity and personality will also leave a mark in the work that you do, just as your hobby will contain that mark.

I had a chat with a friend who turned into a financial planner (which of course has become a bit of a new title for what we used to call ‘insurance agents’). I realised soon based on what he described of the industry, that insurance, much like property, has the feature of growing naturally alongside a growing economy.

And insurance agents, like property agents/brokers, have the advantage of earning their income through commissions which are linked to the underlying transaction value. In the case of insurance agents, it is the premiums. And of course, premiums are functions of insured sum, and everywhere we know, financial protection is often calculated on the basis of income capacity (rather than in expenses). This means a growing economy and rising incomes will raise the financial protection needed, and raise the premium payments, thereby naturally uplifting the commissions of insurance agents in absolute sum even though there might not be a change in the value of the service rendered.

More significantly, I’ve always been against the way the incentives are structured in this industry. Sales commissions on the basis of insurance sales is simply an unsustainable way of incentivisation and there’s fundamental misalignment of interest between the agents and the customers. I’m still a champion for Do-It-Yourself when it comes to financial planning. While I do think you can free up your mind-space on financial planning by going to a financial planner, I’d rather go to a fee-based financial planner rather than someone whose incentives are based on sales/product commissions. Especially not one who is subjected to sales targets.

I wrote about scaling laksa in Millennials’ Narrative, and then I reminded us that we need to consider what we are scaling and are we really doing ourselves and others a service when we try to scale things. Infrastructure is one thing that originally appeared to be the sort of things that benefit from scaling. After all, they are more cost effective when distributed across more people. And they are a good way to distribute wealth.

But is bigger necessarily better? What sort of utilisation levels are we expecting, and how can we be sure that the trends in demand for the piece of utilisation will continue? What sort of income, positive externality and wealth will it create?

Today, infrastructure is too often about politics more than economics and we are worse off because of that. When we don’t properly size projects before working on them; when we focus overly on a piece of infrastructure than the overall system of infrastructure. Thinking long term about the maintenance, the lifecycle of the asset is important. How many governments are thinking through that enough?