Try the Eisenhower Matrix and see if you can lead a more fulfilling life. Named after Dwight David Eisenhower who was the 34th President of the United States, the matrix is not just about allocating and organising your ‘to-dos’, it gives you very clear prescriptions about how to approach them:
Urgent and Important thing: Do them now
Important but non-urgent things: Schedule a time to do it
Urgent but unimportant things: Get someone else to do it
Non-urgent and unimportant things: Why are they even on your ‘to-dos’?
Apply it not just to work but to most other things in life; purchase services that allows you to outsource all the bits that fall into category 3. And for category 4, if it’s something you enjoy doing and ‘want’ to do them, they don’t belong to your ‘to-do’ but falls into leisure, so no need to stress over them.
Today online ran a story about toxic workplaces; and it boils down to culture – not just a workplace culture but society as a whole. I’m going to share some quotes from this today online article as I share about how the toxic cultures of our workplace interacts with the kind of narrative that we have grown up with as a society. I’ve written about this before; and I think we all can make our society better by considering better stories for ourselves. And to choose to take action rather than continue the narrative of helplessness.
Story of Job Description
When she finally plucked up the courage to report her problem to the bank’s HR department, she got brushed off with the remark: “He is just like that la, Jo, what can we do?”
Our society has a narrative around predictability and the job description (JD). There is expectations on everyone and they are just supposed to fulfil those expectations; students to study, do well in exams, parents to help them compete in school, adults to work and produce for their company. And so our work and life becomes boiled down to the JD.
‘What can we do?’ is a statement of resignation, of lack of imagination, of being procedural rather than upholding the spirit of a role. We are telling, there are more important things my job calls for than to think about this.
Story of the Stoic
“(The HR manager’s) attitude towards this is like, ‘Don’t make HR life difficult. If you can, just try to tolerate it’. It is like telling you …if you are not happy, find another job,” Sarah said.
Stoicism can be very subtly celebrated in Asian culture. Or maybe not so subtle. It is a virtue to be able to remain resilient in face of adversity. We all will experience pain in life, and how we respond to it will determine if we suffer. By speaking up, by taking action, we choose suffering or acting. And that courage should be lauded, and receive a response that is aligned with the spirit of action.
It is almost selfish, to tell others to put up with misery so that others can have the life they want. The HR department can lack that empathy and miss out on the vision of the better people they can be, and the better work they can do.
Story of Power
Some of these workplaces have highly developed human resource (HR) structures to handle such complaints, yet the rank-and-file do not have enough trust in these as the best avenues to seek help.
We live with the narrative that the HR, processes and structures are laid down to support those in power, not to help those in need. We’ve been fed that story when policies are laid down without too much consultation. That story gets reinforced when taking an alternative stance from those in power tend to result in punishment.
When HR fail to take an active stance to support individuals, to act against abuses in a manner that lets sunlight on to the wound, then it is hard for employees to trust them. It is hard for people to change their narrative about power and where HR stands. After all, our capitalistic society would cause us to ask, who’s the one paying those staff in HR?
Story of doing things in vain
When she left the organisation, her exit interview took just five minutes as she sensed that the HR manager was not truly interested in acting upon what she would have to say.
Smart people are concerned about efforts in vain. They want whatever they do to contribute towards their intention, to achieve something. And the moment they detected it doesn’t matter, they don’t try. They think they are only being reasonable. I wrote previously about my exit interview and how the new HR officer seem to think I was bringing ideas up in vain. I probably left her thinking I was the idealistic sort. She might even justify to herself ‘that’s why this person left’ – the poor soul who couldn’t accept things as they are.
Maybe exit interviews can be about holding HR officers accountable – that even as they listen to what they may think are complains, they need to somehow act on it. If I were the CEO, I’d pay attention to what the influential leavers are saying to the organisation.
I’ve written about how we don’t learn or talk enough about feedback – receiving and giving of feedback. So this episode from Brene Brown’s Dare to Lead podcast is an absolute gold mine. The story that Brene shared right in the beginning of the podcast is wonderful. The kind of emotional intelligence, ability to disarm people, muscles involved in selecting the right words, the body language, is just so important and amazing.
We want feedbacks to gather ideas and leverage on the perspectives of others; but we don’t want to listen to complaints or be put in a position to defend ourselves. So how do we set up environments to encourage constructiveness and positivity in the process of feedback-gathering? How do we set up a process to get people to cycle through both the pleasant and the unpleasant parts of feedback giving and gathering? We all need to learn that.
To be able to set up the scene, to deal with any misalignments is so important. The first step that Brene Brown introduced, to make sure that the one you’re eliciting the feedback from is able to feel that you both are on the same side. That is so important. The consistent reminder we should have during this pandemic times that getting you to do this or that; to comply with restrictions and so on, is that we are all trying to keep one another safe, and to be able to flourish once again as a society. It’s a pity these points tend to fall on deaf ears in our outcome-obsessed society.
Seth Godin wrote about the hedonic buffet and I want to apply it to thinking about jobs and careers. There are so many choices out there and we all now have so many interests. We also have different narratives telling us whether a job is meaningful or not, and whether the career is going to be sustainable for our lifestyle and so on. We may keep seeking and switching, or focus so much on building out our CV, forgetting what it is for.
There’s no single CV that allows you to land any job you want. Industries shift and move; but so would your interests and areas. I suggest you drop the labels. The titles like engineers, lawyers, teachers, accountants are useful when you look at others, when you have to search for roles and sort them on a website. But start thinking of your interests in terms of the problems you’re trying to solve, the kind of creativity you want to deploy, the kind of interactions you want to have.
At a buffet, people think about what food they like to eat, and also what are the expensive dishes which will make the buffet experience worth it. But they eventually sit down and eat. You have to be consuming the meal to make the buffet worth the while, not just infinitely stacking your plate. Likewise with jobs and careers you’re eventually trying to go somewhere, and pursue some kind of interest. You need to be clear about that.
I wonder who writes textbooks. What kind of person and what kind of relationship would one have with the subject matter for one to write textbooks. And actually wondered that before, more than 12 years ago, and came to the conclusion that it’s useful but eventually we all need to learn things in our own words.
And so it’s more useful to make notes, to produce materials that have been thoroughly digested, distilled. I’ve previously distilled a whole bunch of materials for students at A-Levels; the students who were able to access them on the now-defunct ERPZ.net which I used to run were privileged.
For those preparing for A Levels right now or in the future, you might like to enjoy this privilege by purchasing my re-packaged materials linked on my writings page. They are available for sale at affordable prices. I spent 3 years teaching A-Levels students, and about 1.5 years teaching undergraduates Economics. So don’t miss the ability to take on self-learning and move away from being spoon-fed.
Discovering some of my old writings (previously published on ERPZ.net) and now archived here on my blog is pretty cool. So apparently, even before taking and interest in and then writing about the Right to Repair, I wrote about planned obsolescence before! Again, that was more than 10 years ago, and the film project I cited, Story of Stuff, continued its work of encouraging more exposure of companies’ supply chain and the way the world is using various different materials.
What is wrong with old stuff anyways? Shouldn’t we try and use them as best as we can? And what do we really think about when we are throwing away things? Do we imagine they just disappear? Where do they actually go? It’s probably worth understanding the process and knowing the impact it eventually brings.
In my previous job with IE Singapore, I was supporting Singapore companies in the environmental solutions space internationalise. I therefore had the privilege of visiting some of the less traveled bits of Singapore including visiting some of our waste incineration plants, Pulau Semakau (which is our only, and offshore landfill). I’ve even gotten the chance to visit similar facilities abroad such as in Ho Chi Minh City. It is wonderful that we have evolved urban centres to be able to manage, treat, and eventually remove waste from our lives systematically.
But if it causes us to forget the negative effects on our environment, then something is wrong. Worst, if businesses running waste management and treatment facilities want to have continued streams of waste around in order to maintain their business and operations, then we’re not evolving our society in the right direction.
More than 10 years ago, whilst I was preparing and working on my scholarship interviews, I actually wrote to give some advice around those interviews. The fact that it’s been more than 10 years ago scares me but the points that I gathered in the piece is relevant, even for job or work interviews.
I quote some of the points I find really powerful and applies very much to just about any interviews:
Remember there is no right or wrong answers in an interview so never look as if you regretted something you just mentioned (if you really do, please correct yourself immediately on the spot) and in many sense, as long as you are sure what you’re saying, you’re giving the right answer.
Don’t appear self-important but show the interviewers what you are willing to do to serve them and what you’re not willing. When you’re given the tough questions, ask for time to think about it. You could say, “Wow, that’s a big question, give me a moment to organize my answer” or something like that. Try to think about the tough ones beforehand so that you’re more prepared to handle them. Don’t bet on them not coming out.
Don’t hesitate to clarify their questions; if you don’t know what they’re asking, ask them questions to clarify; sometimes the question they’re trying to pose is more close-ended than it seems.
The underlying premise is that we should just be ourselves, and really chill. There is so many different tactics to do well but what they all don’t replace is good and strong preparation coupled with alignment of your skills and experience for the role you’re gunning for.
With so many jobs requiring practical wisdom and intelligence in dealing with problems, interviews have shifted to lean heavily on looking at role playing and situations. Developing that ability to help everyone be at ease and chill; inserting appropriate humour, would be really useful.
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.
