Category Archives: Life

Standards are great tools to get people to move past something mundane and to fix the number of variable parameters so that we can move forward with things, and build upon what have been decided. Civilisations are made of standards, one step at a time. When the “First Emperor of China” (Qin Shi Huang) unified the bunch of squabbling tribes and formed the Qin dynasty, he started to develop standards which helped not only to unify large swathes and number of people in China but allowed more trade and innovation to blossom.

He standardised the currency units and denomination (they were in silver), standardised the length of axles between wheels on carts (thereby also allowing the government to build road infrastructure which were uniform and standard), ensured units of measurement were uniform in the lands where he ruled. Most importantly, he unified the writing system of Chinese at that point and eliminated variant symbols or ways of writing the same character. This laid an important foundation for the script of Chinese characters up till the modern day.

One may say he produced the standards in order to rule more effectively; others may consider his ability to produce standards to be rooted in his monopoly power as the state, especially one that was formed through de facto power. While one may argue a different length of axle, or a different way of standardising the Chinese characters would have been better; or one may dispute the selfish motive of Qin Shi Huang, one cannot ignore the fact that standards are important building blocks to help one move forward and further.

Same for our personal lives; if we can develop standards that helps us not waste our willpower on the small things, the ones that are insignificant or unimportant, then we can save our horsepower to run greater distances.

There was perhaps an impression that public sector has more work-life balance than private sector where people slog hard to earn the extra dime from the market. Well, I think the truth is far from that.

In most organisations, the extent of the slog really boils down to 2 parameters: load distribution and system efficiency. An organisation where some work especially hard while others are not fully deployed struggles with load distribution while an organisation where everyone seems overworked struggles with efficiency. Of course it is usually a combination of both but simplifying to this 2 extremes allows us to look at working out ways to cope with it.

Load Distribution ridden companies need to improve their resource composition and utilisation. They might be chasing the wrong kind of work. Organisations dealing with efficiency issues might need to improve hiring or their overall system of managing their people.

What has modern capitalism brought forth to us? Choice is one of the big important thing that the market grants us. But for most of the period of great growth in the decades prior to 2000s, the choice was mostly about new things that could be consumed which previously did not exist.

Fast forward today; we might have a tad bit too much choices that new products and services might be there to restrict or reduce choices. Freedom to choose becomes less of a relished freedom when we become compelled to make so many different choices. Do we really need to choose from 1000 available options for our bathroom tiles? Do we really need to have 5 apps for streaming shows?

Are all of these choices making our society, culture and people better in any ways? When capitalism rewards the people who entertain us more than those who bring clean water to more lives, do we want to allow the system to grow without bounds? Should we allow more markets to be regulated and more activities to proceed without profit motives driving them?

In the latest Annual Shareholders’ meeting for Berkshire Hathaway, Buffett and Munger came together to trot out their wisdom for the shareholders and the world as usual. One of the point that came out was about CEOs or leaders in general – but I think more broadly, it is a warning about the narratives or messages that are crafted for the public.

And of course, so they go on every couple of months, and they repeat certain things about their company, and it becomes part of, sort of the catechism. And nobody’s going to go on two months after the CEO has said one thing and say, ‘Well, actually, that really isn’t the way.’ They’re not going to contradict themselves or change course.”

Warren Buffett, 2021 Berkshire Hathaway Shareholder Meeting

There are many organisations, not just companies that constantly bellow messages about themselves they want others to believe. The Berkshire Chairman is warning us against the danger of crafting myths that will get perpetuated. Leaders who defines goals for their organisation but do not take time to understand the truth about it will end up being cornered by journalists or media somehow blurt out something positive and aspirational but simply not a reflection of where the company is at.

The company and its staff will then be forced to window-dress the firm to align with what was spoken rather than focusing on the core value-drivers. So if you’re a middle-manager, or more junior, how are you going to respond to your bosses’ myths. How can we confront them gently and guide the organisation back to truth and its core?

Energy storage have been in existence for a really long time even before the rise of solar panels, wind power and electric vehicles. In fact, batteries has been a very core enabling technology for us to go wireless, to have sensors in places which are inaccessible, and to have any operable portable gadget at all. Batteries have transformed the concept of portability and its advancement have allowed for that. In most cases, the needs in the development of other products is what drives the development of batteries rather than the other way around.

And because of that, the economics of batteries and battery technology tend to always lag behind actual products and services. That means that if you have a product, such as EV that really needs good batteries to work well and serve the right customers, then the customers you serve must be willing to take on the price point with the costs derived from battery costs. And in order to improve your product, you have to dive into battery technology. EV is the best example of how the vehicle companies have to team up with battery manufacturers or get involved in improving the batteries themselves so they weigh less, can be more compact, delivers more power and can be charged quickly. One could say that most of the capabilities, convenience of the electric car comes through the improvements in battery technologies.

That has some spill-over effects: people are eyeing grid-scale batteries as another means to improve grid performance and provide some kind of insurance against the intermittency that solar and wind have in the system. The problem with this market however, is that there is no clear market. Projects in Australia has demonstrated that it is necessary for multiple revenue streams and yet if from day one, batteries are relying on electricity markets, or ancillary services markets to recover their revenues, it probably won’t work.

For one, most grids which can even afford to have grid-connected batteries would already be stable enough, with sufficient competition in the markets to provide those services that a battery can provide. Grid connected batteries are multi-purpose assets which find competition in all the different services it can provide.

If you really consider the economics of batteries once again; it has to be a derived demand. There are some other products or services that must really be able to fetch that price point. Traditionally for batteries, it is paid for by the portability it brings about, then for EVs, it comes from the desire for clean mobility. For the grid, is there some equivalent draw that can compensate for the cost of batteries? Better to require it of variable renewable energy owners contributing to the intermittency to bear the cost, or to simply put the responsibility on grid operators (who can be free to lease the storage capacity from third parties). Without clear assignment of responsibilities, you mute the demand for batteries.

While people are making fun of SPH CEO bringing the somewhat archaic lingo back into mainstream, I think the real reason is that people are taking umbrage at what was announced about SPH. There’s generally a sense of socialisation of losses as the media substance of SPH is being packaged into a CLG to be held by the government.

I guess that move simply make the “state ownership” of the media outlets involve a little more explicit per se. The listed status is probably problematic but I’d think there is no need to cave in to investor pressure. The company itself is unique being regulated by special laws – that should already warrant it special status and allow shareholders to self-select. There is no need for them to compete with others for capital. In fact, 99.9% of the company is in the hands of public shareholders and they themselves signed up for it fully aware this is a regulated company by the government. Maybe the regulated status made it hard to innovate its business model?

Nevertheless, that is not an excuse to get a bail-out. Imagine a bank who says they can’t compete because of the central bank’s capital adequacy ratios and hence will transfer all the non-performing loans to a vehicle which will be guaranteed by the government. Hmm. Being regulated does not mean the public can be made responsible for losses.

What is for sure about this move though, is that it takes a loss-making business out of the hands of CEO Mr Ng. The same thing happened when NOL was divested to CMA CGA under Mr Ng’s leadership. Perhaps like NOL, the business may come back to turn a profit when it is led by someone else.

Not another piece about jobs and companies. Rather, I’m thinking about friends, the company we have in our lives. And the important of good company. Friends are the people around us that we technically can choose. Often we might think it boils down to some chemistry and circumstance. True to a certain extent; since for example, the friends you make in the first few weeks of university tend to be the ones you end up sticking to for the rest of your time in university and potentially even for life.

As we grow older, it becomes more challenging to make that same kind of friends. It feels less organic perhaps than a school environment though there are still clubs, associations and other opportunities to network but friends made with the intent of collaborating for a project, or for business gains just seem different from friends made in school, or joined by some other kinds of common interests.

Yet all that doesn’t mean we can’t be in control of the company of people we are in, and we can’t choose ‘good company’. It is more important perhaps to choose good company than to try and work for a good company because the people around you can shape your thinking which in turn shapes your capacity to strive and achieve.

I chuckled when I saw the quote ‘You can’t change the people around you but you can change the people around you.’ I laughed because I got it. Did you?

The only kind of failure that is permanent is one that terminates you. Or the one that you choose to keep you; because you’ve allowed it to terminate you. In Chinese, there’s the saying that failure is the mother of success. And that is the acknowledgement that more than being polar opposites, failures are building blocks of success.

In fact, life really isn’t about attaining successes. Ultimately, in our hearts, we are after the things that comes with success, perhaps the recognition, the sense of being loved. And we all know that success, like failures, are temporary too. We can only be successful ‘so far’. Introducing the time dimension helps us see that success or failures are not part of our identity but merely experiences that we go through as part of our growth.

When one ponders over failure, do you think about actions you regretted, not taken, or do you consider what are the new aspects of reality that you come to know through the process? It takes humility to say ‘I was wrong about this’ rather than to think ‘I knew it should have been so’ – but this humility is rewarding because it turns the temporary failure into a lesson, one that can be used as a building block. The arrogant ‘I knew it’ only turns the failure into regret and bitterness.

I wrote about opportunity cost and it dawned on me that I need to improve upon the story. Not just about the opportunities forgone but also the opportunity set. Implicit in the economics concept of opportunity cost is that you’re only have to consider the best alternative, just one.

But in this age of almost infinite choice, what is the best choice? Not to mention the best alternative. In trying to consider the choice and to “price” it against the alternative, our brains often just decides to be lazy and ask what everyone else does instead. There is less independent thinking, evaluation and decision-making.

To certain extent it is our cognitive abilities being overwhelmed but it is also us being lazy. The danger of following the crowd is that we then become afraid of missing out, which causes us to consider even more things, and lose even more bandwidth.

So the way to think about opportunity costs, might be to consider the set of opportunity that exists as alternative, and see roughly that “alright, those are what I’ve decided to miss out for this – more as an objective statement to oneself”. That is your subjective valuation of the choice you made.

How do you draw up an “agreement”; more often you should not really be thinking of what you agree on to include. Because the agreement is not really used again until you disagree. So better to think about what you’d likely disagree on later as a way to approach the drafting of an agreement. Ironic, isn’t it.

Dwelling on disagreements is an unlikely formula for harmony but I would say it is not disagreements which results in disharmony but what we do about disagreements in general. And that is where the education system comes in again.

The modern education system is there with an immense amount of nobility but also vested interest. Mass education lifts people out of poverty by enhancing their opportunities but they are also there to train people to become employees, to follow instructions, be obedient, conform. The industries want workers and reward them for having gone through those comformance training. And the cycle continues.

And that is probably why they don’t teach you much on how to disagree. Yet all the more it is important because these skills are scarce – disagreeing in a way that is agreeable. Disagree but yet be able to influence others to your side. Disagree and make a case with passion but no offense, with just joy and conviction the others want to join your side.