Kevin Low

Without being too conscious of it, the 3-month period of working from home has fostered a period of greater reflection. Rather than the melancholy that people might tend to have experienced during this exceptional period, I seem to have experienced a break which I had been needing for years now. Perhaps it is my introversion finally having space to express itself, and I finally have more space to ideate and think about things that the world needs which I can contribute to. For the longest time, this side of me seem to have disappeared and life seems always about execution, manifesting activities.

It is also a period when I have much more time to think about Ikigai which is a concept I’ve come across rather long ago but failed to spend more time thinking through. The ideal confluence of ‘What I love’, ‘What I’m good at’, ‘What the world needs’ and ‘What I can get paid for’ seems almost elusive on first glance. But I think we’ve been so conditioned, so influenced by the society, the Singapore-education’s linear approach that we’ve created some false dichotomies and choices in life, seeding our own misery.

This is the reason we conduct surveys that forces people into a corner; but this recent woohaah also led to some good reflection. I recall the times when I gave up on initial hopes of getting into the arts (I dabbled with graphic design, film-making, animations during high school), thinking I wasn’t good enough at it even though I kind of enjoyed it. At the back of my mind however, I did feel that if I go down that path, I’d be a letdown to my parents even though they never forced me into one area or another. And the reason is that I shared the common view that an artist won’t be able to make money.

I’ve certainly gotten myself into a profession at the moment, doing something I’m relatively good at and can get paid for it. The fact that I love economics and my work is tangentially related to that helps. And for the longest time I did genuinely have that sense of mission, and that I’m making a difference. But gradually, service at church helped to fill that bit on the sense of mission, which perhaps made me less insistent on doing ‘meaningful work’ in my day job. Life can really ‘slip’ in this way when we just try to go with the flow. Or perhaps when the waves of circumstances leaves you without a choice of the direction by which to go.

I’m definitely going to be more deliberate and mindful in considering the concept of Ikigai. And may the Lord open doors towards more meaningful work that I’d find more passion in.

Teaching, by and large, have shifted increasingly from schools to farther afield. So those aspiring to teach; bear in mind that leaving education sector, or not being a ‘teacher’ altogether, might be a good choice.

I had always enjoyed teaching, and have a deep passion for education – which is why I tend to have so many commentary ultimately honing in on education reforms, changes in perspectives that would help to alleviate issues and challenges I observe in the society at large. I have a lot of interactions with teachers primarily because most of my friends became teachers, and having been married to one, new friendships with more teachers inadvertently forms a permanent part of my life.

Yet through these interactions, it is often the daily problem solving that occupies them and hardly any thoughts about dealing with larger issues in society through education, or their role in teaching. In fact, for teachers today, teaching is relegated to a very small part of their actual jobs – with admin, pastoral care, managing projects – and not forgetting marking – taking a lot more time.

“Real teaching” has gone on to tuition centers, enrichment and supplementary classes perhaps. Learning has also changed because many would say that what they learnt in school doesn’t apply much in their work or most of the rest of their lives! Though the academic qualifications they gained count towards something.

Because I love teaching, I realised that my work interactions, be it dealing with bosses, peers or juniors, I incorporate a lot of ‘teaching’ in them. Some would say it’s communications, which probably forms a more general part of the equation; but for most part, as the economy becomes increasingly knowledge-based and knowledge-intensive, teaching skills at work actually matters a lot. The ability to transfer and share knowledge meaningfully matters – whether tacit or explicit knowledge. And this applies not just downwards to juniors and peers but also to your superiors. A large part of this sharing, involves engagement to the extent of teaching.

In fact, sales, is generally teaching. And conceiving it as teaching helps me recognise better how to prepare a pitch, because what I am trying to do is no longer just merely trying to convince and persuade, but to do so through encouraging understanding. In so doing, I also clarify my own thoughts and don’t come across as trying to baffle the audience. This trustworthiness is an important reputation a salesperson ought to gain to be able to deliver consistently.

And over time, you learn to recognise the ‘good students’ from the bad, invest your time wisely to teach and gain rapport with the good students, try to reform the bad ones, and you’d realise, you’re a teacher after all! Whether in consulting, business development, sales, as an operations manager working within a facility – industrial, commercial, even residential – you can be the teacher you might have thought you had wanted to be.

My Dad, who had wanted to be a teacher when he was 16, was rejected for being too young. During those days, people did start working early but he was told to get more qualifications. He eventually went on to be a clerk in public service, shifting around until he became part of the tax department. That anchored him within the tax sector which he stayed within for the next 30 over years. He never became a teacher. But in many sense, within the family, in our interactions, he has always been one.

Singapore’s economy is going into a period of much less optimism and this of course is something that we are not alone in when we look at the global economy. As much as we’d like to think we are insulated from some of the headwinds or that we can mute some challenging effects with expansionary budget, the fact that we are an open economy remains.

The idea of a small export-oriented economy succeeding in the world and that being the right strategy finds itself more in the global context that the economy is in, rather than the inherent structure or nature of the economy. Of course, Singapore put in place policies that allows us to execute on the ‘small, open economy’ idea well, and we reaped its success but let us not kid ourselves with that inward looking view that our policies by themselves stands up well (as though they are inherently good and not made optimal due to circumstances).

I’ve been a champion of using closer study of history (some older pieces includes this and this) to appreciate and understand the global context by which an economy succeeds or fails. And as the world enters a phase of increasing trade tensions, nationalism, indulge in the folly of closing their economies, we too, need to rethink our ideologies associated with being able to compete, and consider how far we are going with our so-called advantages and whether we need to invest more deeply into them. Our traditional metrics of competitiveness, of targeting growth might need to change and this is a window of opportunity to shift people’s attention to some new ways of looking into diagnosing the growth of our economy and fruits of our labour.

For a start, considering the structure of the economy in terms of demographics and how income, wealth and government’s revenue structure from various socio-economic groups in the country will matter. Next, looking at our connections with the rest of the world in the form of Foreign Direct Investments, Direct Investments Abroad, net Direct Investment Abroad, Imports, Exports and scrutinising the network of our Double Taxation Agreements and Free Trade Agreements will help. Finally, we can consider vibrance of community life of our citizens – be it civil society, or religious activities’ involvements.

When we were younger, our parents gauged our growth based on physical parameters like weight, height; then when we grew a little older, they looked at our behaviours, and the intelligence we exhibit. As we enter teenage and adulthood, our growth became more based on social parameters and maturity. While in some sense, those attributes manifest themselves imperfectly through grades, salary, job positions, etc, we need to acknowledge that as one grows, we ought to look at different and new parameters that indicates genuine growth.

Likewise, in an economy, if we are still stuck with looking at GDP and having policy or resources responding to that, then it would be rather immature. Yet at the same time, we ought to realise that those figures/quantities that represents the concepts behind them, are often flawed and we ought not take them too seriously to the extent of assigning them 100% weightage in reflecting the reality of matters. Finally, the global context we reside in must inform our actions and allocation of resources, investment into different areas. A man do not grow inherently or inwardly, he grows because external circumstances forces it to – if we often just think about insulating ourselves, then we may even insulate ourselves from the need to grow.

Clinical psychologist Sara-Ann wrote a recent piece on CNA about young people burning out in life and work (especially work); it relates somewhat tangentially to my not-so-recent musings on prestige careers. Strangely, she decides to spend more of her piece empowering the individual, listing 5 points that the individual can do to combat burn out. Nevertheless, she tucked in the piece a very important statement we should delve more deeply into, as a society:

[T]he onus is on organisations to recognise the importance of workplace health and build workplace cultures conducive to their employees’ physical and mental health.

There is a need to put this responsibility back to organisations; and one of the difficulty of doing this, is perhaps the misconceived notion which Sara-Ann herself perpetuated by saying:

Indeed, organisations should tread cautiously and strive to achieve a balance between increasing productivity and deleteriously endorsing a hustle culture.

This is ultimately an issue of balancing short-term and long-term priorities for any organisations. To me, the only perspective worth taking is still the long-term perspective and anything that is used to deal with short-term issues must not detract from the long-term perspective. The lack of worker engagement, endorsement of hustle culture, always asking for ‘more’ (which might involve cutting corners to create capacity to deal with more) as oppose to ‘better’ (which could involve questioning practices, eliminating inefficient or unnecessary ones, so as to create capacity to do more important things), reflects an organisation that has lost sight of the long-term perspective.

I think organisations, leaders, need to assist individuals on all of the 5 points that Sara-Ann pointed out in her commentary.

1. Structures and leadership in place must be able to catch the warning signs of burnt out individuals – especially good-performing ones
2. At risks of being paternalistic, organisations need to ensure basic needs of staff are fulfilled – work can never be the expense of physical and even (genuine, not perceived) psychological needs.
3. Companies and organisations must develop credos that emphasize clear sets of priorities and actively help staff resolve conflicts between these priorities so that each individual have a good sense of how to order their work to achieve the most for the organisation
4. Workplace health promotion and social activities can sometimes end up being additional obligations – take active steps to ensure that downtime for workers are genuine downtimes and encourage participation gently. Provide staff with time and space for down-time.
5. Create routines for engagements that are genuine, unpretentious and safe for staff to express their views, engage in meaningful debates on things that matters to them at work. Too often, ground views are suppressed in favour of management views, politics ignored or taken as given; respecting employees, down to the lowest level, is the

A recent book I’ve been reading, Enlightened Capitalists by James O’Toole talks about many leaders and companies who have sought to do all that, and more. Whether the small size and open nature of the Singapore economy allows for that sort of practices is another story. Too often, these companies are considered sui generis but given Singapore being also a bit of a sui generis itself – I wonder, if we could choose to take this lead in this part of the world to make a difference to the way our own country continues to develop, and the manner the region would grow.

If we are to do so, then our extreme meritocracy which Sara-Ann described would be the first place to start working on. In fact, Clifton Mark penned a piece earlier this year in Fast Company, which suggests that not only is the notion of meritocracy an illusionary ideal, believing in it actually do you little good. And that, is probably how our poor 26-year-old Dave in Sara-Ann’s commentary came to be where he is. To address this conundrum relating to what could well be one of our national ideals (another one, probably less mentioned now and peddled around only when necessary, is pragmatism), would be a great challenge.

The only means would be to identify other values to supplant this so-called ideal. It has to be compelling both in psychology, philosophy and also sustainable in its economics. And to that end, I think the virtues of care, and making sure that we can sustain caring, can be a good starting point to see what we can crystallise eventually. Just as people had thought that treating people as resources for a company rather than as the soul of the company (courtesy of Sara-Ann who used that description) made economic sense; we can rewrite this orthodoxy through learning from companies highlighted in James’ book: Johnson & Johnson, ACIPCO, Levi Strauss & Co, Lewis Partnership, etc.

Been reading quite a bit of writing on this topic primarily because I’ve been speaking to many young people about jobs and careers.

A friend shared this link to a Medium article. He was suggesting that in the context of Singapore, there is this happening and added to the list of the careers would be the sort that is promised to “government scholars”.

Singapore is unique in the sheer number of government-sponsored students in the foreign universities perhaps in proportion to our population. And myself being a beneficiary (though my friend would think, “victim”), I’d say that it has definitely help to develop a rich pool of human resource and talents. Yet as any MNC trying to move into Singapore would attest, talent for those sectors listed in the article is actually hard to come by, primarily because they are hoarded by government.

Through that article, I also found out about Andrew Yang’s book which I started reading. The beginning chapters which share largely about the motivations of high-achieving students aligns well with the true story of “elites” in Singapore. Not just the academic heros but those with lots of co-curricular achievements and even volunteering experiences.

Probably something worthwhile for Singapore government is to consider how to foster more risk-taking communities and to support talents to build things. And also to continue opening its talent pool up to be accessed by the industry- it can be shortening of bonds or just simply doing away with scholarships altogether, creating new forms or institutions that provides education in a manner that works closely with the industry and is primarily led by the industries which generate real value.

The infrastructure industry represents such a place where business focuses on value-generation for long term developments that enable economic growth, and creates new employment opportunities in the emerging economies. Yet risk-capital and human-capital is clearly under-allocated because the world has become increasingly short-term in its thinking and the influx of short-term (to the sense of instantaneous) data is worsening our myopia.

We need talents for these areas of human development. And we lack them partly as a result of the same myopia; lots of talents have poured into technology leading to that same momentum feeding itself. By virtue of its long term character, infrastructure development will find it hard to compete for both talents and resources. There will have to be a sea-change in culture and a shift in our attention towards the common future the world needs to head towards.

The greater the resolution of the big data, the poorer our vision of the big picture.

This is a bit of a seminal piece dealing with draps and bits of ideas mashed together. Hope I find time to think through and put up a few more coherent pieces soon!