Social levelling

When I read about the stories Adrian Tan shared with Lianhe Zaobao recently, I was almost moved to tears – perhaps also due to the awareness that he lost his mum to cancer earlier and is currently fighting cancer himself. I resonated with his experience when I first went to Chinese High myself. My parents didn’t have to pull any strings to get me there but they did do their part in emphasizing the importance of a good education (though not so much the results), and encouraged me to explore my intellectual interests.

Like how ACS changed the life of Adrian, Chinese High changed my life too. I didn’t feel too competitive in school but I never felt like I was an outsider despite the fact that the students who got to the school were mostly from Nanyang Primary while I was from an unknown neighbourhood school. I made friends, I participated in activities with the rest in school. I didn’t do any better or worse than my classmates. I didn’t have additional tuition or music instrument classes compared to my classmates, but it’s okay. I got into an Arts programme in school and spent so much time in the arts studio slogging away on my arts project. I developed my confidence, awareness of the world, politics, sensitivity to culture, work ethic.

For me, education was indeed a leveller. And though I missed out on further opportunities that a more privileged background would have afforded me, I’m really grateful. It was being in Chinese High and around people who had huge ambitions and big aspirations to change the world that drove me to aspire the same. And that was also what granted me access to scholarship applications, one of which eventually landed me in LSE and NYU.

Yet I’m not sure if Singaporeans today had that same access as me if they were from my background. I’m concerned there are greater disparities between the performance of students from better backgrounds compared to those who don’t. This is a reflection of greater and more intense reinvestment of the privileged family in securing educational advantages for their progeny. It is only natural; but the society will really have to try and even out the playing field more.

The pigeonhole

Or the cubby hole. Or lockers. Whatever.

As humans, status roles and desire for affiliation drives a lot of our behaviour. These are the two fundamental drivers that typically underlie Seth Godin’s thinking and ideas about humans and most phenomena in the market and societies. Both of those ideas involves some categorization of grouping of some kind. A taxonomy if you may. Within our minds at least.

Status roles are driven by some ideas of dimensions, some basis by which to compare. How much more money, talents, capabilities, or recognition. The values that matters, they are in a bucket. The values that don’t are in another and hardly even thought about. You’re putting attributes into pigeonholes of different labels and kinds.

Affiliation is once again about groupings. Wanting to be in one bucket rather than another. Only this time, you’re putting people and yourself into pigeonholes. You actually want to be occupying a hole.

What if we can no longer compare. And when everything is just moving around rather than being in neat, tidy drawers? What happens when things or people tries to defy the pigeonhole? Does it cause anxiety? Or creates peace?

Paying for work or process?

As a consultant, we work with businesses on different topics and we charge them based on how much work the project involves. Yet the only way to measure the amount of work was to estimate the time it would take us to complete the work. Of course, the price per unit time of someone more experienced (or higher up in position) is higher. But this inevitably seems as though we are charging people for the process rather than work.

Another way to really charge for the work is to find out how much the problem is costing the client, and charge an amount just below the cost of the problem. The client gains the difference. If it’s not a problem but more benefits flow to the client as a result of the work, it can also be valued based on the incremental value to the client. That’s just harder because the clients are unlikely to really reveal that.

As a result when we overvalue ourselves, the transaction never happens and it only seem to happen when we undervalue ourselves vis-a-vis the client’s own value of the work that we are doing. Along the way though, the client can sometimes try to give us more work. After all, the lump sum price have been decided on. Better to ask more questions and wring more value out of these guys. It’s a delicate balance to strike. But all I can say is that consulting is such a human business we can never escape having to manage these interactions and relationships.

They are all necessarily more valuable than the transactions; but it is after all the job, the work, and the payments that enable these relationship. So do you value the work more or the process to arrive at it?

Dancing with controversy

Some people want to start a conversation putting people on defence – often using controversy. Why did you name your child after an unsavoury character in history? Are you really making your guest wash their feet before entering your house? Why does your company logo look like it is plagiarized from this other firm?

First, why do they do that? It could be a power play; or just banter done poorly. Often you can’t really tell their intention. In fact, you are not responsible for their intention, only themselves. While you might want to read into their intentions and craft some kind of story to set your mind away from the mystery, you never really know. So better to choose a story that favours you and your intended response.

Second, how should you respond? Now this part is on you. Regardless of the other party’s intention, you now have to be concerned about your own intention and the message you are trying to project. Returning it with banter or trying to laugh it off may work – but does it reflect your identity? Maybe you want to be gracious and simply acknowledge your feelings towards it. “That was hurtful, let’s move on to more productive topics.” or “From the sound of your question you’ve an axe to grind; I’d appreciate if you help me get away from that axe”. Just putting it out in the open, gently calling out what the other party is doing can be very powerful.

Finally, don’t dwell on it. Move on and direct your energies and enthusiasm towards something else. Controversy is such because people are unable to look beyond disagreements or to boil it down more to the fundamentals. They are such also because of the distractions around the topics which makes people less willing to confront the issue at hand.

Salmon bagels

I like salmon bagels; they are my default choice when it comes to getting these bagel sandwiches in one of those bagel breakfast places. I imagine that sort of cuisine came from America and somewhat spread to Australia and was popularized over the world. Unfortunately, it’s really difficult to get good smoked salmon and good, thick, dense bagels.

Likewise, it is so difficult to find good hummus in Singapore. But a Lebanese friend inspired me to consider just making it myself – after all, most of the ingredients are easily available in Singapore and it really doesn’t take that much work.

When we complain about the authenticity of food in a place, and we compare foods across different places (such as Ramen in London vs the ones in Singapore – despite it actually being Japanese cuisine), we are enjoy the fruits of a globalised economy and culture. We often take that all for granted.

At the same time, we naturally pick and choose specific dishes we like while forgetting that within a single food culture, there are various different dishes that are counter-balancing each other to help maintain one’s health. Perhaps it is necessary for me to go beyond the salmon bagel and consider more salads instead – the ones with less dressing of course.

Courage as action forward

In my faith, we trust that God would guide us according to His will. And often, we pray that His will be done, just as Lord Jesus prayed in the Garden of Gethsemane. But then as believers, we often struggle to accept God’s will. Yet when we are somewhat lost, we think we are seeking His will and wondering how we can find the “signs” to walk His ways. We let our inability to see or find His signs stop us from taking action.

Contemplation is great. Overthinking is not. And at the end of the day, actions bring us forward. Regardless of it being the right or wrong action. In fact, throughout scriptures, God teaches us through our lives each step of the way as we take actions. Actions that exercises our faith or actions that don’t. Our decisions certainly reflect the state of our faith – and we have to trust that the consequence that God has allowed are there to help us grow, to help shape and mature our faith, if we respond to them accordingly.

Courage is not the absence of fear but presence of faith. So courage ultimately becomes a description of the action taken; what came before the emergence of that courage (or act of courage) was simply faith. I imagine when God says to Joshua, ‘Be strong and of a good courage’, the strength was not physical but beyond physical – mental, and spiritual. The quality of courage is simply emerges from that strong faith.

And action forward is that emergent courage manifest.

Corporate ladder

I always find Star Wars’ portrayal of corporatism and industrialism very interesting especially because despite the different forms they take, they very much mirror what happens in the world we reside in. The trading, bartering, and dominance of transactional behaviours across the galaxy is amazing. Yet there is also such a strong presence of politics, of fighting for beliefs.

One of the recurring theme for those within the ranks of the empire is the idea of climbing the corporate ladder. There are characters who climb because they actually believe in the cause of the corporate, and there are those who are there for their own egos and desire to rise. As we steep ourselves so deeply in work, have we reflected upon the ladder that we are really climbing?

It may not be the corporate ladder; it could be a personal one, or that of social expectations, familial expectation. And if we are not climbing, what then are we doing? Are we even conscious of our goals as we plow through each day?

The corporate system is best not at identifying talents and allowing them to rise (the market and community system tends to be better at that); but it is very good and wringing out standardized productivity from the masses of workers. With its means of doling out incentives and disincentives, from recognition to coercion of different forms, it bends people to its agenda and will.

Have you been bent? Do you know what you are climbing?

Green economy II

Why would we rely on companies’ goodwill and marketing desires to drive environmental, social and governance goals? Why don’t we as a society go out the push these agenda upon them? After all, we did the same with labour laws, we also regulate the release of harmful substance into the air or water bodies. There are more draconian and extensive rules around. The financial markets might look like they will survive climate change. But not human lives. Especially not the ones whose livelihood and critical infrastructure depends on stable environment.

There is a huge crack in the system and it is going to cause a great deal of pain if we try to fix it. This pain is in terms of profits; but we know it is also going to cause a greater deal of pain, agony and anguish to many lives, and a future that is ahead of us. Yet for some reason, we are willing to safeguard profits at the expense of a future. We think the profit can buy us safeguards – what form, I’m not exactly sure about.

A green economy requires external intervention and it is not going to come about naturally. Sure, it will be quite difficult to gain societal consensus around these issues and things. Most of the population may not be well-aware of the issues at hand enough to actually support some of these reforms or policy changes. Others whose profits and livelihood are impacted may question the wisdom of these. Public education and creating awareness is just as important – we’ve done that with hand-washing and encouraging public hygiene, we have moved people from kampongs (villages) into high-rise public housing in a single generation, and we have turned Singapore from Third World to First in just about 25-30 years.

We can make this transition to a green economy.

Green economy

What is the green economy? It is an entire system of production and consumption that actually acknowledges and properly handle the constraints and boundaries of the environment, nature and ensures sustainability of the system. The blue economy is captured in that. So is circularity in the economy. And so is the notion of nature based solutions.

Greenwashing is not part of the green economy even if the activity is borne out of it. A large part of the green economy is the government; they no longer just ensure monetary stability, enforce the laws and support various other institutional structures. They also have to provide some kind of structure to govern the pricing of carbon, enforce accounting of carbon emissions, invest into the technologies that enhances the sustainability of our economy.

All of these things are not entirely new to the government but they need to get used to being involved, taking responsibility and ownership over this area they used to leave out. Not only this, they need to look upon the transition towards this green economy as ultimately part of the security and future of the jurisdictions they are looking after. It can be difficult; when banks don’t finance baseload coal fired power plants you might think energy security is being undermined. But maybe that’s not the right problem we want to deal with; because energy security can also be about energy efficiency, switching to more decentralised sources of energy, and using more renewables.

So are we electing and choosing leaders who care about the future to lead governments? Are we behind them in their approach and thinking about creating a future that we can exist in?

Meritocratic complex

There are negative feedback loops that ends up self-limiting certain effects. But there are positive feedback loops that amplify certain effects. Meritocracy can be self-reinforcing particularly in the manner merit is defined.

The merit defined at a point in time can become entrenched as those “merited” take on leading roles and define the meaning of merit for subsequent generations. At the same time, those with resources gained through “merit” can likewise use those resources to build up merit for their descendents.

The education system is being challenged and as we look to review our social compact, we need to think this hard. How much should one be rewarded for good luck or penalised by bad? And if merit can be passed on through generations, then is it still merit for an individual?