Kevin Low

I’ve been reading Annie Duke’s Thinking in Bets. I’d say it’s a fantastic book we all should take time to look into and consider the implications for our thinking. It is very subtle unlike the usual popular non-fiction compiling studies and evidence to support a compelling theory or story. Annie’s book is largely a combination of personal experience, research and she is helping us recognise something we tend to gloss over in our lives.

My personal journey in understanding what learning is about and how it interacts with evolution started when I was barely 15 and read Eric D Beinhocker’s “The Origin of Wealth”. As it turns out, complex systems grow by being able to run loads of tiny experiments that enables it to learn and adapt at system level. That’s neat but the implications on a single individual is not that clear. The only encouragement is that survival is in itself a kind of win.

So back to “Thinking in Bets”; it gave me a new perspective in terms of reflecting back about life, actions taken, decisions and choices made in a manner that allows me to make room for chance and probability which is how the world really works. Take for example one of the biggest choice and commitment in my life: taking on the scholarship.

On one hand, having left public service, I could think it was a mistake to have taken up the scholarship and spent 6 years of bondage to the service when I had not develop my career further in there. Yet on the other hand, I might not have gone to UK for my undergraduate studies and got the exposure I had if I didn’t take on the scholarship.

Rather, the way to approach it is to recognise firstly that when I took up the scholarship, I had not expected that IE Singapore would merge with SPRING to form Enterprise Singapore. And because I gave public service a chance, I got a much more global and broad experience; and made the friends I did, got to appreciate and understand business in a profound way that helps me do my work as a consultant today. It certainly wasn’t a mistake, not when you are able to think through the complexity of such decisions, the limited knowledge, and the outcomes produced that brought you to the state of reflection this very moment.

Do you lose your ideas when you share them, shelf them, or when they fail? Or do you lose your ideas when someone else takes it, makes it happen and succeed? Then what happens when people take your ideas and then fail? Do you pin it on them, and go on to try make those ideas work? Or do you decide to discard them instead?

Gaining and having ideas is such a mysterious process but losing an idea is basically a story you tell yourself. Because so many ideas are lost because we dismiss them when they come. And yet we behave as if we lost them when someone does all the hard work of putting those ideas into action and succeed (“he stole my idea”). On the other hand, when people fail with those same ideas, we might also lose them (as if we never had them).

This story is important because it affects how you share your ideas and make the effort to develop them. It is easy to claim and insist some kind of “ownership” and hence the story around “losing it”. But what if ownership of one’s idea is about taking actions, about developing them further, investing into them? Then you can only earn ownership and never quite lose it.

As we build organisations, raise families, work with teams, do we want to create a culture around fear or around support? We know we certainly can get employees, kids and even dogs to obey because of fear. But is that the kind of culture we want to develop as we move into the future? Do we want our next generation to continue perpetuating these fears and projecting them on to even future generations?

During this period of the Resignation Tsunami, it is important for companies to begin realising the implicit fear-based tactics they apply on staff. It usually surrounds the idea of scarcity and how they might not be able to find a job, or even come back to their job. I’ve heard more than once teachers who yearn to leave the MOE schools and to explore their own interests and passions only to stay because they cannot be sure their passions can translate to some livelihood, and also because they’ve been reminded in one way or another that it would be hard to return to teaching service.

I think that any organisations that claims it is hard to return to it once one leaves should be flagged out. That is a major red flag because an organisation most certainly would embrace talents and sure enough, many people who leaves within a short period leaves a bad impression and may be assessed as one whom the organisation do not prefer. That’s not a punishment for the people who left but simply an observation on their quality. Again, we have to be aware and conscious these are fear-based tactics to talent management and retention.

At some point, the public institutions and government service ought to help regulate against such abuses of power on the part of the employers. Moreover, when employees take back their power in a labour market facing shortage of labour, and then exercise their power, employers tend to blame them for being unfit for the work or being entitled. Yet such sense that the fault lies on employees is generated from centuries of power imbalances, especially in the global south and eastern economies where labour seems to be abundant. As a society, we need to decide if we want this to continue.

My family is currently fostering yet another Singapore Special (the affectionate term we use to refer to the stray mongrels found in Singapore); he is really sweet, gentle and while he was called a monkey by the previous fosters, has not given us any trouble from ill will. The challenge we have is that he is quite anxious, and jittery most of the times when encountering new things outside. Nevertheless, he is curious and learning fast, so we hope he will overcome his fears one by one and be more adoptable.

No dog is perfect and for most of these mixed breeds who has been living on the street, they are usually naturally selected to be the ones who are quick to run from danger, constantly hiding away, hating novelty and see strangers as bad. These behaviours which lead to their survival out there are mostly driven by fear and anxiety. But these aren’t the behaviours we want in dogs who are pets. They make for poor social companions and have bad social etiquette.

However, they can be trained in the medium to longer term. Mostly through different games, activities and exercises. Looking at my new foster puppy reminds me of just being Singaporeans. We tend to have the reputation of being goody kids, obedient but it’s mostly because of fear. I see how much of my foster dog’s potential forgone because he is so fearful all the time. His great intelligence, sensitivity and gentleness is gone mostly because fear is so overriding. We humans are not so different and I think as Singaporeans, we are mostly still dwelling in a lot of fear. Of the unknowns, of not being well-liked, of being on the ‘wrong side’, of not having enough, and the list goes on.

Does GDP really give us a good sense of standards of living? Is the English Premier League winning team better football players than those who lost? Is the student who scored higher on a Chemistry test better in Chemistry than the one who scored lower? Does getting into McKinsey means you are better than someone who didn’t get in?

What does a figure, threshold, passing line, timing, grade really say about people, teams, organisations, countries? They give rather general, objective facts: eg. A team scored more goals; or a student answered more questions correctly. But they don’t easily translate to ‘this is a better team’ or that ‘this is a smarter student’. Maybe, but there is a myriad of reasons for that translation to fail. And we acknowledge these measures to be imperfect.

So why do we still act as if those figures, lines, scores really mean those things? How do we find better ways to measure things and get people to stop relying on imperfect measures that does no better than random guessing? How do we teach people to handle things that are in-between; how should they approach those imperfect but still valid measures? What is the story they should be telling themselves?

Lots of questions, more to ponder than to answer. The trouble is, are we even asking ourselves those questions? Are we thinking about them? Are we finding that these answers would be key to unlock a better future?

When we are confronted with taking an action that adheres to the spirit of a rule but breaks the rule, what do we do? Does that action honour the overall spirit of the society in setting the rule, or does it honour the protection of ourselves instead? And when protecting ourselves, is it at the expense of someone else?

When we follow standard operating procedures that no longer really serve the objectives they were created for, what are we honouring? The people who wrote the manual? The process itself? Or the old objectives?

When we are confronted with evidence that turns in face of what we believe in; do we change our perception of that evidence to continue perpetuating our beliefs or do we change our beliefs instead? What are we honouring when we do things one way or another? Do we honour our beliefs? Or are we honouring the system of evidence-based decision-making?

If all we want is to honour rules, objectives that do not change, or to rely more on evidence than on beliefs, then we want to use technology that help us with rule-keeping, process-running and decision-making. But for everything else, there are humans up for it.

I’ve been in Ghana, at a village in central region, where people would spend time in the afternoon having tea together and just watching vehicles and livestock pass the village without doing much. They probably did a lot of work in the morning already at their fields and it was too hot to work anyways. So they rested.

In New Zealand, the dairy industry peaks at a certain period where the cycles of the cows’ lactation were somehow optimised. People worked intensively during the peak periods and then there would be lull periods where people worked shorter hours and produced much less.

In many sectors and aspects of life, there are seasons, cycles and time of activity, and lull. Yet the modern, urban life seems to think that productivity is achieved by squeezing every ounce of time, forgetting that resting can be productive. The mobile devices we carry with us do indeed give us greater ability to do work on the fly but all that attention, and capacity might be wearing us thin and wearing us out.

Over the past decades where we experienced the most improvements in quality of life and changes in standards of living in the world, it was mostly when productivity was gained through the world working together more and more, through trade and international supply chains, smoothing out volatility through more accurate transmission of price and volume signals. Taking this to the next level, of individual productivity, will unlikely make that much of a dent for the progress of humanity even if it makes one feel great.

Perhaps then, it’s time to recognise the cycles and seasons we ought to have in our lives.

This is going to be a very light-hearted and very Singaporean piece.

I put on my shorts, don on my SAF admin tee before carrying a NDP tote bag with some NTUC vouchers and tissue packets, slipping on my sandals preparing to leave the house. Yes, I honestly can’t really be bothered with how I dress especially when going around the neighbourhood. And these days, neighbourhood can even consist of shopping for stuff or dinning out at Orchard Road. It dawned on me that I’ve basically become an uncle since many years ago. Yes, I also drink Teh Si Kosong or Kopi Si Kosong, mainly because sugar free, and my childhood asthma has given me a hot-drink habit.

I wonder what being an uncle really is. At the most superficial level, it’s just having a niece or nephew. Or friends with kids? But really, entering uncle-hood is about going past the level of maturity of a youth concerned about how he looks and the impression he gives ladies. It is when you embrace the freedom of being able to dress and speak comfortably with less restraint from the social confidence of having been around long enough.

After all, uncles are the ones carrying Decathlon small Quecha bags (which used to cost $3.90 but now $4.90 due to inflation), wearing Decathlon tees and shorts, or often also some other tees either from Thailand or bought from some other Pasar Malam (in pre-covid era).

This is not to be confused with ‘boomer uncles’. They take uncle-hood to another level. They are prudent about expenditures, often complaining about price increases. They take an interest in politics and current affairs, politely offering their feedback on a range of policies to younger ones, without necessarily desiring to take change into their own hands.

But there are also pretty great uncles, like Mr Loo Cheng Chuan of the 1M65 movement, who have been doling out less conventional advice and wisdom. As an influencer, he’s been really active and have generated a following with his genuine, Singaporean-style sharing without too much of the embellishments that is out to impress.

When we step into the workforce from university, the transition feels quite natural. It is more of a change of cars than shifting of gears so we are more receptive of change and open to whatever culture we may have to learn and fit in. Whatever we pick up at the job will be seen as “what’s how work life is like”. So we accept it because we generalise it.

But what if we knew things can be different? We can have more holidays, we don’t have to stay in office past 7pm, or how things can work well differently? Then it might be harder for us to accept. So it is critical that we know our possibilities. Not the vague ones but real concrete ones – through work offers, actual job experiences.

That’s why in your second or third job, it gets harder to make compromises, and you become more assertive. And in today’s job markets where labour is tight, companies are often complaining about workers switching or being self-entitled. The truth is that companies can no longer just force staff to fit into a culture but to hire for a culture they want to create, and have that culture attract more of the people we want to work with.

I’m not saying you should be switching jobs often and keep tempting yourself with other offers; but it is important to recognise that the possibilities are limited to the boundaries that you define for yourself within the environment. And whether you’re trying to fit into that small tight space, or something much bigger.