Kevin Low

When I was in kindergarten, we had play time when you get to “drive” around a little plastic car. And there were limited number of those toys so I had to wait for my turn. You don’t actually drive them around, it was basically a chair on wheels with a box around it and a steering wheel that directed the wheels on the chair and you had to move it with your legs. You get to ‘drive’ around the little yard in school for a while before you let someone else do it.

Limited number of ‘cars’, limited yard space, lots of kids, so we got to ration, wait for our turn to play. As we grow up, we are told companies have limited resources, there’s limited manpower and attention, so you get your turn to drive some projects, when it comes. And you wait, to be chosen to drive, to steer the things towards a direction you believe in (or maybe not), forgetting that it was going to be you powering the whole thing to begin with.

Seth Godin have written and spoke extensively about how everyone in the industrial system has been conditioned to be waiting to be picked, to be chosen, rather than to take action. Because we want to fit in, we don’t want to disrupt the system.

Most of us in corporate jobs are doing that basically, waiting for our chance to make a difference rather than just making a living, to be called to take the lead in changing the culture, to be given a title so we could influence others. All the while, we forget that when we do get there, it’ll be our own energies powering it after all. So why don’t we start now?

When I was thinking of leaving government, I was confronted with a dilemma. There was the 13th month Annual Wage Supplement (or whatever else they may call it); if I tender before January, then I would sacrifice that.

But then if I had stayed on for another month, it’ll be only 3 months before I get my annual bonus. That’s a big one, it could be worth 3 months salary, which means basically every month I stayed on, I’m getting paid twice my salary.

Then I thought, if I had stayed till April, I’d be just 2-3 months away from the mid-year bonus. It might not be so high given Covid and all, but maybe it’d be 1-month worth. That means every additional month I stay is worth ~1.5-month salary. And so on, and so forth.

If I practice that sort of marginal thinking, I would almost never leave my job. That sort of financial manipulation to “manage talent” may be smart, but it wins no one’s hearts.

In some sense, value of your labour withheld from you, again and again – then used to manipulate the staff in favour of the service. Because look, you had worked the entire year, but yet you don’t get the annual bonus until April next year when you had worked another quarter. And if you leave any time before that, you lose the ‘bonus’ entirely.

Of course, if your values align well with the organization, all of those considerations are really completely moot. So such a system does not help to ‘retain’ those who would have stayed anyways. Question is, why are we trying to ‘retain’ those who would be staying just for that sort of manipulation? Is it good for the service?

On the other hand, there can be entirely good reasons for such a system of bonuses. It allows the government at the end of the day to decide to pay out more if the economy is doing well and to reduce it when it isn’t. This allows the bonuses to be a very strong valve for them to steer the labour cost of the public service budget. After all, it seem to have had worked well in the past; the tricky thing is whether the new generation will buy it.

To the next person who asks you, “What is in it for me?” say, “You get to give yourself in…’

Because who wants their life to be marked with what they’ve taken away? Shouldn’t you be desiring a life marked by what you’ve given away?

Alternatively, you can ask, “What is in your life, for this world?”

Too much distractions, too many pieces of work, spreading oneself thin. The most successful people succeed because they were dedicating their energies on one thing, that they want to win at. Athletes don’t go for ‘quick wins’; self-respecting scientists don’t try to ‘quick-publish’. Instead, they find their system to practice, to be able to strengthen and gain mastery, to discover and process those discoveries.

Each day, maybe it’s great to start the day deciding what is the objective you want to take on, to deal with. And stick to it; and to keep saying no to other things. A runner don’t go and play football for one season and go back to running every now and then. Even if he loves playing football, he has to keep saying no. A scientist don’t order sodium hydroxide for one experiment and then suddenly decide to use it to clean his lab instead.

You are a professional too. So set up your practice and run your system – to deliver on your objectives. One objective at a time, and deliver each of them.

In case you have not yet realise, plant-based meat are often less healthy than real meat. They promised you they didn’t hurt animals to make it, and that it’s plant-based, but they did not say it is healthier. Ultimately, these products are targeting meat-eaters who probably don’t have very healthy diets to begin with. Though maybe the extra sodium and saturated fats are going to make things worst.

And that brings me to the question of how companies are positioning themselves to the future workers. You might be reducing the environmental impact of food on the planet but by causing more obesity amongst non-meat eaters, is that really making that much of a positive contribution to the world?

Likewise, the money-making oil and gas companies can continue to be ‘champions’ of climate change solutions, pour parts of their profits into researching carbon capture technology, and talking about recycling plastics while extracting more fossil fuels and producing tonnes more virgin plastics, flooding the market.

Well people still have to eat, and consume energy, so where is the balance? There will always be people working for the dough; and so you get those whom you hire for their labour rather than their work.

When you are finding sponsors for an event, you want to make sure that the reputation of the sponsors are good so that your event is not tainted by bad press. At the same time, you don’t want to be hounded by NGOs or enemies of your sponsors. Of course, more importantly, you want to make sure the values of your sponsors are aligned to your event’s values. So if you’re running some kind of sustainability conference, it is important that you don’t have a bunch of sponsors who are just there to do greenwashing.

This alignment of values extends itself to education sponsorships, especially the ones where you eventually are bonded to the organisation sponsoring you. You have to perform due diligence into their governance and processes, especially in terms of HR practices and talent management. Talent management is not just about paying the market rates, giving good bonuses and performance incentives.

True talent management is allowing employees to contribute with their talents, to be providing value through their opinions and not their obedience. The best companies are never short of manpower to support their work because they make the employees’ work their work. So if you’re considering a scholarship, especially a sponsorship that comes with a bond, please do your due diligence and don’t just think it’s free money.

We’ve confused the dynamic about our labour and work. For avoidance of doubt, I consider labour the input and the work an output of the labour. What happens in-between of course is a matter of all the experience, expertise, intellectual, emotional management that goes into translating the labour into work.

So would you rather be paid for your labour, or for your work? Will they be the same? Think about whether you’re really hoping to exchange your labour or your work for a salary. Because if it’s your labour, quite likely, there’s a lot more people competing with you to get paid for that labour. But if you’re hoping to get paid for the work, then you need to make sure you’re producing the work for someone, not just everyone. Because not everyone will pay you for it. And you don’t need everyone to pay you for it.

So yes you can be paid for your labour: showing up, following orders and getting outcomes which you probably don’t care about. But if you do care about the future, about outcomes, then you quite likely would not care that much about the orders from your bosses. Unless they are genuinely best practices. And yes if you’re going to prefer getting paid for your work, then you’d have to find an employer that wants that work; or you are better off working for yourself and serving the client instead, the one who can see what you see, and care about what you care about.