Discovering some of my old writings (previously published on ERPZ.net) and now archived here on my blog is pretty cool. So apparently, even before taking and interest in and then writing about the Right to Repair, I wrote about planned obsolescence before! Again, that was more than 10 years ago, and the film project I cited, Story of Stuff, continued its work of encouraging more exposure of companies’ supply chain and the way the world is using various different materials.
What is wrong with old stuff anyways? Shouldn’t we try and use them as best as we can? And what do we really think about when we are throwing away things? Do we imagine they just disappear? Where do they actually go? It’s probably worth understanding the process and knowing the impact it eventually brings.
In my previous job with IE Singapore, I was supporting Singapore companies in the environmental solutions space internationalise. I therefore had the privilege of visiting some of the less traveled bits of Singapore including visiting some of our waste incineration plants, Pulau Semakau (which is our only, and offshore landfill). I’ve even gotten the chance to visit similar facilities abroad such as in Ho Chi Minh City. It is wonderful that we have evolved urban centres to be able to manage, treat, and eventually remove waste from our lives systematically.
But if it causes us to forget the negative effects on our environment, then something is wrong. Worst, if businesses running waste management and treatment facilities want to have continued streams of waste around in order to maintain their business and operations, then we’re not evolving our society in the right direction.
More than 10 years ago, whilst I was preparing and working on my scholarship interviews, I actually wrote to give some advice around those interviews. The fact that it’s been more than 10 years ago scares me but the points that I gathered in the piece is relevant, even for job or work interviews.
I quote some of the points I find really powerful and applies very much to just about any interviews:
Remember there is no right or wrong answers in an interview so never look as if you regretted something you just mentioned (if you really do, please correct yourself immediately on the spot) and in many sense, as long as you are sure what you’re saying, you’re giving the right answer.
Don’t appear self-important but show the interviewers what you are willing to do to serve them and what you’re not willing. When you’re given the tough questions, ask for time to think about it. You could say, “Wow, that’s a big question, give me a moment to organize my answer” or something like that. Try to think about the tough ones beforehand so that you’re more prepared to handle them. Don’t bet on them not coming out.
Don’t hesitate to clarify their questions; if you don’t know what they’re asking, ask them questions to clarify; sometimes the question they’re trying to pose is more close-ended than it seems.
The underlying premise is that we should just be ourselves, and really chill. There is so many different tactics to do well but what they all don’t replace is good and strong preparation coupled with alignment of your skills and experience for the role you’re gunning for.
With so many jobs requiring practical wisdom and intelligence in dealing with problems, interviews have shifted to lean heavily on looking at role playing and situations. Developing that ability to help everyone be at ease and chill; inserting appropriate humour, would be really useful.
Amongst Singapore’s government-linked companies, there is much interesting corporate histories that is worth exploring, understanding and appreciating. I wonder why we don’t document this things more, and to learn lessons from them. Sometimes it could be because we think the past is not relevant, or that we don’t want to seem like we are digging into ‘mistakes’ made by CEOs. But I think we are missing great stories and lessons by shying away from these.
Sembcorp is one of the companies I have been looking at for a while. Today, they are a sustainability solutions company with business across Europe (UK), Middle East, India, China and Southeast Asia; focused on Energy, Water & Wastewater, as well as development of industrial parks (China, Vietnam and Indonesia).
It is interesting to note that just a couple of years back, they also do have businesses in South Africa, Chile and Panama – mainly water concessions where they were basically retailing municipal water to ordinary people and businesses. These businesses were divested in a bid to focus.
But this idea of focusing is not new to Sembcorp. When it was formed in 1998, it was actually from the merger of Singapore Technologies Industrial Corp (STIC) and Sembawang Corporation. At that point, the newly formed company had businesses in the area of infrastructure, marine engineering, information technology, and lifestyle. It was a proper conglomerate, a popular sort of business structure in Asia and also early days of nation-building. Network, capital and influence all comes together to allow businesses to be built and expanded.
It might be unthinkable this day but in the early 2000s, Sembcorp actually entered the waste management business in Singapore (which it is still involved in), on top of owning the Sembcorp Marine business, Sembcorp Utilities with the various utilities plants in Batam, Jurong Island. It also owned Pacific Internet (one of the first Internet Service Provider in Singapore), the Delifrance franchise in Singapore, Sembcorp Logistics (subsequently acquired and rebranded by Toll Logistics). You can see what’s with the lifestyle as well as the information technology involvement they had.
My personal favourite in terms of the random mix of business that Sembcorp was, is their full ownership of the Singapore Mint (which continues till today). It wasn’t super clear to me how Singapore Mint which was started by Dr Goh Keng Swee in 1968 ended up in the hands of Sembcorp. This probably warrants a separate article itself but I speculate that it came through ST’s acquisition of Chartered Industries of Singapore (which held Singapore Mint). So ST must have structured Singapore Mint into STIC when it merged with Sembawang Corporation resulting in it residing with Sembcorp.
So what if we know all of these history of corporations? I think it is important to recognise that corporate histories have an impact on the company’s culture, identity, and the complexity. In fact, it probably is extremely complex from a human resource point of view with non-uniform salary scales and all kinds of standards or protocols which are not rationalised. After all, when you’re dabbling with so many different industries, you can always trot out arguments about having to compete in the different spaces. These nuances also help us appreciate Singapore’s nation-building efforts and subsequent impact on local capabilities better.
Have you ever wonder what is it about humour that connects people? When we laugh at something funny, it tends to be something we did not control or contrive. That kind of honesty is a form of vulnerability that brings us together, reminder that things are not always in our control and we are all humans.
Of course, it is also because humour necessarily is about our minds taking a fork in the road of logical processing. And when we find that there are others along with us on that fork, or we manage to get others to jump over to our fork in the road, there’s the sense of togetherness.
Humour is a gift we often forget about. And there’s definitely a role for it to play in life, the workplace, in entertainment and education. So in our individual lives, let us not forget to use the gift of humour to bring joy and laughter to others. Who knows, you might land a job for your humour too.
I went through Seth Godin’s short course on Making better decisions. And in that short interview with Annie Duke, she first pointed out that the mistake people tend to make, is that good decisions leads to good outcomes and bad decisions leads to bad outcomes. And once you articulate that, you immediately recognise that something is wrong with that thought.
Yet we constantly fall prey into that, being so caught up with the concern of making a bad decision thinking it’ll Segway us into a bad outcome when the truth is, a good decision can just as well lead us into a bad outcome if circumstances turned against us. The information available to us when we made the decision may likewise change after we make it. That does not cause our decision to be a bad one.
When we reflect upon our decisions, we almost exclusively evaluate them on the basis of the results we eventually get rather than to appreciate decision-making as a process we can get better in. Because we may abandon the right process just because of that single experience of getting a bad result due to that ‘good decision’. This is probably a really nuanced point about learning in this world that I must keep reminding myself of as I apply new knowledge about things we learn that involves a combination of luck and skills.
I had a good question posed to me today. Someone asked me what happens if I encounter new information or learnt new things that made me rethink some of my stance that I’ve written about before. Well, just because I’ve made a stance before doesn’t mean I can’t change it. After all, when convinced that I’m wrong, the only way to go is to change my mind – isn’t it?
What is so bad about being wrong? Perhaps the psychological trauma is too much? It might hurt too much of our pride? Doesn’t seem to be the case when we stop liking the toy we like when we grow up; or we fall in love with another brand of chocolate instead? So what is wrong with changing your mind when you’re changing your preferences all the time? What is the fear driving it? How are the ideas in your mind shaping your identity?
So think through what is the cost of changing your mind? Is it an internal costs? Is it a cost to your reputation? How can this mind-change be reframed into something positive. Something around the story of growth and personal development?
This is a post full of questions with no answers. In line with my belief that questions are more important than answers, I’m cultivating the ability to ask good questions and get us all thinking.
Are you the sort of people who read the operating manual of a device or machine before touching and working on it? Or do you figure out along the way? Or you treat the manual as a guide you go to only when something goes wrong? How important do you think are the intentions of the creator?
Do you also have an operating manual in your head about how the world works? Or how others should behave, respond to you, and achieve good things? Question is which one of us really expects our operating manuals to be followed by anyone at all, especially when no one has really read the manuals and you have not yet written it? How often do we actively convey our expectations to others? Do we mostly expect others to read our minds? Have we practiced articulating and communicating expectations?
When is self-sufficiency attractive? Or rather, why is it attractive? Does it have to do with trust, or lack thereof? Or does it have to do with pride? Or maybe these concepts generally go hand-in-hand. In Singapore, where our resources are scarce, it is difficult to be self-sufficient in things. We import almost all of our energy and food. And we learnt a long time ago that security can be achieved from diversification.
Same principle when it comes to an individual and recognising no man is an island. We have to work together and that’s why we form societies. The greatest beauty of the market economy is in allowing the greater society to be able to work together and co-create products, services in service of individuals that make up the society. At a global level, that idea has helped to enhance global collaboration to a large extent.
Trading relationships helps to stabilise politics as well; though of course, that is a big source of soft influence, and the challenge of forming connections and relying on others is that we lose some degree of our independence. Straddling that is important, and demystifying that allows us to be better leaders, not just as individuals but as a society, as a nation as well.
When I was a kid, I consumed lots of self-help books. Mostly in the self-help section of bookstores, sometimes in the library – I certainly helped myself very much through acquiring most of these knowledge for free. One of the biggest things I learnt was that leadership is not about being in the front, asking people to do things, and bossing others around. It is to build relationships and influence with people; and others would naturally look towards you.
Of course, that is the hard part of things for most people. But then there’s also the additional challenge of actually knowing where to go when people look to you for directions. Now that’s where the second part of ‘being influenced’ comes from. It’s good to be an independent thinker but a leader cannot be thinking about everything from ground up and developing every solution by himself. He ought to draw upon the strengths of the team. He needs to know also whom he can approach in order to seek good advice on the way forward on a variety of matters.
This model of leadership places a leader not as a driving force but the conduit. The leader steers but he don’t have to be the fuel, the force nor the front guy.
I wrote about misaligned incentives, but the more specific situation I was describing is the principal-agent problem that is so rife these days. It might have to do with marketing, and influence. More attention is paid to what people say than how people are actually paid. As an economist, I think it is still important to see what is the incentive structure behind people’s actions. Of course, the incentives involves other elements such as sales targets, the kinds of conversation and culture an organisation is having.
As we think about how the new industrialism is going to be weighing even more heavily on production from capital, the value that labour brings will likely be oriented towards selling. This is challenging to me because it has an impact on the distribution of rents and gains towards those with capital, and those with ability to sell. And organisations will have to think of how to incentivise and help their people sell more. This naturally seem to pit the people against the interest of their customers at least in the short term. Reputation and longer-term sustainability needs to be added into the equation.
Insurance policies needs to be designed well, with the best interests of the customers in mind in order to ensure the reputation of the organisation remains good and keep customers flowing. But customer experience at the point of commitment cannot be determinant on the decisions or such products. To me, the sales agent is providing a service and the only way his interest can be aligned to the customer is when he is paid a fixed fee by the customer to provide that service.
