Kevin Low

Given how prolonged the ongoing pandemic is, those who have been holding things off until ‘normalcy returns’ can no longer really hang on to that. You will have to start considering how to move forward, how to be able to making progress regardless of the kind of circumstances that are in place.

For starters, progress is non-linear. It is not unidirectional or unidimensional. You can’t look at progress just from one metric and certainly, it is not just about moving in one direction for each of those metrics. There will be trade-offs, and there is no single driver for the whole time.

I want to consider the example of the solar power industry. It had a lot of false starts which in retrospect, contributed to its longer term development. Those window of opportunities drew bright minds and investors into the picture when they otherwise would not have entered. And these were important contributions to the industry even if they did not immediately make things take off.

There were times when the industry was not focused and still in limbo as to whether mono-crystalline or poly-crystalline or thin-film technology would be the de-facto. Even when the leading technology became clearer, further cost reduction and revenue enhancement opportunities had to be explored, including replacing string inverters with micro inverters to reduce single-point-of-failures in the solar array.

So your business may not be getting so much volumes now, perhaps it’s time to look at improving customer service, raising the quality of service, introducing better processes. These are things that are hard to do when all your staff are engaged, and busy with the status quo. Investments take the form of capital and also time. This might be the time to work on those investments that takes time.

I used to work for a big boss who often shared tidbits of humorous wisdom during some of the smaller meetings we have when he reviews our work. He usually have his set of 2×2 matrix which he comes up with analogies about all kinds of things. One of these matrices is about strategy and tactics. He reminds us that they are different and also that people with different combination of intelligence about strategy and tactics would derive quite different outcomes.

So we have 4 quadrants, from the combination of high and low abilities in strategy and in tactics. So there’s the ones who are high on strategy and tactics. He calls them the guided missiles; they do well at strategising and executes them well, on-point, on-target with resources optimised. Then there are those who are high on strategy but low on tactics; he calls them the empty canon (or artillery), they’d point at the enemy and at the right angle but then when it comes down to firing, nothing gets hit. Then there are those who are low on strategy and high on tactics; he says that’s the machine gun; you fire blatantly hoping you’ll hit the target which you might but also drain a lot of resources and potentially cause collateral damage.

Finally, those low on strategy and tactics are submarines. They’re just hanging around. But maybe, they are carrying a guided missile with them.

So who are you, and are you thinking about strategy and tactics clearly? Do you differentiate them?

Been pondering what a good citizen means in Singapore for the future that we want to live in, and to create for our future generation. One of the things we were conditioned to consider in our nation-building days is “if everyone does this then…” and usually if we can agree that chaos will ensue then we will opt not to do it. As a result we learn to understand rules and regulations in the context of the overall social outcomes.

At some point we had been railing against some degree of inflexibility and stupidity in this. I recall one senior who tried to flag down a cab outside the departure hall only to be rebuked by the security guard and was told the cabs are only allowed to drop off and not pick up there. In some sense, Singapore’s orderliness is possible by design and not emergent. But can orderliness be emergent?

Actually it can, and when we have active good citizens who are able to act in considerate manners, who self-organise into queues and lines, who practice grace and politeness, then we get order that is ground up. Which we do see in Singapore. The next generation of good citizens would be those who can recognise what is truly good and important for the nation, and without prompting or mandate from government, organises the others toward those goals.

Was looking at the short video featuring Ray Dalio’s views on Lee Kuan Yew and a bit of history about Singapore. And he interestingly pointed towards the notion of good citizenship that contributed to the manner he built up Singapore in the early days. The fact that Singapore’s people responded to the policies and mixture of sticks and carrot in those days to eventually fulfil Lee Kuan Yew’s vision should not be overlooked.

Of course, to be able to develop one great vision of Singapore as an oasis in the region is powerful; to act in concert and rally the crowd matters. But there was a population of motivated, hardworking individuals who were so used to just doing their own things to survive. Now they had to sign up to a dream about the country. There was little to lose by way of wealth other than the fact this is something completely new for them in their lives. They moved from ghettos and kampongs into high-rise public housing. They changed their way of life completely. And they formed our defence force, they helped to form the core labour in the facilities that the MNCs invested into.

As a country, we determined to invest into human capital in the deepest form. Not just mass education but really changing the way of life, how societal affairs were conducted. Those were deep changes not to be taken for granted. But now that we’ve the fruits of those changes to enjoy, do we not recognise that the new era we ushered in requires a new kind of good citizenship we need to arise to be?

I had a recent chat with a teacher who shared with me an issue he face in school. He had students who disagreed with certain school rules and do not comply with them. In some cases, it could be about sleeping during the reading period for example where they are supposed to be reading a copy of newspaper that day. That seemed mild enough and the rules only state they are not supposed to sleep or work on anything else except to use that time to peruse the newspaper.

He realises that some students are involved in so many activities or busy with many other things in school and hence would naturally be sleepy or tired during that time slot. So it seemed pointless to go around classrooms waking these students up. He had the chance to speak to these students but they just generally don’t believe that time slot was going to be helpful to them and hence rather take the time to ‘rest’. He asked me when the students do not accept or align themselves with the intention of the rules, how should we get them to comply?

I suggested the following analogy: If you visit your friend’s place and they take off their shoes before entering the house, do you keep your shoes on and enter their house just because you do that at home yourself, and disagree with their practice? And the reason for you to be doing that is because you do want to maintain your identity as a friend, and receive the benefits of friendship and the house visit you’re taking part in. Likewise in school, respect for the rules comes with the privilege of being able to attend the school.

If, even after explaining such and giving the student (in his/her teens) to digest it, then it makes sense to mete out punishments. The problem with an approach to just get students to ‘follow the rules’ without clear indication of the intent is that they would only learn superficial compliance. But the even greater challenge is when they are resentful about being ‘forced’ into that compliance if they don’t buy into the intent. Then, the principle is that of privilege and responsibility. Something I’m not sure we emphasise enough in schools.

I recall the days back in school when I’d spend hours in the library in this small reading cubicle doing my homework, studying new topics, doing research. In fact, after the age of 16, I never really did school work at home anymore. I did almost all of my work in school, at benches or in the library cubicle. I found the same kind of cubicle in the library of Hwa Chong, and then LSE, and then NYU.

Then I graduated and started working. It’s funny how since I started working, I spent hardly any time in the cubicle. Granted, I never really had one because my first workplace embrace the open concept. It was a bit messy, disruptive and can be stressful when I need to do focused work. But I got used to it. I’m not sure if I could have produced better quality work if I had a cubicle but most of my work requires lots of collaboration so it was just as well.

And now, I’ve been working from home a lot and for more than a year. I begin to rediscover the importance of the cubicle. Which essentially is the boundaries we want to set around our work. If we allow interruption, if we do work outside the cubicle, we need to know how far we want to let it go. As the society marches towards a mental health crisis, I wonder if it is important that we revisit the older model of salarymen (and women) who recognises that work is there to support us to live the life we aspire – instead of work being the life we aspire.