Find and Replace

Does it always make sense to use a takeaway container or bring your own bag? Is it always sensible to replace every coal-fired power plant (which can sometimes last 50 years) with tonnes of solar panels which often only last 15-20 years. Are we producing too many reusable plastic cups and plastic bottles in a bid to reduce disposable ones?

Sometimes, using the ‘find and replace’ function in Microsoft Word and Excel can be costly. Likewise, if we often can’t just achieve sustainability with the standardised approach – finding that one substitute for each of the polluting, environmentally-unfriendly thing, and then replacing the unfriendly version.

It will take in-depth studies, more careful considerations, to find the right areas to invest, the loose brick to remove so that the old structures powering unsustainable practices would fall. All that is often worth it; to achieve long run sustainability.

Long run efficiency

I recently started working on excel modeling as part of my work. I’ve always been on the theoretical side of working on excel, having attended some trainings here and there but not really applying my skills to the fullest.

It was only in the hands-on of these things that I realise it takes a lot of creativity to model things simply and well. More importantly, being able to foresee how a user is going to approach the model or future expansions to the model required helps you do better.

Now the dilemma is often the trade off between being able to get the results quickly versus finding a more efficient way to arrive at the results. Most people who cares about only the outcome may not want to take detours around experimenting with more efficient methods. Once you perceive the clock ticking is for the outcome, you want to just trek down the path you know to that outcome, rather than take time finding shorter paths that may not bring you to your destinations.

The truth however, is that finding the new paths can have really great long term payoffs because if you’re going to repeat the same kind of tasks or model, you now know how to do it more efficiently. Yet how many of us invest in that? We prefer someone else to do the hard work and meanwhile we will just take the tedious way out.

Pathfinding for long run efficiency is in itself somewhat “inefficient” only when you perceive the clock ticking for the short run outcome. The story to tell yourself is that you’re looking at the long term efficiency. A good life is not made of a series of short term optimisations.

Defaulting Sustainability

What are your defaults in life? What do you fall back on?

Google announced (at least for the US) that they will show you the greenest rather than the fastest route when you search for directions on Google Maps. That’s powerful; and that’s also the method that companies including banks which are switching to ‘paperless’ statements are doing to their customers. First they made it an opt-in to have paper statements (ie. by default, you get electronic statements), and then they might even put a fee on paper statements down the road.

Maybe if we are not cutting plastic bags yet, we could make it default for shops not to give bags. Just pass the customer a product after check-out. Let the customer ask for bags. If they don’t ask, they don’t get the bags. Don’t let your staff ask if they need; let the customer know politely if they want bags, they need to ask. Use signs to tell them that.

Defaulting to the green option rather than the most convenient option works and is important. Make ‘bring your own containers’ default for takeaway by always asking customers if they have their own containers, then reminding them there’s a fee for the takeaway containers.

Change the defaults, save the planet.

Better appraisals

We can make appraisals better. Less personal, less likely to be emotionally charged. It should not be about you, it should be about the role, the responsibilities assigned. The reframing will help us approach it more objectively and use it more wisely.

Appraisals should be about identifying fit for a role/responsibility package that comes with the job. It works both ways. When hiring, the bosses or supervisors do not have perfect foresight what the role and work will entail and so they might be shooting blindly in the way they write the job description or qualify the candidate. Likewise, when applying for the role, one can’t quite really know if the job is what he or she expected it to be like.

The appraisal should be done quarterly or half-yearly, focused on looking at the contents of the job role and package of responsibility, then discussing the fit, and direction it should move. If the role is too big, responsibility too heavy, then there might be a need to reduce the load and role. People grow, they step into new stages of life, and they deserve to be in roles that match those needs. Let’s stop restricting ourselves to that unidirectional notion of ‘career progression’ and force everyone to climb the ladder a workplace lays down.

Abuse of Power

So a manager was serving quarantine in a hotel on an island off the mainland of Singapore. She just returned to Singapore from abroad and had to comply with the pandemic measures. She wanted to attend her yoga class via zoom but didn’t have her yoga mat.

So she called her staff to go to her home, pick up the yoga mat and bring it to the hotel on the offshore island. Her staff could have said no. But she didn’t. She was concerned about being loaded with unnecessary work, or being picked on, or worse, getting an unfavourable appraisal.

The culture of compliance in our workplaces is reinforced by the continued use of one-way appraisals. This breeds cronyism and favouritism unless there is sufficient checks on the power of bosses.

Why check their power, you ask? Because the cronyism can breed mediocrity and the culture reduces productivity, encourages hypocrisy. Beyond adopting 360 appraisals, a different attitude and approach to appraisal is needed in the workplace.

Kevlow.com turns 1

Yes my blog have existed for quite some time and I’ve imported quite a fair bit of writings I did from previous websites I ran (eg. ERPZ.net) on this blog so there’s a fair bit of content you can look back to. But this domain, and the website in its current form has only been running for 1 year!

And this website really started because I launched my coaching practice, and decided that I want to help the people around me learn to write their own stories. This site is also a personal endeavour to keep myself engaged with writing, to share my ideas, with the world. And since the beginning of 2021, it’s been great. I’ve been writing every single day, sharing random thoughts and ideas but all converging towards the idea of creating a future that we want to be part of.

The thing is that we can only either create something for ourselves, that we want, or to create something to serve someone else. Like Seth Godin mentioned in The Practice, you can choose to do one or another but if you try to do both, you’re basically forcing everyone to like what you like. I don’t pretend that the future I’m trying to create is one that everyone will like; but I do welcome all on this journey with me, for yourself, to care about the future, to care about serving others and our future selves enough. That humankind can even have a future, and to move forward.

Grasping at something

It might be useful to teach college graduates or even teens to identify, and account for things in our lives. To account for whether they can be controlled, or influenced, or not at all.

Too many of us live our lives thinking we can control everything. This happens at the level of governments, corporations, and even individuals. If we just take a moment to reflect and recognise how poor even our self-control is, we’d realise that trying to exert control over things typically end up with misery.

And that’s why being obsessed with outcomes is very toxic. And at an individual level, attempting to control outcomes in order to emerge as the champion often can have bad results for the society as a whole. As a society, we can invest more into how to encourage a different culture; not one where individuals all grasp at things but aspire to be something, for the community.

Theory tests

We are a few more days from the mandatory theory tests for food delivery riders here in Singapore starts. The tests will cover maintenance and handling of the various e-mobility devices (mainly scooters) for the riders and also safety when riding.

I think exams and theory tests are good for propaganda. After all, propaganda involves repeating things to people and what better way than to test them on it so they have it in their minds all the time. They are also good for things where people must regurgitate to someone else. But these theory tests are not so good for things that are practical. It is hard to declare someone capable of performing first aid just because he completed a theory test with flying colours.

Likewise, you might prefer the surgeon who has performed more surgeries than one who has repeatedly scored better than him on theory tests. But why do we continue to trot out these sort of tests and credentials?

It’s to create deniability; to say it’s been checked so we’ve done our part. Why we do this to ourselves, I’m not sure. Better perhaps to change the culture from one that is focused on grasping for individual credentials to one that is about caring for people.

Beyond qualifications

There was a time when information and knowledge are scarce. And misinformation is rife because there are people who are uneducated and ready to believe in those who might appear more knowledgeable. And then qualifications and credentials started to make a bit of a difference because it helps to refine the signal a bit and tell the noise apart.

Yet when more and more people get qualified and the pool of unqualified people shrinks (eg. More people have gone through mass education), scammers begin to pray on the ones who are slightly knowledgeable or even the worldly-wise. It is better to know nothing and hence choose not to engage with a scammer than to know a little and get led on.

At the same time, the signal starts getting mixed up with much more noises. For example, you could have passed an exam because you memorised solutions rather than really knowing how solutions work and solving them at the exam. You can think of more situation of such noises crowding out the genuine signal.

Since a college degree is more common, it is harder to justify paying a college graduate more. And then brand name colleges starts to get prized even more and we’ve an unhealthy dynamic going for us.

So we are back to fundamentals, where we try to make learning and education democratic, where it is less about paper qualifications. And we try to make the formal systems less about exams but more about proving oneself. We see big tech firms requiring talents looking to provide training themselves and picking talents in a whole new space. It’s almost like when Sabermetrics was first discovered and undervalued players were being picked up more.

Better to start creating new games to play than merely just figuring out rules of others’ games.

Other People’s Thoughts

When I look at my dog, I wonder if she cares about what I think of her. I happen to sometimes think she is a little spoilt, manipulative, overly skittish. I also wish she knows that I care for her, that it bothers me she is often scared of me for no good reason. Humans as social animals happen to operate a level of functioning so sophisticated and high that it often borders on leading to malfunction.

We seem to care so much about other people’s thoughts (of ourselves) that our minds are constantly seemingly wondering about that. And as social creatures, we want that approval, even subconsciously. And we will gravitate towards fulfilling their expectations. We might even allow our emotions to rise and fall on the opinions of others.

The best weight you’ll ever lose is the weight of other people’s opinions

Unknown

That sounds like a normal way to live. How can you ever even expect to be freed of the influence of others? After all, you’ll always be a function of the society, culture, upbringing and environment that you exist in. The main challenge perhaps, is when we end up becoming anxious about the life we are living in a bid to satisfy everyone’s expectation. Remember, living for everyone, is living for no one.