One of the greatest challenges confronting our modern world is the sense that when there is a solution for something, the idea that we didn’t apply it indicates a lack of responsibility or some kind of mistake on the part of a human. The fact a surgeon could have healed someone but failed to puts the blame on the surgeon even when the chance of success is probabilistic. Of course, some things require a lot of resources to achieve even when they are feasible, so that doesn’t mean that the feasibility of a solution isn’t the only parameter to determine whether it should be applied or not.
Yet somehow at the back of our minds, if we didn’t apply it, that seem to imply we did not try hard enough or do our best. The issue is that with limited resources, you probably can’t ‘do your best’ in everything. There’s only this much you can give. This applies even to the government, whether it is taken from the budget perspective or the use of manpower.
And for a small country with a lean government like Singapore, solving for the ‘which problem’ to tackle is perhaps increasingly important as there will always be some fringe issues that you can deal with to make yourself look as though you’re doing your job when you’re not making any progress. The recent cigar dish case seems like one of those situation where it is probably not significant enough to escalate to higher (or more mature) decision-makers while seeming to have that easy solution of ‘order them to remove it’. We have a limited attention span available for our public servants, especially those handling frontline issues.
If there’s one big thing we need in society that the education system is not properly teaching us, that is the need to struggle. There’s this sentiment in the education system that struggling suggests something is wrong, that is a state to transit away from, and to be avoided if possible. But what if struggling through difficulties, challenges is actually an important aspect of life? What if it takes struggling in order to truly learn something? Not just to acquire head knowledge but also to have a practical sense of how to use that knowledge?
How do we teach people to be resilient otherwise? How do we cultivate a generation of people who can actually deal with those problematic issues confronting mankind (eg. climate change, sharp inequalities, cracks in market capitalism, etc)?
We can organise our economy in very different ways, and even as the free market and the idea of capitalism reign, there can be different extents to which goods and services are produced and supplied to the end consumers. The non-profit organisation can serve as a way to coordinate activity that delivers real economic results in the form of goods and services.
I think we have overlooked the ability of such a form of economic organisation to do more for the world. The advantage of a non-profit that it explicitly pursues resources specifically for a cause. It doesn’t mean it will squander resources inefficiently, but the stated purpose of it, is to generate the impact or advance towards the mission. Ironically, some of the more profitable companies in the world can tend to make claims that are similar to non-profit in terms of the contribution it brings to society.
And since non-profits often have to deliver results in exchange for funding, or to unlock pre-committed funding, they will learn to optimise their budget and utilise resources optimised to deliver some of the results or at least provide inputs to the causes they are trying to champion. The funding portion of non-profits may be different but the way it should be ran operationally is probably not so different from a typical company, with the exception it may not be able to use the usual incentives for its staff (in those circles, they sometimes call it a passion tax).
Yet perhaps more forms of organisations should be acting as non-profits. For example, banks should potentially operate without profits, with the key objective of optimising risks in the system while providing access to credit for organisations and people. In fact, I think that all financial institutions, even those providing payment solutions probably should have limitations placed on their profits because ultimately, it is the real economy that they are trying to drive and allowing them to extract too much from the real economy can hinder the more fundamental process of capital allocation – which is what we are already seeing. Everyone needs to contribute to the real economy and finance in particular, has become the tail wagging the dog, in name of the pursuit of profit. That is a shame.
There is increasing acknowledgement of China’s leadership in a huge range of technologies around the energy transition and yet the struggle is that a lot of narratives in the Anglo-saxon world seem to be rather negative about this whenever the conversation on economics of equipment starts talking about using Chinese products.
I’m not sure if trying to re-invent the Chinese leadership in the technologies should be a key priority. Isn’t it the typical ‘western’ idea of trade that every country can develop their comparative advantage and should stick to it? One of the huge comparative advantage that the west has lies in taking seriously very preliminary, immature and ill-formed ideas and persistently exploring, improving, refining them until they are good enough for the market. At that point, the Asian economies with its ability to scale up further and drive costs down takes over those hardware aspects and this allows for prosperity and mutual gains.
The innovations in business model, technology and regulations that are needed probably will proceed the same way. Geopolitics can seem to drive the climate transition at times (such as putting a price on carbon, regulating flow of goods based on carbon content, enforcing carbon disclosures for companies, etc.), but they could also drive things in another way. When America or Europe puts tariffs on China batteries and other technologies, it can set back more advanced technologies that their local ecosystems are trying to build on top of solar, or batteries.
The truth is, more developed markets with more firms in the ‘traditional’ industrial sectors will definitely have to deal with some can of stasis introduced by incumbents lobbying, the inertia from having to restructure the economy, whereas the newer and up-and-coming markets have less to lose, or less industries to cannibalise when they are trying to develop their own industries. China’s advantage of leapfrogging some of the fossil fuels and moving straight from coal to renewables is simply something more fundamental.
The question as a global society is how we can lean on the strengths of different countries to deal with this global climate problem. Geopolitics and global competition can sometimes help. But not when competition turn towards having to re-invent the wheel.
Continuing my series of musings about the nexus of sports and life. Something more important than winning in the sports arena is that your character is being built. How do you measure the extent of character development? What am I thinking about exactly? And why does it matter?
You can’t measure character. It doesn’t mean it is not important but you just cannot measure it. In the film Les Choristes, the Maths teacher, Mr Mattieu, formed a choir believing it would help reform the badly behaving boys. And it did! But how do you measure it? What changed? Maybe the school grades, maybe the noisyness of the classroom, perhaps even their sense of aspirations. In sports, the players’ performance can be seen in their behaviour on the pitch or courts, as well as their scores, but perhaps also in their lives, the way they treat the people around the sport, and so on. Even how they treat their competitors and how they talk about them. Max Maeder, the Singaporean kite-foiling Olympic medalist, impressed everyone by giving kudos to his competitors after finishing third in his final race when asked to comment on the race.
So that’s what I’m thinking about. There’s something unmeasurable that we can achieve in sports and sporting culture. Are we going to invest into that as a nation? Do we care enough about our people’s lives and their mental fortitude, resilience in face of struggles, competition, and need to perform? Those are precisely what sports offers us an opportunity to train and build up. And so investing in sports is not just about shiny stadiums, sport science degree programmes but also providing athletes with sport psychologists, equipping athletes with the science involved in training, practice, self-care and so on.
An excerpt from Roger Federer’s commencement speech for the graduating class of 2024 at Darthmouth this summer:
In tennis, perfection is impossible… In the 1,526 singles matches I played in my career, I won almost 80% of those matches… Now, I have a question for all of you… what percentage of the POINTS do you think I won in those matches?
Only 54%.
In other words, even top-ranked tennis players win barely more than half of the points they play.
When you lose every second point, on average, you learn not to dwell on every shot.
He could be considered perhaps the most long-running, persistently successful individual athlete of our times, and the lessons he can draw from his experience are timeless. If we could have more of such models and examples to train, motivate, and encourage our next generation of Singaporeans – for their lives not just in sports but other aspects, won’t it be great?
For some reason, despite not being particularly sporty or athletic, I’ve had the benefit of knowing good athletes and learning a lot from them about psychology, personal development, and mindsets. While not being involved in the sporting scene, I’ve come to recognise the many ways our attitudes or behaviours during sports can mirror some other aspects of our lives.
One of them shared a really good practice introduced by her coach in Australia. After each training, he would get the athletes to go down the line to describe how they thought they performed for the training and why. And he’d listen to them, and then tell them whether they are judging themselves accurately regarding the performance and reasons provided. Often, people could judge their own performance correctly, but they come up with the wrong explanation, which means they are not going to correct it properly. And the coach would then offer his thoughts. Compared to Asian coaches who typically just drops his feedback directly, this Australian coach was challenging because he required his athletes to develop their judgment of themselves.
I thought this practice is great because over time, the athletes are building up a stronger ability to judge their own performance and pinpoint why. That creates a strong ability to coach oneself and also develop the right approach towards improvement. Many aspects of sports is about psychology and even getting oneself to put in the effort to practice can be something psychological. By coaching this way, athletes can come to see sports as more than just about performance but learning about oneself and one’s body even more intimately.
This is important. In Asian societies, especially with strong examination cultures, we never learn to judge or discern our own performance in things nor develop that independent sense about our abilities. This is a shame because once you’re at work, you will need to form judgment about the quality of your own work before you make submissions, you’ll have to determine if coworkers are doing what you need them to do, and of course, you’ll need to do so on many different dimensions including the social performance aspect of things. We strengthen our mental resilience and fortitude when we can judge ourselves more objectively.
As a consultant, we sometimes encounter clients who only want to pay for the outcome but not the inputs or the efforts. It is probably true that a client takes on the cost of the work and all of the risks when they are just paying someone for the efforts, but they do also get most if not all of the upside pertaining from the subsequent business success. Of course, the consultants get a track record or credential but that’s probably a win-win situation, not something you’d expect the consultant to be paying the client for.
But paying for effort, monitoring it and managing the risk continuously can sometimes be the only way to achieve success, rather than striking an agreement with someone whom you would only pay for success. You see, outcomes are often not a function of incentives, they are a function of effort, timing, chance and many things outside the agent’s control. By paying for success, you might not even be optimising the effort for success.
And that brings me to the payouts for Olympic medalists. A gold medalist for Singapore gets a payout of a million SGD, whereas an Australian gets a payout of $20k AUD, which is about $17.5k SGD at current market exchange rates. The point isn’t about whether that is a lot or little; and in any case, the Singapore government might say there are so many Aussie gold medalists that it would not be worthwhile paying them too much. The point is that Australia probably already spend a lot more money upfront in terms of public infrastructure for sports, supporting local sport teams, supporting talented coaches, and promoting a culture of sportsmanship. The ‘outcome’ of Olympic success is already ‘bought’ when they make those investments.
On the contrary, Singapore still thinks that sporting excellence and investing in sports is out of a desire to win. I think that’s a shame, because there are so many other great outcomes that comes from a strong sports culture. And I think the many years of ‘investing’ into Olympics thus far had been out of that desire to ‘buy outcomes’, which is probably why we are offering such a big payouts to the Olympic medalists for Singapore. It allows us not to spend taxpayers money if we don’t get the medal – but at what costs to our sporting culture?
If we are prepared to secure a gold medal, why not take 90% of that million dollars and spend it on something like paying coaches better so they can focus on coaching a one or two teams rather than two handfuls? And why not alter the education system so that civic values are also taught through sporting interactions? There are so many possibilities only if we are willing to put our minds to it, and think about the effort we want to pay for, rather than trying to buy an outcome.
What does it mean if companies declare that they are committed to the energy transition including committing resources towards it, and massive investments, only to make a U-turn when oil & gas turns out to be way more profitable? It tells you that it had always been about the money it makes rather than the transition. Never mind that the fossil fuels continue to drive up carbon emissions and hurting the climate. In fact, maybe climate change would drive up demand for energy – especially in terms of heating or cooling, or requiring more activities in the economy to deal with and mitigate the impacts.
Can the work of accelerating the energy transition be left to the markets? Can profits really motivate companies to support the transition and reduce carbon emissions? Does the market demand understand, appreciate and would be willing to drive and pay for the transition? I don’t think so. Absent regulation, it is unlikely for the markets to drive the emergence of the solution. It is as if we want seat belt manufacturers to drive the messaging around safety and benefits of having seat belts rather than legislate it as a requirement in cars. Or just waiting around for cars to adopt them as the standard feature in a car.
We probably don’t have enough time for all that to make an impact on mitigating climate change. Regulations will be required. To put a price for carbon on the market, to push technologies and options in the market that will reduce emissions. We must also evolve and steer the regulation as our understanding of the technologies and impact on environment advances. We don’t have to get everything right on the first try but we do need to be trying.
The former China CEO of McDonald’s Kenneth Chan penned a recent opinion piece in Channel News Asia about Singaporeans not taking on leaderships in global companies. It was written in the “practical” Singaporean way that focused on the steps towards being ‘next-level’ and being ‘bold’ to be a leader. He described personal insecurities and his experiences on the ground to rise up.
Personally, I’ve had a host of regional experience within China, South Asia and Southeast Asia during my time with the Singapore government. At International Enterprise Singapore (IE Singapore, now Enterprise Singapore), I had the chance to work with Singapore companies on their internationalisation plans and follow them to markets you would not even think about as a man-on-the-street. Subsequently, I was in the pioneer team of Infrastructure Asia, engaging regional government bodies on infrastructure projects. That gives me the exposure, the open-mind and also the skills to communicate and manage cross-culturally.
As a Manager at the Sydney office of Blunomy today, I am leading teams of consultants across our Singapore, Hong Kong, Sydney, Melbourne offices. I often have to facilitate exchanges with our European offices as well. Insecurities or perceived inadequacies may hold me back but ultimately, it cannot be the fear of me losing my edge or competitiveness that drives me forward.
And that’s the issue I have with the way the article was framed. The opinions expressed in the article reeks of the same old fear-mongering about Singaporeans being comfortable and losing out. I’m not sure if this works for the new generations of Singaporeans nor if that is the right motivation to begin with. The challenge for Singaporeans is not so much the desire for comfort but the lack of worthwhile aspirations. It used to be that rising up to be a ‘GM’ or a ‘CEO’ was something worth aspiring towards. But that simply isn’t the case today with the new generation.
The ‘boomer’ aspirations are simply not worth fighting for. It is in dealing with the ‘why’ that we find our fuel to move forward. “Success” as is constructed in past generations might not work anymore. Instead of aspiring towards “senior leadership” of global corporations, Singaporeans should be desiring to lead the charge of changing the world. Leading global organisations are means to do this. And then it is no longer about remuneration and the practical barriers of relocation and incentives. Monetary incentives should not be the reason for taking up these positions because they are challenging, stressful and hard. There is only so much money can drive that sort of sacrifice. It is the inspiration and influence that counts.
Think about Kenneth Chan leading McDonald’s – you’ve the chance to change the diets of millions of people by making decisions on the menus of your outlets. By thinking more deeply about the toys and promotions on Happy Meal, you get to reshape the aspirations and fancies of a generation of children. That is why it is worth being the leader of a global company – not because of the recognition or being labeled a ‘talent’.
Likewise, if you’re heading up a technology company, it shouldn’t be about maximising shareholder value or aiming to enable investors to make more money. Those elements are important only to the extent they allow businesses to continue making a difference. It is the ability for the technology to grow, benefit people and shape the future into one that we want their children to be part of. That can tip the scale of our motivation no monetary incentives can.
Are we equipping Singaporeans with the right aspirations? It’s not about skills and all that jazz about leadership. Those are important. And yes, government incentives with relocation or settling back in Singapore after stints overseas can help. But what is it that is worth Singaporeans developing that leadership for? That’s what we should be developing.
There are imposters around us; they pretend to be doing their work but are actually creating problems for their coworkers to solve. They are starting fires around workplaces that we all have to put out. The only issue is that companies are trying to get people to practise teamwork and they are not trying to sniff out imposters who are just pretending to be teammates. Unless you start playing office politics and all that.
What this means is that if you have been doing well, and keep doing well even though you didn’t seem to have previous experience or built any credentials around it, you’ve already proven yourself. What this means is that if you have some suspicion about yourself as an imposter, consider your intentions rather than your qualifications. What makes you an imposter is when you have drastically different intentions from the rest of the team.
It’s not just your qualifications that gets you there. It’s your intentions as well.
