Tag Archives: politics

Political culture

Woke Salaryman recently posted this comic article in response to comments towards a previous post about workplace ‘politics’. I really like the realism, the clarity and conviction behind their work. I think it is great that they call out the naivety of those who thinks that they can be ‘above’ politics at work but I’m writing this post because I want to add a more nuance layer to the conversation.

I think Singapore, by and large, have always been sensitive to overt kinds of politicking because of the way politics have been portrayed in our history. We take a more superficial view of what politics mean, as though it is all bad and about behaving in deceptive or conniving, self-serving ways.

And in the workplace, we default to thinking that the virtuous approach is simply to bury head and work hard. That can be a great start in a small working team or organisation where visibility isn’t really a problem. It also works well when productivity, key work metrics are not contentious. Then politicking can seem like it’s all about bootlicking, gossiping and acting in the worse, socially destructive ways.

Politics, which is derived from greek words meaning ‘affairs of a city’ is fundamentally relating to governance and interactions between fellow beings living in the same environment, subject to different constraints and influences that are interdependent on one another in the community. The relationship-building, social interactions, tussle for power, influence or mind-share are all part of it. In a workplace, where we are all coming together to achieve something together, it takes effort and the meta-layer of ‘work’ to organise everyone together.

Work today has evolved and become increasingly complex; it is hard to measure individual effort easily, and particularly challenging to identify precisely what the right skillsets are to progress to the next level. It is ultimately the ability to organise others and persuade them to work together that produces value as opposed to working and contributing directly.

There is a role for politics in all of lives, and maybe Singapore needs to build a culture of politcal-awareness and also encourage citizens to appreciate the positive role it can play in society, workplaces. And we may all also learn the right social, emotional intellect needed to handle tricky situations. With the geopolitical climate of the world today, Singapore needs to cultivate more brilliant diplomats than ever before. How else to do so than to help our people recognise the value of such work to the survival and success of a city state nation.

Driven by inspiration

If you think that Singaporeans were motivated by fear to build up our country in early days of nationhood, think again. There wasn’t really all that much to fear because we didn’t have much to begin with. This narrative that we had no resources, we had to rely on our manpower, and our ingenuity, that’s all true but it wasn’t translating into fear for our forefathers. We had it wrong to think that Lee Kuan Yew fearmongered two generations of Singaporeans into the building up a metropolis we have today.

I believe the early Singaporeans were driven by inspiration – the ‘against all odds’ was possible because it was well worth a shot. We didn’t have much to lose; and there was everything to gain on the table. We had institutions to build, and a new identity. How exciting! And of course, we do not slacken, we are not complacent, because we were not there yet – we were limited only by our ability to envision the future and inspire our countrymen towards it.

Fast-forward today, we seem to think that we managed to achieve all that we did out of fear. We think it was ‘kiasuism’ (fear of losing) that drove us. Probably not. What was there to lose anyways; and yes we are competitive because we want to win, not because we are afraid of losing. Being afraid of losing only happens when you have won at least once. And we did win, more than once, and we begin to hold on to our victories and achievements more than our vision of the future. And in fact, this vision of the future morph, and then slipped.

Consider this press release by the Singapore government in November 1988, there seem to be a clear policy and longer term strategy underpinned by a theoretical framework of the economy. There was a deep understanding of what it means for our economy to grow and the structure by which it is expected to grow with. But without a clear sense of vision for what we want to build Singapore into, we will fall into the trap of just trying to push certain figures up indefinitely.

Ten years ago, in 2015, Ravi Menon sketched out some kind of economic vision for the future framed in a retrospective 100th year anniversary speech for Singapore in 2065. It is brilliant and perhaps reflects Ravi’s aptitude for such high level strategic thinking and visioning. If we look at the decade of performance that took place after the speech was made, I’d say things have not been kind to the world and Singapore in terms of geopolitics. That’s perhaps something Ravi did not anticipate and would not have been expected to identify as a challenge for Singapore.

In the next five decades, our nation will be confronted with lots of geopolitical challenges and turmoil in the world; our economy will require more radical thinking and transformation than the country has ever had to go through. But we can only get through it with inspiration, not fear. We can only be driven by the desire to create a future we want to live in, rather than to react to the world’s situation with the classic ‘bo-pian’ attitude that we might find more common amongst our people.

Skills and degrees

There’s been recurring opinions, stories and new reports about jobs and skills in Singapore over the past couple of months. The Job Skills insights report presented some interesting results that can be interpreted in vastly different ways, and is perhaps worth our society deliberating over.

One of the statistic in the report (page 14) that comes across as strange though not surprising, is that a non-degree holder with high skills proficiency is finding it HARDER (lower chance of getting the job) to get high-skilled jobs while a degree holder with medium to low skills proficiency can access high-skilled jobs more EASILY (higher chance of getting the job).

And on the next page, it claims that those same degree holders who were mid-low in skill proficiency had higher remuneration, and more autonomy in the jobs they got. Overall, the slant of the report seems to be promoting the need to obtain degrees and more qualifications even though it is supposed to highlight the importance of skills.

There are different opinions about what exactly is happening in Singapore. Some believe that if there simply aren’t job opportunities around, the paper chase just ends up being an arms race where jobs are just moving around from one group to another. The winner then becomes the certificate issuing organisations and schools.

Others think that there’s something absurd about hiring process and HR if they are so reliant on the degree or paper qualifications rather than real skills. Perhaps the high density market and having no short of manpower options mean that such patterns emerge where paper ‘evidence’ is used more than trying to screen for real skills. That contributes to some kind of ‘efficiency’ in the process especially when the HR function in Singapore isn’t exactly the most progressive.

There are others who believe the government’s emphasis on skills had just become a matter of incentivising more paper mills because it is easier to have a clear-cut measure of the output of their ‘skills’ policy. This is why instead of having skillsfuture churn out people who have the skills for the future (such as AI-literacy, programming skills, ability to think more strategically, understanding of carbon emissions, understanding of new energy technologies or what sustainability is really about), we simply get more aunties who could bake melon pan, or uncles who could generate good morning messages with GenAI.

I exaggerate.

But the point remains that we have a culture that is steeped in wanting to have tangible proofs of something that is genuinely intangible. And degrees or paper qualification remains a proxy for us to somehow observe skills. The point of it all is really the skills rather than the degree – so to make it about the degree seems rather superficial and short term. If anything, the big companies hiring in Singapore could come to the conclusion that since the degree holders they’re hiring have already hit the mid-low level of skills proficiency, the talent pool is really shallow and this is it, and they forgo hiring the non-degree holders who have high skill proficiencies.

Maybe that is when they start pulling out of the market. Because they are not able to access the real talent pool they need.

In long run, our paper chase actually ends up stopping ourselves.

Climate startups

Whether it’s climate tech or climate or sustainability startups, I’ve been encountering them recently. Of course, they are just startup companies, looking to find a product-market fit and then scale their business. There is a massive distraction in today’s market where you could grow a business out of making grant applications and putting together plans, where you try to get funding to take off.

This sounds a lot more like research in academia than the economics of a free market. While government is hoping to drive the development of good climate solutions, they are still tapping on the market where it failed, doing so through what they believe are ways to keep things market-driven when they have actually replaced the market and allowed the grant application processes to pick winners.

The challenge is that the winners picked through a grant application process are not going to be the type who wins in the market. These are firms who would have scrutinized the fine print, delivered on arbitrary KPIs and proxies that some bureaucrat came up with in his or her office. And these schemes are just distracting time, money and resources away from the startups towards satisfying governance requirements. After all, ‘it is taxpayers’ money”

The work of growing a new industrial ecosystem isn’t easy and I’ve spent considerable part of my career thinking about ecosystems, value chains, bottlenecks in developing an industry. If the government can give some demand assurance perhaps for a specific project, or product that the customer would be able to use or satisfied with, then it could help. And very often, if politicians want to be able to make claims about having supported one particular development then things becomes more difficult, not easy. When economic support is driven by a desire for narratives rather than allowing the stories to emerge from a system that is created, you can get a poorly specified policy.

Singapore’s 60th

I sat down and listened to the National Day Rally speech with a break in between. In terms of delivery and finding the stories to tell, I’d say Lawrence Wong did well. He also positioned the 4G team well, and to a large extent, it almost feels like political campaigning. The election results this year have shown a good amount of trust in the PAP government and reduced tolerance for weak opposition candidates. So I’d expect that the ruling government would lead confidently and start working on rolling out a vision.

I think the elements of vision involve more of the old playbook, unfortunately: another committee to work on the economy, more new towns and spaces earmarked to be developed, and then programme funding or tweaks to support Singaporeans, in terms of reskilling or upskilling.

There’s this common thread that Lawrence Wong seem to have been emphasizing, but I’m not sure I observe much of it on the ground. He seems to be recognising that general sense that the government had been dominating decision-making, and so there are generally more attempts to involve the people, to gather feedback, or to listen in. If that was his diagnosis about the sentiments, it is correct. It is not something to be ‘fixed’ overnight however. And it will take time to create a culture where people contribute responsibly to policy-making, and to concern themselves with the needs of the wider society.

Over the years in Singapore, there had been more individualistic attitude – because the government’s approach to just about everything involves sticks or carrots, more often than not, there’s this general attitude of ‘what’s in it for me?’ From the NDR speech, I can see Lawrence Wong urging less of that individualistic attitude, more of the ‘we’, but I wonder what are some behaviours that the government or the civil service can lead with, in order to foster and encourage that.

Trust in Singapore

As our nation crosses the diamond jubilee at SG60, people were putting down their wishes of ‘I want to…’ during NDP. The messages played on the videos for NDP were really inspiring and had nice stories from ordinary Singaporeans of diverse background. I felt genuinely moved and encouraged that we can be more than just ourselves and what we bring because Singapore is just a society that has been on the move, that has been developing and growing and thriving. It all feels good.

The stuff that doesn’t feel that good – how do we approach it though? The fact that places and spaces have been sacrificed, people uprooted to make way for development (as the Tekong story suggested). Or that sporting feels more like a lone wolf endeavour more than a national one, particularly during the ‘invisible phase’ of training, working towards Olympic qualifications, etc (story of Lloyd Valberg; though one can’t say this through that story since Singapore wasn’t yet a nation in 1948). Or that the big corporations often push around small businesses because that is ‘normal’ in our culture (story of Yanee; ‘but are you ready for an order of this scale’).

There is a choice to be made on how we see things. And whilst we have been told repeatedly there would be trade-offs, we haven’t yet learnt the real principles and intentions behind the decisions on those trade-offs. Why do we choose one over another? To the ones in places of power, it might be obvious. How could the sacrifice be made worthwhile for those suffering from its consequences?

What principles do we use to uphold our values – whether they are peace, justice or equality? Or perhaps progress? What happens when they are trading off each other? What if we cannot accomplish all of them at the same time? Often, ‘progress’ as the value seems to take centre stage. And is the kind of progress broad or narrowly defined?

To move forward, we must also learn unravel more the principles worth learning about and keeping, which we can use to navigate the future. Our forefathers left them for us but if we don’t pick them up to use them, it would be squandering the success that they’ve worked so hard to build us.

Blunting policies II

I wrote about the government blunting their policies previously when it comes to SME grants, particularly in Singapore. The same applies to many countries where policy directions are not just unclear but constantly changing. In the energy transition world, so many projects and companies in the US were taking investment decisions on the basis of tax credits for production of renewable energy.

So when the fate of the tax credits was suddenly called into question, it massively derailed the plans of these companies and projects, resulting in a whole sector or industrial sub-segment seizing up. I have always thought it’s incredible that in Europe and US, you could build an entire business or project based on revenues that are only possible because of subsidies or government tax credits. That’s amazing to me because in Asia, companies do not rely on government subsidies to build their business cases. At least not the private companies who have no political influence.

The reason for that is that the private sector is unwilling to take a lot of the regulatory risks from the Asian government, and they are not sure about the longevity of those policies and incentives. They recognise that when leadership changes, these incentives could disappear (as it happened in the US most recently). In other words, those policy measures in Asia are actually pretty blunt because the private sector is not going to respond to it much. US government risk that happening and losing such a precious lever to influence the economy and coordinate the change that is required.

Likewise, in Singapore, one of the biggest advantage that the government have is the ability to coordinate change properly. Technically, they don’t need to use market-based mechanisms to do that, but decades of indoctrination about the need to use free-market capitalism to ensure efficiency have brought us to the approach taken these days. The topic of subsidies is tricky and often at the top level, the thinking is ‘who would not want subsidies and freebies for their business?’ Yet in practice, it is not so easy. But it is not the bureaucracy that companies are unwilling to engage with – it is the uncertainty around the discretion of agencies’ decisions on whether some company or activity merits the funding.

Often, if the government’s grants or subsidies are uncertain and criteria are flexibly applied to accept or reject applications, then companies would rather focus on dealing with the vicissitudes of the market than of the government. I’m writing these because I feel that our agencies could inadvertently undermine something precious that the government have built up in the past. The full implications can only be seen and experience when it’s probably too late.

Blunting policies I

I started my first serious job with the Singapore government over a decade ago. Before that, I worked variously in education (math and economics tutor, and teaching assistant for undergraduates), as a freelance writer for a local economics magazine, and water treatment systems (B2C and B2B sales of drinking water filters and treatment units).

But I’ve been thinking about government policies and the institutions required to build a strong economy for almost two decades. This is partly because I was influenced by Dr Goh Keng Swee’s achievements to study economics. In particular, I thought a lot about industrial policies and the approaches taken for that in Singapore.

I was subsequently part of IE Singapore, and then Enterprise Singapore. They were agencies that provided grants to local companies for various activities. To avoid ‘picking winners’ in terms of selecting particular sectors to support, most of these incentive policies are broad sweeping – they were targeted at investments that enhanced productivity such as supporting automation, digitisation, etc. Sustainability was recently a key theme for some of these incentive schemes.

As I’ve been out of the system for a long time, my views are not based on what I know from inside the system but observations made from conversations with businesses on the outside. In all of these incentive schemes, there’s a strong emphasis on governance so the process takes a bit of time. Companies are encouraged to go ahead with their plans while the grant application is in process. This plays the role of reducing risks of delays to the companies’ plans but it also mean that the companies faces uncertainty on the final outlay/expenses that the government would cover.

The government exercises a significant amount of discretion when approving grants. This is a conclusion arrived at by consulting and digital service solution providers to the Small-medium Enterprises (SMEs) with solutions or services that were supported by the grants.

What eventually happens as a result is that incentive schemes by the government becomes weaker and weaker as a tool to encourage companies to take up new solutions or move in the direction of the government. In the short run, when government pushes out incentives to help SMEs with payment systems, or improve their marketing, or even start R&D, the SMEs will definitely start looking into this areas thinking it’s their chance to defray some of their costs of making such improvements and getting more competitive advantage. Some may even realise they should go into it with or without grant support. But a majority of them would not look deep enough to make that decision – instead, they’ll make the decision contingent on the availability of support. When their applications are either denied or the amount granted falls short of their expectations, a certain trust in the government is broken.

The next time these grants or incentives are peddled around, they no longer respond to them. They are skeptical about the government’s sincerity. This is especially if they had experienced cases where the rejection comes through technical grounds or when they expected a particular expense to be eligible due to vague policy wording, but eventually the agency exercised discretion to deny it.

In the long run, these policies gets more and more blunt, and public servants will be spending so much effort thinking about the policies, setting up governance procedures, only to realise that uptake of these incentives are poor. I wonder how much governments realise this is actually a problem for longer term policy-making and economic levers. As much as they try to use market-oriented levers, some of these intangible factors make a huge difference.

Green jobs

While in the meeting rooms of policymakers, the discussion around green economy and creation of ‘green jobs’ is underway, there is a slightly different conversation about green jobs in the coffee shops and cafes.

“Good work-life balance. But limited impact.”

“We move two steps forward and three steps back sometimes when trying to drive corporate green transition.”

“We have no veto power on investment decisions, the company still needs to make money so the frontline business units have the final say even when the investment have adverse environmental impacts.”

“The corporate sustainability department primarily manages reputational risks, not environmental ones.”

The best way to create impactful green jobs is perhaps when the laws and regulations properly require compliance with stricter environmental standards. At the moment, a lot of compliance are around reporting requirements and yes you do get some kind of ‘green jobs’ but they are mainly the bean-counter sort. The solution-seeking sort will come when you begin to set up standards in environmental performance that companies have to meet.

There is no point propagating green jobs, trying to subsidise manpower for these jobs and using tax credits or other incentives to force companies to locate their sustainability or green functions in Singapore when there is no corresponding increase in environmental performance standards imposed on our corporates.

Better to spend the resources studying the suitable regulations to put in place. And then you can support the companies to meet them.

Experience curve pricing

So it started when I was reading Cedric Chin’s writing about Morris Chang, and then about Texas Instruments dominating semicon industry through the invention of the Learning Curve pricing. Here is a situation where a large company basically finances its product into dominance by sacrificing some early profits as they expect lower prices to generate sufficient demand to increase utilisation of their machine, improving product yield through improvements in the manufacturing process.

This enabled Texas Instruments to dominate the industry as the anticipated increase in manufacturing yield (as a result of the ‘learning curve’), enabled more aggressive pricing, pushing out competitors, increasing market share for Texas Instruments, and thereby creating more scale advantages to drive more yield improvements. This is a remarkable use of financing to use scale economies to dominate the market. Essentially, most of the digital tech companies tries to use this as a means to eventually dominate a market of their niche.

The original idea of the learning curve of course came with manufacturing, and I believe this idea was applied at the scale of the entire industry in China when it comes to solar panels, Li-on battery architecture and now probably electric vehicles. By massively subsidising the products and creating demand not just domestically but also in foreign markets, China successfully increased utilisation of their capital equipment, improved their manufacturing capabilities and cement their advantage further.

While other markets are still focused on ‘costs’ of deploying solar, or using batteries, China took a different perspective, one that was driven by manufacturing capabilities and learning curve. I believe Japan had desired such an approach as well, having been subsidising certain markets and technologies, including development of hydrogen cars as well as residential hydrogen appliances (see ENE-FARM home use fuel cell system).

Sometimes when we wonder if we are too early into the market for something, when it comes to the government that is willing to orchestrate a strategy at that sort of industrial level, one can mobilise the resources to create the future rather than wait for the right time.