The Best Welfare is Tough Training

My national service batch was what you could call an interesting one. We were an “experimental” batch – the one caught in between the “brute force” thinking of the 60s and 70s and the “tech-wizz” army of the 90s and 2000s. Our batch is best summed up by the howitzer that we used – the FH88 and the FH 2000. The FH 2000, the pride of the Singapore artillery at the time, had wonderful hydraulics that allowed us to get the howitzer rounds into the barrel without developing a hernia (I’m told that Singapore’s 155 gunners have our current Prime Minister to thank for developing the flick rammer), which wasn’t the case with the old M71 and M71S.  However, when compared to the Primus, our towed howitzer, the “FH” guns are relics. I remember asking a young gun commander about his gun drill and he stared at me as if I was speaking an alien language. At that point, the S3 (Operations officer) sheepishly explained to me that “gun drill” was called “push buttons.”  

What is true of our equipment was even more so of our people. We were considered “spoilt” because MP’s actually pretended to listen when parents complained about army camps and we slept on foam mattresses. However, unlike today’s recruits, we did have a lap top issued to us upon enlistment. We were a bit more polished than our predecessors and a little more rugged than our successors.

One of the reasons for that was because the army decided that it was time to introduce this thing called “Welfare for Soldiers.” What did this mean? Officially, it meant that the organization had to look like it was pretending to care about the grunts on the ground and superiors were not allowed to get physical with you.

However, while “welfare” was the new buzzword in those days, one of my senior instructors always made the point of telling us that, “The Best Welfare is Tough Training.” While this sounded like a cliché at the time, I’ve come to realize that phrase contains great wisdom, especially when you look at the modern political landscape and the fact that despite all the advances that we’ve made, life seems tougher than it was many years ago.

On one hand you have people who complain that despite working harder than ever before, they seem to be getting less, while on the other hand you have the crowd that complain about the yobs from elsewhere stealing jobs and scrounging off social welfare. The solution for both camps is inevitably the government. So, what is it exactly that we want from the government? Unfortunately, the answer is either more spending on social services or (it’s usually an addition) banning people from certain other groups from having a bite at the cherry.

Both sides seem to have lost the plot. Government plays a vital role in ensuring that things function relatively smoothly. Government also plays a key role in balancing the needs of business and society. However, government in many cases is a bit of a self-serving entity and you have to ask how government can get better for everyone.

I believe that governments should go back to basics, namely understanding the role of government in society. This is best explained by the analogy of a sports match. The government is the provider of the pitch and the referee.  When you look at this way, you will understand that the government is there to provide certain services like infrastructure, defense and sanitation. The government ensures that businesses can flourish but at the same time do not exploit workers. The government should under no circumstances be business.

One of the key roles of government is in providing infrastructure and one of the most important forms of infrastructure is the educational infrastructure. People with skills get jobs and better paying jobs than the people without. I live in Singapore, which is obsessed with education and training. Buying knowledge is big business in Singapore and the government’s continuous mantra is that our entire success is based on the fact that our people have skills that large multinational corporations want. The key driver used to be semi-conductors because our small population used to have the right skills. Now, we’re focusing on other industries.

You could say that the Singapore government has understood that the best welfare for its people is in training and ensuring that people can get good jobs. Better to have a nation of well-trained people that can get decent paying jobs than have a bunch of unemployable people who will expect handouts.

However, as one former journalist said, “Every minister of education we’ve had should be shot – we need so many foreigners every year to do the jobs that the economy creates and it appears the locals can’t do the jobs created by the economy. Then, you got ask, why can’t the locals to the jobs created by the local economy? You look at the one thing they have in common, which happens to be the education system.”

So, what is it about the local system, which is very good at instilling basic skills, not creating the people that are needed for the jobs that are currently being created?

OK, I’m not an expert on the system (in fact, I failed so badly in the system that my mother gave up her career in journalism for me) but I suspect that while our system is good, its good at producing people who can work within the system but not people who can deal with changing circumstances, which, in the age of disruption is a vital skill in order to survive.

While the Singapore government is right to focus on things like “retraining” and “lifelong” learning  so that people can jobs in new industries being created, the question is – is this really what the government wants in its people?

I’m a little unusual because I spent the better part of my working life as a freelancer. I think of the “Gig” economy as the world’s greatest blessing. Things like “Uber” and ‘Airbnb” are empowering. Why can’t I rent out my spare room for a few days a month if it brings me extra money or supplements my income? While nine to six is stable, it cannot be the only form of earning money.

However, its people like me, whom the government looks at with suspicion because we, in the “Gig” economy have a mindset that our survival is self-made. We don’t see a job from a multinational or the government as a gift from a benevolent power. A job is merely that – a means of exchanging time for money. We understand that you, the giver of the job can take it away as you have given it. So, we need to find something else.

On the other hand, someone who has grown used to stability will think differently. You develop a dependent mindset when you have one single source of income that makes it illegal for you not to be dependent on that one employer. For someone raised on that system, the “gig” economy is hell on earth.

Governments should understand that the best form of welfare is to train people for the future. Better to have people who can make their own jobs rather than people who expect welfare handouts. While governments like Singapore’s have been very good at training people to have basic skills in doing things, how many of them have trained their people to think laterally? If governments are serious about providing social welfare, it’s time they trained people to think laterally.  

Letting Birds Fly

Father’s Day has come and gone. It was a time when we all try out best to be nice about the men who contributed a tinny cell that made us into something living. My experiences of fatherhood have been pretty good. You could say I struck it lucky when God decided to give me parents who couldn’t stay married forever. My dad did an awesome job of keeping in style. My stepdads, Lee and Thomas ensured that I understood that the qualification for being a father wasn’t necessarily biological.

When it comes to my natural father, I’m often wax lyrical about the fact that he provided the funds for a pretty cushy lifestyle and  I am an  “educated man” because of him. As my mother used to say, “No matter how bad his business situation, he’s seen to it that your school fees were paid.”

However, what I can’t thank my dad enough for was his ability to let me grow. It was just after the tragedy in New Zealand, when Ronnie and Yin Tit had been blown away by that terrible tragedy. I had pushed for the army to cancel the exercise for my battery and expressed my unwillingness to go for a living firing that had sent my good friend to an early grave. I spoke to my mother, who called my father, who then proceeded to make life hell for the SAF. He told me, “If they want you to fire a live round, tell them, you won’t and I’ll see to it that they won’t court martial you.” He also told my battery commander that as a father, he kept looking at Ronnie’s obituary picture and kept seeing my picture in his place and explained to the battery commander that it was an exercise that every parent was going through (my battery commander ended up becoming a father to three girls).

Well, after fighting tooth and nail to get me out of the exercise, I decided to join the live demo in Thailand. The powers that be in the army insisted I speak to my parents. Dad looked at me, told me his reservations and then told me to speak to my mother and then said that if I insisted on doing the live firing. In that moment, I really felt I had the coolest Dad around. It was this simple, I was telling him that I wanted to do something that could kill me (and remember the evidence that this was potentially lethal had just hit home) and his words were “I will respect your decision, no matter what.”

I look back at this incident because it reflects one of the things many of us forget to do in our roles as people with responsibilities – namely to let go and to let our charges fly or sink according to their merits. In a way, our first experience of leadership comes from our parents, who are programmed to look out for us and if you read through enough job sites, you’re always told that “good bosses” are the bosses who “mentor” and “nurture” you. In short, a good boss is like a parent.

There is however, a point when parents and other “leadership” figures stumble and fail the ones they are supposed to “look after.” That point of failure is usually when they forget to let go. At best, that analogy is annoying – I think of my ex-girlfriend, who, in her early thirties needed her mother’s approval to be with me (Needless to say, her mother loathed me  even if I was and am the only man she’s been involved with who works for a living.) This is silly.

In businesses, the inability to “let go” or “bossitities” has probably been a leading cause of business failures. The worst cases of this come from “entrepreneurs” particularly the very successful ones who built businesses from scratch. The “founder” forgets that his (most are usually men) somehow ends up committing the sin of not grooming a capable successor (hence leaving the business to vulnerabilities to human frailty) and/ or not really leaving their successors to get on with it, thus making it nearly impossible for the man in charge to be really in charge.

I live in Singapore, a country where the founding father was imminently brilliant in so many ways. He even made a song and dance about wanting to step down while he had his marbles around him and then stepped down. Well, he didn’t quite do that. Instead of stepping down, he stepped aside. Both his successors (one of them being his son) couldn’t escape his shadow. I was at a seminar where a prominent journalist said “We’re in the era of Lee Kuan Yew. Lee Hsien Loong may be the Prime Minister and Goh Chok Tong may have been the Prime Minister for 14-years but it is still Lee Kuan Yew’s era.” While, we’ve been materially OK since his demise, you can’t help but feel that Old Mr. Lee’s inability to let go has created a sense that there is a lack of direction in Singapore now that he is no longer around.

My mum used to say that as a mother, she had a duty to ensure we could live without her (a point that I try to make to Jenny). She reminds me that we had a handy man in England (Mr. Cook) who could do all sorts of things and trained his boys to do housework – the cause of this was simple – Mrs. Cook died. Mrs. Cook ensured that her boys could get on without her.

What is true of parenthood should also be true of other forms of leadership. A leader who makes him or herself indispensable is doing his or her followers a disservice. PN Balji, the former founding editor of the Today Newspaper, takes pride in the fact that the paper started making profits once he left. His argument was simple – he a duty to ensure that the paper would be better without him. If only more “leaders” around the world understood that.

Idealism is Exceedingly Practical

One of the things that Singaporeans take great pride in, is the fact that we’re an exceedingly “practical” people. We like to think of ourselves as a people who live in “reality” and we tend to “poo-poo” those whom we deem as “dreamers.” This is very obvious when you look at our voting choices. We may bitch and moan about the PAP but when push comes to shove, we keep them snuggly where they are because by and large they’ve kept life comfortable. I think of one of our former presidents who reminded us that we need to look at the “office as it is.”

In a way, I am exceedingly grateful that Singaporeans have this mindset. I like to think that part of our prosperity has been down to the fact that our people have a tremendous amount of common sense, which drives us to do things like to go to work and to send our kids to school. We are a people with an uncanny ability to know the things are good for us no matter how much initial pain that might cause us.

However, there are two key problems with that mindset. The most obvious is the fact that we’ve been blessed with semi-decent political leadership. Say what you like about our late founding Prime Minister, Mr. Lee Kuan Yew and his successors, but they managed to get most things right. I never tire of saying this but Singapore is so many ways is what a country should be – rich, clean, green and safe. I, for example, don’t worry about things happening to my 20-year old daughter when she comes home late at night. As an Englishman once said to me, “I find Singapore exceedingly free because it’s safe – safety is freedom.”

The people running Singapore have on the whole been benevolent and competent and the reality they have created is once again, likewise. A “practical” person in this respect merely has to fit into the system to do relatively well. Go to school, go get a job and hey, before you know it, you’ll have a valuable property.

However, what happens when the people in charge have become less competent or less benevolent. What happens is that they create a reality that suites them and them alone. A practical person adapts to it and he or she keeps adapting to the reality that is created by the people in charge, who don’t give a shit about anything else except about creating a reality that suites only them.

In Singapore, we have the perfect example of that across the causeway. They had a political party and political system that worked on a system of patronage and a system where it was understood that only people of a certain ethnic group where supposed to benefit from the system. Everyone excepted it until the people in charge decided to get a little bit greedy and exploited the weaknesses in the system until the reality became such that it was unbearable for the majority of people.  Many of my Malaysian friends have stated that one of the greatest things about the 2018 election was the fact that people came together as “Malaysians” rather than Malay, Chinese and Indian.
This leads to the second point – there is no progress, be it political, scientific or economic without some sort of idealism or rather the ability to see the world as it “could” be rather than what it is.

I got to admit; I was a horrible Singaporean when I was in university. I thought my more idealistic brethren in the halls of college. I mean, I couldn’t understand why people complained about capitalism, a system that had benefited my little nation. I’m told that this is a phase that Western university students go through and they change once the reality of the working world sets in.


After nearly two-decades of living in a prosperous, practical East Asian society, I’m inclined to relook at that. While, there’s lots to be said for accepting reality as it is, there is a danger in that you become so accepting of reality that you forget that it can be changed for the better. 

I think of my former client, General Electric Commercial Finance, part of General Electric, which was founded by Thomas Edison, the man who invented the light bulb. Perhaps Edison was not the idealist in the sense of my fellow Goldsmith’s students. However, he had the ability to see the world with lighting that that wasn’t dependent on individual fires – hence the electric light bulb and many other such products.

The two richest men in the world, namely Jeff Bezos and Bill Gates didn’t except life as it is. Bill Gates could see a world where there would be a computer on every desk – hence Microsoft. I’m old enough to remember failing computer studies miserably because to turn on a computer required some scientific knowledge. Now, I push a few buttons and the computer is an essential part of modern living. Bill Gates saw the world as it could be and changed our reality and so made a fortune. 

The same is true of Jeff Bezos, who saw us being able to buy and sell things without having to leave our bedrooms, when the reality at the time was shopping meant getting out of the house to visit a physical store. 

Blind idealism without reality isn’t good. The world is filled with great dreams that never get turned into reality or people who are visionary but can’t even walk of the house dressed. However, there’s another extreme, people who are so focused on living in the world as it is that they get trapped by it and never progress. I like advertising great, Bill Bernbach who called “creativity – the most practical tool a businessman can employ.” I would argue that “Idealism” a greater tool. 

You need the people who can execute but you also need the people who can dream. Dreamers who have their feet on the ground, do exceedingly well (I think of the guys at Polaris, who revered Arun Jain for this ability to dream and yet is a humble and down to earth person). There are also people who are great dreamers and recognize they’re no good at the execution part, so they team up with the people who are (Richard Branson comes to mind). Idealism needs practicality to be turned into reality – but practicality without idealism can be unpractical.

‘Working mums’ and the do-it-all delusion

By Ms. Neela McGilton

Director - International (Strategic Partnership)

Deakin University 

“Working mothers, how do you do it? Not only do you hold down a job, you cook, clean, garden, nurse, chauffeur, tutor and launder – all while looking amazing.”

This gushing portrayal of modern motherhood is as common as it is crazy.

Celebrities are getting in on the act, with social media posts that combine to give the impression that working, doing the school run, cooking nutritious meals, being a “mindful” parent while still looking picture perfect is a piece of (gluten-free) cake.

So how does the modern mum do it all?

Easy. We have help. (And if we don’t, we’re suffering.)

I’m a “working mum” of two — funny how my husband never gets called a “working dad” — and a champion delegator. I unashamedly DO NOT do it all.

Instead, we surround ourselves with nannies, cleaners, gardeners and handymen. Not to mention grandparents. We use every possible service to make life easier – from child care to grocery delivery, Airtasker and party caterers. We choose to do what we enjoy, what is important for the family and outsource everything else.

My job, though demanding, is flexible, and I enjoy regular international work assignments. (Opening the door to a clean hotel room after a long day working is sheer bliss.)

I’m under no illusions about how privileged I am. I recognise that boasting about the catering at my child’s birthday party will not win me friends. But nor do I pretend as though I whipped up the vol-au-vent myself. 

I know many women do fulfil all the roles mentioned above – carer, worker, cleaner, laundress – and that paying for help is not an option. Many of these women are suffering considerably. Official figures in the UK show women are 70 per cent more likely to suffer workplace stress, and researchers have warned of a generation of “do-it-all women” on the cusp of breakdown.  

Australian figures are equally dismal: research shows women work considerably more hours than men (at home and in paid work), easily outstrip men when it comes to chores, and are almost always responsible for sick children and elderly parents, even when both parents work full-time.

No doubt, for the mum who is forced to do it all, gender inequality is a major problem. (Workplace demands and economic realities contribute to the dilemma.)

All the more reason that we stop peddling the myth of the (happy, healthy) do-it-all mother. Making things look easy when they’re not, releases men from domestic responsibility (The wife’s doing well — no need for me here!); undermines stay-at-home mums, who work just as many hours as the rest of us (I do everything you do, and I’ve got a ‘proper’ job!); and excuses employers from flexibility (What do you mean you’re not coping – how hard can mixing work and family life be?)

I’m not perfect, but I am happy. Without help, I wouldn’t have survived these past eight years of motherhood. So why don’t other mothers in my position get help – or admit they have help?

It boils down, perhaps, to a bigger problem – women are here to be looked at, adored, admired and categorised. Image remains everything, and Instagram posts featuring perfect Paleo cupcakes makes us entirely complicit.

I love this quote from British author Caitlin Moran: ““When a woman says, ‘I have nothing to wear!’, what she really means is, ‘There’s nothing here for who I’m supposed to be today.”

The perfect modern mother is the result of focusing on who we are, not what we do – or want to – in our short time on earth. Stop worrying about who’s watching – get help, or be honest how tough it is.

Don't Lose Hope No Matter How Hard Your Circumstances

By Ms. Vee

It can be said that the most frightening thing in our life is to lose faith

The uneven life always contains events, unhappiness in life, including sad-happy chains - happiness - suffering, we never stop growing because we all nourish a soul, the will of a persistent faith

My life is a broken story of happiness, my parents divorced when I was only 10 months old, the age was not aware of how badly my father had treated my mother.

 Perhaps living in my father's lack of affection, I appear to be strong on the outside so that I can grow up more, which now makes me believe the most is my future, really trying to make money successful to be able to repay my mother who has kept me in the hard years ... there is a saying that reminds me of a relative in my family that "don't trust anyone because they have can change face any time ”

In a personal sense, when you have faith, you will be happier and life will be more meaningful. I believe that the beliefs I put into them are correct, because the beliefs that are not given by us are created by ourselves.

Business is Best When Accountants Don't Get Creative

By Ben Scott
Entrepreneur

There is an old joke that goes like this: the CEO walks into work one fine Monday morning and says “good morning” to the admin crew, the first people he meets is he walks into the office and asks “what’s one plus one?” And they respond, “Two, of course.” Then he walks off to the factory, says “good morning team,” bumps into his production manager and asks “What’s one plus one?” The production manager looks a bit confused and says “Well, it’s two, sir.” The CEO replies, “Thank you very much.” And off he goes to see the accountant, and he says, “Good morning, what’s one plus one?” And the accountant just looks at the CEO, smiles and says, “What would you like it to be?”

Now, as we all know, there’s never a truer word said in jest. And throughout modern history, there are plenty of examples of scandals and problems caused by people dabbling in financial engineering. Whether that was Enron, WorldCom, Nortel, or obviously the most famous of them all, the 2008 financial crisis. And whether the games were played with junk bonds or home loans, it’s all the same. You could dress it up any way you wanted to, but it was still fraud. Bent people taking advantage of those who don’t think things through or are too trusting.

From a reporting point of view, accounting is at the heart of any business. Many people, especially company leadership and investors, must know and understand the financial health of their business at a given point in time.

For most of us, when we start a business we work on a cash accounting basis. This is quite simple and intuitive — how much cash did I put in the bank, what am I spending and what has come in. This works as it focuses us on cash flow, which keeps us fed and clothed.

As businesses grow we generally move to the more accepted, accrual-based accounting. This allows us to be more precise, take into account things like inventory, inventory movements, things we have paid for but not used and investments in machines. From there, both the profit and loss statement and balance sheet can be formed. This then precipitates the need to begin recruiting more qualified people.

At first, an accounting service or firm will be enough. That is usually replaced by recruiting an in-house bookkeeper which is then upgraded to a full accounting service and full-time accountant. As a company continues to get larger, you must have an accountant on the board of directors. I have always stretched my available resources to build and structure the business in order that it functions correctly and key stakeholders, like the bank, have comfort and confidence. However, this is where having the right people on the bus is critical.

For an accountant, the company’s balance sheet takes precedence over the profit and loss statement, but what takes precedence over everything is cash — you can be profitable and insolvent at the same time. It matters not how much profit you think you might be making if you can’t make payroll.

One of the things that often happens in the accounting department is the so-called “innovations” in finance. Financial engineering was en vogue pre-financial crisis. This always made me laugh as it is bullshit and eight-tenths fraud. Earnings manipulation is real and has been with us since the dawn of trade. The oldest error detection tool is double entry bookkeeping. This has been with us since the 11th century and in daily use since the 15th century. Wherever there are people and money, controls are needed.

The incentives on management to dress things up can lead people to get distracted, to try and show that they’re making more money than they really are. Certain treatments of accruals, pre-payments, CAPEX, depreciation, inventory, income, or warranty claims can all manipulate the image of how well the business is doing. Any leader or accountant can dress these numbers up any way they like, but in the end, good business is good business.

Cash is cash. If cash isn’t coming in, or cash is going out too fast, you’re screwed.

Manipulating the balance sheet is so easy, and hard for many to avoid the temptation and seduction of monkeying with the numbers. However, if more people applied Benford, Beneish or irrational number tests (preferably a combination of all) to balance sheets, fewer frauds would go undetected as these tools see right through the veneer of numbers and structures that are the function of a human mind rather than a function of operations and activity. Numbers just don’t lie, people do.

No matter what you do, these tricks are only short-run solutions. The message here, really, is don’t get distracted by the numbers and don’t think that somehow, something new is better than good old fashioned business and good old fashioned accounting and cash management. That is, paying customers and cash in the till, all day, every day. It’s a simple matter of honesty and integrity.

Your business needs cash; cash is everything and when you’ve got profits and you’ve got cash in the bank, you’re in good shape. That’s a simple measure for success (the other is paying taxes). If you’re trying to play games because you don’t have that cash, then no matter what you do, the cash won’t magically appear. One of my first customers used to say that to have a business you do not need an office, you do not need a factory, or a desk, a name or logo. You need a customer. When you have a customer, you have a business. Good business is very simple — it has a purpose and purpose transcends money.

Even if you’re not currently making an accounting profit, but you’re generating cash, you’re in good shape. The key is to keep your mind focused on paying customers, making sure they are sticky and you are creating new ones. As Peter Drucker said, our only purpose [in business] is to create a customer.

Magic of Board Governance in Turbulent Times – Ethics & Risk

By Mr. KV Rao


 We are all far too familiar experiencing occasional turbulence in the air when flying, but not so often - on the ground in our external environment. If you added “turbidity” to “turbulence” – visibility drops drastically, and you may lose sight of the steering, and crashes are imminent – essentially crashes in managing ‘ethics’ and ‘risks’ – the two most popular words in corporate religion. There are no autopilots in here. 

It is paradoxical to talk about ‘ethics’ in the context of a corporate governance, and when you become board directors – where ethics is so integral in one’s personality, shaped by early life experiences. The first seeds are cast by our own parents, school teachers, early experiences and matured and shaped through the experiences of life. It is rather counter intuitive to expect the learning and practice of ethics, when you are entering a board room. Frankly, either you have them or you don’t.  However, ethics in the area of business don’t fall into straight black and white, I am reminded of the book “The Difficulty of Being Good – The Subtle Art of Dharma”, by Gurucharan Das. ‘Dharma’, is such an integral word that has no equal in English – it encompasses within it – rightitude, truthfulness, fairness, appropriateness, correctness, compassion, care, courage, etc. that make it very so very complex in its practice, in our business environments.

The reflections of what is right and wrong, are both contextual and largely based on the lens used to view the reality. This is what makes the role of Directors challenging in voting for the ‘right’ – what appears right might not always be the right. At the end of the day, one needs to rely on one’s own inner moral compass, when in doubt. Of course, all the literature, case work, and ethics manuals and all good reference materials but no substitute a strong inner moral compass. Still without the rectitude and courage to speak one’s mind and stand ground to what you believe in, simply having a moral compass has no real value – if your protest is only a whimper or a whisper, you just wither away. Ethics in practice is an emotional intelligence at work. 

The second paradox is about ‘risk’ – without risk there is no business, and with risk too there is no business! Hard wired risk management processes, methods, tools have all helped in making business risk taking a far more evolved and objective process, but they often end up becoming restrictive, and counterproductive to growth, innovation, and entrepreneurship, if not managed with a sense of balance. Here again, it is often the collective wisdom of board leadership to support managements in taking, albeit calculated risks and encourage them to hone success. 

The third paradox, to me is on safety – organizations and boards spend considerable time and effort on ensuring, the operations, facilities, systems, people are well ring fenced and secure. The important paradox, that goes unnoticed and often unaddressed is not the external security, but the internal insecurities that management and leaders face. In turbulent times, this personal insecurity can make the best of managers behave and take decisions in a somewhat nervous and self-protective manner, imperiling the organization. Processes in itself, sometimes strangely become self-serving - as protective blankets to cover managements, against their own failures.  

The way forward, has a few elements for us to reflect upon: - 

Board Composition

1. Good People: Ethical Leadership is an outcome of having ethical leaders. It is important to find the right people, not just qualifications and achievements but look at their backgrounds in terms of leadership styles and practice of ethics. 
2. Diversity – beyond a gender diversity, board directors appoint directors from known circles with similar backgrounds, and a ‘sameness’ pervades all over - of thought, of intents, of views, and it does not help in today’s times of disruption. Adding diversity in terms of having a social worker, a sportsperson, an artist or whatever will bring into the board new angles of thought. 
3. Age: I believe a 3 generational composition, i.e. grandfathers, fathers and sons in a family board make a great team. They bring the wisdom of the past, the pragmatism of the matured current, and the youthfulness of current and hence being best of past, present and future to insulate board vision to the future, with maturity. 

Board Culture & Leadership. 

1. Boards cultures we have inherited are archaic, largely colonial, and English. We still wear suits in some boards, in hot summers... There is a stiffness, formality and ceremony with board meetings that cover it all in a thick diplomatic layer. Look good, say right…. Don’t actually help. It’s important to break loose, when needed, and have a no holds barred discussion, debate, and encourage mutual challenging amongst board members. Many forward-looking boards have moved forward to have periodic board retreats to achieve this informality and help break from convention to bring unhinged thought processes. 
2. The Chairman plays a very critical role, and their ability to manage conflict, leading with purpose and keeping the managements challenged, stretched, yet motivated is not found in corporate guide books or manuals. You do need to find, install and empower such Chairmen. The flip side of it is also often seen where larger than life Chairman lead, where there is so much deference to a personality that having a board makes no real difference! Deference should not kill difference. 
3. Independence, is for all directors and not just for the independent directors. Each one should have an independent view on matters and question oneself hard when you find yourself agreeing with ease with others. 
4. All cultures are nothing but a set of shared values and beliefs, there is great value in the heritage and success stories of the past and it is important to preserve that unique set of a cultural mold, that unique glue, and keep re-inventing itself into the future. If your board has done nothing new, in the last 2 years’ time to ask yourself what could have been done differently. 
5. The times are complex, and issues that come to boards are equally complicated and deserve a deeper understanding of the market place, consumers, technology, competition, regulation, etc. and Directors too need to continuously LEARN, and keep themselves abreast than to depend only on management inputs and presentations. 
6. Last but not the least - time management. Not enough time is spent preparing for the board meetings, and reading heavy board notes, with huge stack of presentations etc. There is a whole need for directors, and managements to work more effectively and efficiently on allocating and managing time, and bringing focus, and brevity into discussions. 

It there is really a magic in here? No, old world wisdom has no expiry date – except that it needs to periodically upgrade its OS – (the operating system.) relevant to the emerging environment and challenges. The answers point to the same old wise wine, in new bottles.  

To end on a lighter vein, here are my one-liners with a punch. Quote them, if you wish! 

-      “The job of a Managing Director, is not managing directors’ only! – it’s actually managing the business.” 

-      ‘You don’t have to be an Independent Director, to be independent in your views! 

-      ‘The best and often the most honest conversations happen when walking out of the board room, if only they can happen inside!” 

You are in a 'board', not to get 'bored' !!!!!

When the Kid Does You Proud

Kiddo has started working at my night job with me last week and it was especially interesting because she was actually transferred to work with me at the Bistrot over a long weekend. The experience was amazing. The kid who was the cause of a few embarrassing phone calls because of her inability to make it to school on time, suddenly became the epitome of punctuality, dragging me out of the house so that we’d get to work on time. I was suddenly brought back to the seven-year-old who once showed me her watch rather impatiently as I muddled my way in getting her to one of her earliest schools.

Much to the annoyance of her new colleagues, she refused to get involved in idle chit-chat and instead of leaving the cups for the next day, she made it a point of ensuring that every cup was washed before we went home. She was very matter of fact about it – “I am here to do a job and I will finish the job,” she told me.

It wasn’t just me being in Proud Papa Land. The restaurant owner in our nightly drink’s session was quite open about his appreciation of her new work attitude (she had an earlier working stint, which didn’t go too well).

Watching your child take on challenges with guts and determination is an amazing experience. Parenthood is generally an exercise in worrying. You worry about every little thing that the little tyke gets up to and that worry generally grows when the little thing becomes a little less little and every screw up the kid makes gives you a feeling that you must have been a really awful human being for god to give you a screw up. So, when the kid actually shows you that he or she is taking charge of his or her life, you get this amazing sense that you didn’t mess up along the line.

However, while her “new” attitude to work attitude was refreshing, I got a huge jolt of pride when she told me that one of her new sisters had tried to corrupt her by telling her that she could leave work at 9.30 but she should sign out at 10.00 and claim an extra half hours’ worth of wages. She said to me, “She’s nice but keeps trying to get me to do bad things – I’m not going to let her have power over me and it’s wrong – I want to make money but I will do it the correct way.”

I think of this because we do live in an age where you often end up doing the “practical” thing instead of the “right” thing. It’s especially true when it comes to money, where most of us find that we our wages are stagnating or even declining but costs are increasing. The temptation to take short cuts always seems so appealing.

However, there is a maxim in life that says “there is no such thing as a free lunch,” and we often forget that there is a reaction for every action that we take. When something sounds easy, there’s probably a trade off somewhere. If someone encourages you take “easy” money, they’re probably after something else. I go back to the saying – “If it’s too good to be true – it probably is.”

Kiddo proved she has the streets smarts to recognize a scam and an inducement. I’m happy she has a sense of ethics. She’s taken a tremendous load of my shoulders for these two facts alone. 

Investors remain bullish on India

By Gurdip Singh - Founder and Editor-In-Chief -FII News

Interview with Mr. Girija Pande, Chairman of Apex-Avalon Consulting Pte Ltd 

Indian states and major cities will henceforth play a major role in industrialization of India and the race is on as each state is seeking investment independently.

Given the attractive growth trajectory of 7 per cent per annum in Gross Domestic Product (GDP), foreign investors are responding favourably to recent policy reforms, said Girija Pande, who is Chairman of Singapore-based Apex Avlon Consulting Pte Ltd.

Pande was recently moderating a high-level Investment seminar in Singapore on role of Indian states hosted by the Confederation of Indian Industry and the Indian High Commission here.

“Foreign investors remain bullish on India with its improving economy, backed by the Central Government’s recent reforms of GST and Bankruptcy laws which has improved transparency, ease of doing business and improving the Banking sector so that industrial lending can resume.

“Investors’ favour India for its strong consumer-driven domestic demand as well as huge export potential which falls in line with the Government initiatives,” Pande, previously the Chairman of TCS Asia Pacific, pointed out.

A growing number of Indian states are active in wooing International investors as the Central Government in New Delhi has increasingly delegated its authorities in this area, giving the states a free hand and independence of seeking foreign direct investments.

Under current rules, only very large foreign investments in some restricted sectors and multi-billion-dollar projects requires New Delhi endorsement.

“Clearly Indian States now have most of the authority to attract investors which makes them reasonably autonomous. New Delhi, in a way, has decentralized FDI processes – very similar to what they have for provinces in China,” he pointed out.

“Four southern and two western states along with NCR have been most successful in attracting the bulk of investments into the country by creating a very competitive and enabling environment,” he noted.

The states are Tamil Nadu, Telangana, Karnataka, Andhra Pradesh, Gujarat and Maharashtra with commercial hubs being created in cities of Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Pune and Mumbai.

Similarly, NCR has Gurgaon/NOIDA cities which are favourites of foreign investors, noted Pande.

He also noted that most of the states were now seeking “ease of doing business ranking in their respective jurisdiction” from international agencies.

“There is now a very healthy competition amongst States to attract investments which is excellent as it improves all,” he added.

The Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy School in Singapore has set up competitive metrics for ease of doing business and many Indian states have begun to use such metrics to simplify regulations and improve businesses processes. The School’s Asia Competitiveness Institute ranks the states and help with creating ease of doing business processes.

“Investment promotion requires State Governments to build trust with investors by creating a progressive and stable regulatory regime and attractive incentives.

“These are some of the good measures being adopted by the pro-active Chief Ministers – an increasing number of whom are participating in such investment seminars and setting up one stop online investment portals,” he said.

Pande feels that newcomer states such as Punjab, Madhya Pradesh, Uttarakhand, Rajasthan and Chhattisgarh, who have held investment seminars in Singapore, should focus on differentiating themselves by establishing industry specific clusters.

“The way forward is to establish industry clusters,” said Pande, citing the success of Chennai, Gurgaon and Pune where global automobile component vendors have setup operations to service automobile manufacturers located there,” he said.

Similarly, Bangalore has attracted global IT industry as it has a concentration of IT talent and a very proactive administration, added Pande, who was earlier Chairman of CII in Singapore and has been participating in international investment conferences on India in Singapore over the last two decades.

Punjab and Madhya Pradesh are ideal for building Agro industries clusters or to develop Mohali in Punjab as a knowledge hub for North India. This will bring services and white-collar jobs to the states, he believes.

Uttarakhand, perhaps, should focus on strengthening tourism and healthcare, leveraging on its hill stations and pollution free environment, he said.

Though the states’ FDI campaigns may seem competitive, Pande sees opportunities for the states and their major metros/cities to collaborate actively in this area.

“At the end of the day, to an investor, the city with its myriad services are as important to house talent and provide facilities.

“Hyderabad is a classic case where the city has built hard and soft infrastructure ahead of the curve and is consequently being looked at very favourably by foreign investors, especially in high tech areas,” he said. fiinews.com

Apex Avlon Consulting Pte LtdConfederation of Indian Industry

Shags and Fags.

The Governor of the State of Alabama, Ms. Kay Ivey has brought the issue of abortion back into the front pages of the world’s newspapers by signing what is perhaps the most stringent “anti-abortion” laws in recent history. Alabama’s abortion laws effectively ban abortion including in cases of rape and incest. As expected, the passing of these laws has caused a stir. The “Pro-Life” camp is celebrating the victory and the “Pro-Choice” is bemoaning how far we’ve regressed.

This story makes my eyes roll and I develop, what my mother calls, a “Smug” Singaporean mindset, thinking that I am bloody lucky that I live in Singapore, a country where “common sense” rules the day.

 For all that is said of the man, our Founding Father, Lee Kuan Yew was a man filled with common sense and an uncanny ability to make intelligent decisions. The old man understood that crucial decisions were not much a question of a choice between good and evil but a question of choosing between the lesser of two evils or the greater of two goods. It’s a point that you often want to slam down the throats of the sanctimonious, particularly on the side of Trump Supporters claiming to be Christians.

Speaking as a man who sent his partner to an abortion table, I believe that abortion laws need to be based on the understanding that this isn’t a choice of good or evil but a choice of the greater good/lesser evil. If we can understand it from this perspective, we can get the extreme emotions out of the topic and create something that is in the best interest of as many of the parties involved.

Let’s start with the obvious. Abortion is a nasty business; however, you slice and dice the scientific process. It does involve the destruction of life in as much as it does involve the formation of cells coming together to create a life. Hence, the morality of abortion laws essentially evolves around when does life begin and you are effectively not allowed to have an abortion after a certain stage into a pregnancy because the “said cells” have really became a life form.

Abortion, as they say, should never be a method of birth control and I guess you could say that I was “punished” for sending Gina onto the abortion table, because I was too carried away with having a woman willing to give me sex on demand to forget that there were consequences to having unprotected sex.

However, as I look back at that fatal decision and to the other decision of entering my two-year marriage with Gina, the decision to abort the child looks like the right one. Although “What if” questions will always be at the back of mind when I look back at my relationship with Gina, the decision not to go through the pregnancy with her was the right one. We were fundamentally unsuited to be together and her demands on me were such that it was virtually impossible for me to make a living (so much so that one of my former bosses biggest pieces of career advice was “you better have a chat with her about showing up at the office) and my parents described it as a question of when we’d murder each other (Mum’s version being you’ll punch her to death and kill yourself). Her parents, who were initially for the relationship would have wised up and realized that we were not good for each other.

You can call me a cynic or selfish but it is clear from the marriage that we had that the greater evil would have been to expose a child to parents who would be detrimental to its well-being. While I’ve not been wildly successful, I’ve managed to do things I’m proud of since I left Gina without the responsibility of a child and Gina, the last time I checked, has done OK for herself. We didn’t expose those cells to a nasty custody battle or the violence that took place in our marriage.

Then, there’s the practical side of things. As my former English teacher (Mrs. Clark), said, “I’m against it in principle but banning it is going to kill off women who will seek the help of quacks in dubious back alleys.” History has shown that just as anti-abortion laws have been around, women have gone to quacks to deal with unwanted pregnancies. 

I often like to refer to Lee Kuan Yew’s thoughts on prostitution when it comes to abortion. Better to have it legal and controlled rather than to have it driven underground and managed by the nasty element.

Lee Kuan Yew would have been good for addressing the abortion issue in America. Unfortunately, Lee Kuan Yew’s successors seem to have lost his common sense touch on a few things. The two most common instances where I believe that the Singapore Government has lost the plot are in the cases of smoking and homosexual sex.

I look at the debate on smoking and “alternative” tobacco products and cringe. The government is actually sounding increasingly impotently-sanctimonious on the topic. Despite and increasing number of bodies like the Royal College of Surgeons in the UK coming out to state that “alternative products” have a use in combating the smoking habit, the government remains adamant that it needs to ban such products in a “preemptive move” to stop people from taking up the habit. In the meantime, normal cigarettes, which everyone agrees are worse than the alternative, remain readily available.

 I guess you could say the desire is to look tough, but I do believe there comes a point when you actually end up looking silly by sticking to a position despite growing evidence that your position is factually weak – America’s Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has recently allowed the sale of IQOS, a heated and not burn tobacco system by Philip Morris, which has shown that there’s a way to make what everyone agrees is a lesser evil work.

If the government’s stance on alternative tobacco products looks silly, the stance on consensual sex is downright stupid. The emotion of the debate has been such that the government has stuck to its position of “Keeping the law but not enforcing it.” This is clearly not something you’d expect from a government that makes “upholding the rule of law” as part of its DNA and as one lawyer said – “what’s the point of having a law if you don’t intend to enforce it.” As I’ve often said, those who support this particular section of the penal code have yet to come up with a sound, rational argument as to why we need to keep this law.

Lee Kuan Yew wasn’t perfect but I don’t think he’s been right on every issue.  However, he understood his role as a leader and made decisions that did benefit the greater good or the lesser evil. When I look at some of these debates in the world, I miss him and the pragmatic wisdom that he displayed.

Business is a team sport - and that's why people matter most

Creating a Fun Environment to Work Drives Success 

By Patrick Grove

Group CEO of Catcha Group

We’re at the  half  way point of 2019 and as I reflect on what we’ve achieved - with iflix, Common Ground, Wild Digital and the rest of our #Catchafamily, I can’t help but to feel a sense of pride at what Catcha has become.

iflix has just recently hit 15 million global subscribers - with an insane 250% growth in only 6 months! Common Ground has been expanding so rapidly it’s hard to keep track of their new locations. In under 24 months, they’ve opened a total of 7 outlets all over Klang Valley and another one in the incredible Philippines.

At Catcha, our work philosophy (or should I say, work-play philosophy) is “Work hard, play hard”.

If there’s one thing I’m dedicated to, it’s building fun workspaces - which is one of the reasons why Catcha is known for our fun offices and parties, and Common Ground is such a successful co-working space. Not just because it’s cooler, but because I believe people love to work where they feel most relaxed and comfortable. Our team represents our belief as a brand - that hustlin’ isn’t a job, it’s our lifestyle. We like to celebrate achievements and successes - as we should - and when we do, we go hard.

Of course, sometimes it may seem that the people of Catcha play more than we work but that’s only because the real hustle is never glorified on media. The times we have worked for months without a break, chasing that next big idea; the 30-hour days we had; the trial and error; and the sheer grit to keep going - that’s what makes us such a great team. But we can only do these things, because we know we’re in it together.

I’m a strong believer that you can only achieve the stars and the moon (or an IPO or two) with the right people in your team. I’ve mentioned this before in an interview with Forbes Asia (read it here) - my management philosophy is to hire the right CEOs and then get out of their way so they can do their best work. These are smart, talented people and I have my full trust in them.

And it’s not just me who has put my bet on them.

Investors not only look at our products and business models when they decide to back us. These people and their “whatever-it-takes” attitude are a big part of why investors love to work with us. You don’t need to have the best business model since day one - you just need the passion and the people to figure it out. The spotlight has always been on me and my successes, but any successful entrepreneur would tell you that the greatest asset of any business is the people, the team, behind it.

The people who work with me will tell you that I’m constantly challenging them to set the bar higher. Because I’ve got a team of incredibly passionate, super-ambitious and remarkably talented people, I know that they will only see their maximum potential when they set seemingly impossible goals for themselves, and yet exceed them. Which is why I continue to drive them to do things bigger, better and faster.

Working with 2000 over staff in 35 countries isn’t easy, but when you have a team like Catcha’s, you’ve got a headstart. What makes me proudest is that as a team, we’ve proven that people from ASEAN are as smart, talented and creative - if not more - than the people of Silicon Valley. It won’t come as a surprise to me if the next mind-blowing innovation comes not only from ASEAN, but from one of our own in the Catcha office. When that happens, it will be the ultimate mark of success for me.