When asked about the qualities that he looked for in a
general, Napoleon once said that he chose generals who were “lucky.” I’ve always
thought of this quote whenever it comes to discussing the topic of success.
Talk to enough people who have “made it” and they’ll tell you about their brains,
hard work and sheer determination. They will never admit to having “luck.”
However, if you analyse the careers of the well to do, you’ll
realise that somewhere along the line they had a lucky moment and they went for
it with everything they had. Back when I had just left university, I was told
by Hans Hofer, the founder of Appa Guides that the key thing that successful
people understood was “chance.” A few years back, I blogged about it at:
I think of this blog post on luck because we recently lost
our second Chief of Defense Force, Lieutenant-General, Ng Jui Ping. If you look
at General Ng’s life story, you’ll understand that he was that most unique creatures
– a person who knew how to be lucky and had a knack for being in the right
place at the right time.
Before I continue, I have to disclose that I am from the
same formation as General Ng (Artillery). While I never met the man in person
(he stepped down from being Chief of Defense Force, while I was still in basic
military training), most of my senior instructors had worked with the man (In
particular I reminded of Senior Warrant Officer Lim Seng Wah, who was his
Battery Sergeant Major in the 20th Battalion Singapore Artillery). In
later life, I would befriend a lawyer who served him from the shadows (an advisor
he consulted even though he had engaged other lawyers). So, what I know of the
General is only what I’ve read in the official press and from what people have
told me about him.
My second qualification is that when I talk about General Ng’s
“Luck,” I’m not referring to the number of battles he won. Singapore’s armed
forces have never been tested in an actual war (though in fairness, our boys
have been commended on peace keeping missions and Singaporean officers do make
it to the top of their class in places like West Point and Sandhurst). When I
talk about General Ng’s luck, I am referring to his personal career.
How was General Lucky? I guess the most obvious place to
start was the fact that he was born and entered the civil service at a time
when they were a little obsessed by paper qualifications from the Oxbridge
Universities. After General Ng left the helm of the Singapore Armed Forces, all
his successors were inevitably the same – super scale scholars with beautiful
Oxbridge Degrees.
His luck extended beyond the timing of his birth and in his
long career, he had the good fortune of being in situations where his skills
could shine. These few lucky moments helped catapult him to stratospheric
levels.
The first piece of good luck was the fact that he ended up
becoming the mentor to a certain Officer Cadet (“OCT”) Lee. He was a good
mentor and at his funeral, the OCT that he mentored told the world, ““I will
remember him most from my own time in the army, when he was first my Commanding
Officer, and later when I worked beside him – I learnt much from him as a
leader and a colleague.”
The second piece of good fortune for General Ng came in 1991
when a Singapore Airline was hijacked on Singapore soil. While General Ng was
already Chief of Defense Force (a level too high for people to expect him to be
on the front line), he had the privilege of overseeing an actual mission (the type
where people can die), that proved to be exceedingly successful. To date, the SQ
117 Hijack rescue mission is the one incident in the SAF where the troops
showed they could perform in a “real” situation. This very incident allowed
General Ng to claim something as close as Singapore’s Generals don’t get to
claim – “real life command.”
When he retired from the SAF, General NG did what no other
top civil servant had done before him – he became an entrepreneur. Ironically,
his long career in the army had actually prepared him for life beyond wearing
the green uniform. His gratuity gave him the start-up capital and he had a
strong relationship with the right people to get things going. While General Ng
did serve a stint on the boards of some government organisations noteably the
Central Provident Fund (“CPF” Board – our main pension fund) and Chartered
Industries (Singapore’s version of the Military Industrial Complex), his main post
army career was as an entrepreneur. General Ng was the co-founder of Pacific
Andes Resources Limited.
The one area where he did not have luck in was his personal
health. In 2019 he was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer, which ended his life
this year. Interestingly enough, General Ng’s death showed us how lucky he was.
He dared to be different from the crowd. His predecessor retired into a cushy diplomat’s
job. His successors have all gone onto work in cushy civil service jobs or in
the government-controlled version of the private sector. Being different earned
him a warm tribute from Singapore’s normally strongly “anti-anybody from the government”
online media as the following report from the Onlinecitizen shows:
Knowing how to be lucky in life made him lucky in death too.
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