I remember a local Tamil friend of mine was got a shock when he was asked “Are you from India,” at a corporate function. The man who at the time was head of Southeast Asia for a multinational aerospace company, was taken back because it seemed to imply that the multinational company assumed that if an Indian was qualified enough to hold a high-level job, he had to be from India. It was a bit of a shock to the man’s system to find that his employer seemed to assume that Indians from India were more qualified than the Singaporean ones.
This story is a
cruel reflection on the reality of how the “big” companies that count view our much-valued
human resources. Singapore tells the world that our economic miracle was due to
the fact that we managed to make the maximise our “only” resource, which is the
“human” one. Our line to the “foreign investors” as that while our costs are
higher than our regional competitors, we offer a better-quality workforce. More
importantly, we also make the point that we need the world’s highest paid
ministers because we need to prevent the “top talents” from being snapped up by
international organisations.
While this
sounds good on paper, the reality is a little different. As at the time of
writing, Singapore has with the exception of Lee Kuan Yew and perhaps Daren
Tang, the head of the World Intellectual Property Office, there doesn’t seem to
be a Singaporean who has gained any recognition from running anything beyond
Singapore’s shores.
Sure, our international
colleagues in the multinationals might say nice things about the good work we
do in our domestic market but the reality is that any Singaporean would be lucky
if they ever got promoted to a managerial role in the regional office (usually
Southeast Asia but on accession Asia-Pacific.)
This is a sad
record for a nation that makes such a song and dance about how it has maximized
domestic talent. It seems that the only people who “make it” (defined as
someone outside of Singapore would notice) are either politicians (Lee Kuan Yew
claimed the role of single builder of modern Singapore, which helped in his
post prime ministerial career as an international consultant and a writer for
Forbes and his predecessors had the good fortune to be born tall so that they
remained the only Asian leaders at international summits who didn’t have to
look up to their Western counterparts) or civil servants (the type that
coordinate international visits for foreign dignitaries)
Why is it such
that we only seem to produce “leaders” in politics and how is it such that our “leaders”
are never really required to shine on the international stage?
One answer
might be the fact that they simply don’t have to. If you look at the
scholarship system which has groomed plenty of our senior civil servants and ministers,
you’ll note that they are never required to put their brain power to much use.
A Ministry of Education Scholar for example will never have to teach in a
school full of problematic kids and uncooperative parents. The definition of a “good”
Singaporean is one who has the ability to memorise facts and to regurgitate
them when required to do so. The best part about this is that they don’t even
need to “find” the facts for themselves because there is inevitably an army of
serfs to do the work. Scholars will inevitably be paid considerably more.
While I don’t
disagree with the idea behind the scholarship system in theory (why shouldn’t
smart people run the show), I disagree with the narrow definition of “good” and
the way in which our scholars stop facing “challenges” the moment they leave
the classroom. Unfortunately, the brain is like other muscles, you have to use
it in order for it to develop.
For people
outside of Singapore, the common saying is that the real learning is after you leave
the classroom. While your actual degree may not be of much interest to anyone
else, the skills you acquire (the ability to think) is. It’s a different story
for our scholars. A degree becomes an badge of prestige that is supposed to
remove the need to actually think at all. Hence while theory behind the system
is sound (putting smart people in charge), the actual practice is not (ensuring
that smart people don’t do smart things).
Once again, I return
to the example of our military, which is a conscript force, which means that the
military is effectively a microcosm of everything else. The Singapore Armed
Forces (SAF) is inevitably commanded by people with great degrees. Our current
chief of defense force, Lieutenant General Melvyn Ong is a good example. He
went to Anglo-Chinese School (independent), National Junior College and then it
was off to the LSE. His predecessor, Lieutenant Perry Lim went to Cambridge.
While I am not
belittling high academic achievement, I don’t believe that academics should be
the be all and end all of ones achievements. The problem for our generals is
that they lack the most crucial ingredient in judging a solider – combat experience.
In a way, it’s
a “happy problem,” in as much as nobody should actually want to go to war and
have to deal with the horrors associated with it. However, soldiers, especially
those leading troops in a potential life and death situation should probably
have more than book knowledge about how to fight a war. Why, for example, would
you trust a solider to fight and sacrifice his or her life if all they’ve ever
done is to watch Rambo movies on TV if you would not trust a surgeon to operate
on you if that surgeon had never operated on anyone else before?
To make up for
the “lack of combat” experience, we do send troops on overseas international
missions (which remains not the same as actual war). However, this clearly
something that the system does not value.
Take the
example of Mr. Bernard Miranda, who was a navy officer who actually commanded an
international task force to conduct anti-piracy operations in the Gulf of Aden.
Mr. Miranda was by all accounts pretty good at the job as can be seen in the
report below:
You would have
imagined that success on an international level would have made Mr. Miranda a
hero. Unfortunately, Mr. Miranda was the wrong colour (out of Singapore, the
armed forces champion themselves as places where ethnic minorities can succeed)
and more importantly not one of the chosen few.
His reward for
a job well done was to be demoted (from one star admiral to colonel) and he was
quickly retired. To be fair, he was given lucrative postings and will probably
be remembered as a senior civil servant who got caught drunk driving.
The other example
of wasted experiences is that of Tan Huck Gim, who commanded a task force in
what was then called East Timor from 2002 to 2003. If there was an example of a
Singapore General who did a job for Singapore, it was General Tan’s command in
Timor Leste. His experiences have been turned into a case study on how little
Singapore can use its troops to do something useful in the wider region:
How did we
reward General Tan for doing a good job? We demoted him, took away the extra star
because the only two-star general allowed to exist in Singapore was the Chief
of Army, which at that time was Major-General Ng Yat Chung, who would
distinguish himself by becoming a Chief of Defense Force (CDF) that was mysteriously
absent from all the events you’d expect the CDF to be at and then he would
become a businessman who would run down not just one but two public listed
companies.
I remember
talking to someone in the Ministry of Defense about this. It didn’t make sense
that an army that had never seen an unfriendly situation in its entire history
was demoting a leader who had actually dealt with unfriendly situations. The reply
was “But he’s OLD WHAT.”
Thank you
for being a leader on an international stage – now please give us back the rank
you actually earned and p*** off into obscurity
It doesn’t make
sense to demote people who have proven themselves to be capable, particularly in
a society that claims to worship meritocracy. So, what is he’s old – he’s shown
that he’s good?
Yet, while
there may be some sense to what I’ve said, it clearly doesn’t apply. It seems
that “leadership” is about looking good on paper (right school, graduate from
university, preferably from a family with some money, it helps if you’re the
right colour, though we may need the odd token and you got to be the right
age). Unfortunately, what looks good on paper doesn’t always prove to be so.
The world is
going through a rough patch. We need competent leadership and the only way we
are ever going to achieve it is by promoting people who have shown themselves competent
in the here and now rather than what they did in a sheltered background two
decades ago. We need to stop trying to check boxes made up by bureaucrats in a
cubicle and judge people by what they do on the ground. Sure, I have nothing
against scholars or scholarship. However, we need to challenge our scholars –
give them the shitty problems. There’s no point in putting smart people in
charge of things that don’t need to be solved. Getting scholars to avoid
challenges is an act of putting brain in a drain.
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