Above all else

There’s a glamorous bank advertisement being played on airplane entertainment systems these days, which depicts various industry titans, movers and shakers, who “don’t follow maps but draw them, and build what isn’t there”. And that they just call this “Tuesday”. The point is that to these business paragons, daring entrepreneurship is simply routine. I mean, I'm posting this on Saturday, 'cos Tuesdays are too busy ya know :D I’m no titan of industry. But it’s true that simply calling things “Tuesday” is what often works. As James Clear wrote in “Atomic Habits”, we don’t rise to the level of our goals; we fall to the level of our habits/systems. And it’s not possible to build habits or systems without actually putting them into practice. You can have all the SOPs and how-to-do-it books. But in the end, it takes jumping into the pool, day after day after day. No one is ever truly ready to be married. The only way to become readier, is to get going, and learn to love better an...

How often have you seen this: some kind of problem situation arises, and then the people outside the problem swiftly produce lots of insights about all the things that the people in place did wrong. Classic examples include shaking wise heads at the board and management of Kodak, which failed to respond to the rise of digital photography; Nokia and Research in Motion (Blackberry), which failed to address the threat of touchscreen smartphone competitors; and Blockbuster, which didn't anticipate the pivot from physical video rentals to online streaming. Or the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and the failure of banks, insurers and regulators to recognise the deadly cocktail of low interest rates, lax lending standards, conflicts of interest with ratings agencies, and more, and the "inevitable" crash that followed. Somehow we think that, if we had been there, we would have been the canary in the coal mine. We would have had the foresight to identify the risk. ...

The internet in Singapore has been abuzz with the story of Nisar Keshvani and his family, who were evacuated from Riyadh in the wake of the war with Iran. His heartwarming story evokes the feeling of having returned home the moment he boarded the RSAF aeroplane, and how the passengers even broke into an impromptu rendition of the Singapore national anthem.  What an amazing thing it is to return home! Our home on earth has a special place in each of our hearts. I definitely feel something special when I return from travel overseas, and I know my children feel the same way, especially those years when they're living overseas. Returning home is not necessarily just an emergency rescue (though sometimes it can be!).  The Bible famously records in Jeremiah 29:10-11, "When seventy years are completed for Babylon, I will come to you and fulfill my good promise to bring you back to this place. For I know the plans I have for you, plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give...

Many years ago now, I had the great opportunity to go back to school. It was a little nervewracking, since it had been years since I had been in a formal academic setting. It was also unfamiliar. I was going to a U.S. business school, with clever and experienced business people all around me - CEOs, CFOs and other C-somethings from all over the world, who were often leaders of thousands of people. By comparison, I was just a technician. But the experience was great! I saw how many people were willing to speak their mind, whether they were ready or not, and not immediately worry about whether they were right. A lot of thinking was wacky - and that was the point - I started to understand why that country has so many moonshot successes, and why their innovation culture is so strong, even amidst the many bad ideas and failures. This concept of "success amidst failure" brings me to the present day. When I returned to Singapore, I joined the local alumni club of the bu...

Chinese New Year celebrations are a great time to pick up oral history, and this year was an especially investigative one! I'd always heard from my mother that my grandfather was an Anglophile, who had a keen mastery of the English language, and worked for the British colonial administration. But I'd also heard that he had come to Singapore from China. If so, then how did he speak and write English so well, and why did he like English culture so much, to the extent that he even gave English names to all my aunts and uncles, who are all named after various actors and actresses of the time, hence this collection of classic English names across the family - this was a real rarity in that time. It was time to find out. I spent most of my childhood living with my grandparents and aunts and uncles - first, in a leased space above a shophouse in Rangoon Road, and later, in a HDB flat (in what was then named Bedok *New* Town, wow how time has flown!). My parents, m...