Aruosa Osemwegie
HR consultant, Life & Career Coach, Job Search Strategist In Nigeria
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 10:54:00 +0000
en-US
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Enduring Business Values versus Disruptive Business Models: The Curious Case of Uber
/the-curious-case-of-uber/
Sun, 26 Nov 2017 10:47:00 +0000
/?p=1054
Off the bat, I would like to say that it is easy to be wise after the fact. It is easy to sit down and pontificate over the challenges Uber faced much of 2017 and how they could have avoided it. It is easy to become an expert on the backs of the series of missteps by Uber. In writing this, I struggled with these thoughts.
But I kept having the nagging feeling that there are broader issues for us all. It was then that I realized that raising this issue was altruistic and for the greater good of all. The gnawing feeling is that this Ubergate brings to fore the titanic battle between Enduring Business Values versus Disruptive Business models.
Does disrupting existing business models subtly suggest that we can also disrupt enduring business values? Or to what extent are we allowed to disrupt existing or enduring business values in the pursuit of new business models such as Uber or Airbnb and the like?
All over the world, from MBA programmes to remote corners, people and investors are in search of the next big thing. But how much of what we have come to learn should we hold onto whilst we pursue new vistas?
This treatise is therefore a learning communique meant to stir us to answer questions that could shape the future of tomorrow’s businesses and workplaces. Several enduring or widely accepted business values suffered within our case study organization, Uber. The unfolding events created by their choices is a huge learning dossier for start-ups, venture capitalists, investors, business leaders and human resource practitioners. Clearly our learning will be enhanced with a snap review of some of those missteps by Uber.
Star Players versus Company Values Syndrome
As reported – “Fowler, a former engineer at the company, alleges in a blog post that she was sexually harassed at Uber and experienced gender bias during her time at the company. She claims a manager propositioned her and asked for sex, but she says her complaints to Uber’s human resources department were dismissed because the manager was a high performer. Uber continued to ignore her complaints, and her manager threatened to fire her for reporting things to HR, she says”
– Business Insider.
We can see at least three issues here: sexual harassment, gender bias, and star player syndrome. The Ali vs Frazier battle here may just be the Star Performer versus Business Values. But haven’t we been here before? Haven’t we outgrown situations where some employees are designated as being above organizational values and ethos? Apparently NOT.
As far back as 1998, the Harvard Business School had a case discussion titled, Rob Parson at Morgan Stanley. Rob, was a star producer hitting the numbers but who violated a lot of Morgan Stanley’s values. I still recall Prof Boris Groysberg taking us through the case at the Harvard Business School in 2007. Even then in 2007 I couldn’t help but think that it was a case that was developed that very year, because the issue it dealt with was so topical and rife.
Interestingly, another of our programme faculty at HBS then, Prof Thomas J. Delong had been in time past Chief Development Officer and Managing Director at Morgan Stanley group and he added front-row perspectives to the issue of star producers seemingly having their own set of rules.
Here is what Jack Welch said in General Electric’s year 2000 annual report,
“Type 4 is the toughest call of all: the manager who doesn’t share the values, but delivers the numbers. This type is the toughest to part with because organizations always want to deliver and to let someone go who gets the job done is yet another unnatural act. But we have to remove these Type 4s because they have the power, by themselves, to destroy the open, informal, trust-based culture we need to win today and tomorrow. We made our leap forward when we began removing our Type 4 managers and making it clear to the entire company why they were asked to leave—not for the usual “personal reasons” or “to pursue other opportunities,” but for not sharing our values. Until an organization develops the courage to do this, people will never have full confidence that these soft values are truly real.”
Aggressive, Unrestrained, Exclusionary Culture
As reported – “The New York Times publishes a bombshell report that suggests Fowler’s claims were not isolated. Employees did cocaine during a company retreat and a manager had to be fired after groping multiple women, according to the report. Former employees tell the Times they notified Uber’s leadership, including Kalanick and CTO Thuan Pham, about workplace harassment” – Business Insider. Uber investors Freada and Mitch Kapor also had this to say days after the New York Times report, “Uber’s outsize success in terms of growth of market share, revenues and valuation are impressive, but can never excuse a culture plagued by disrespect, exclusionary cliques, lack of diversity, and tolerance for bullying and harassment of every form. As early investors in Uber, starting in 2010, we have tried for years to work behind the scenes to exert a constructive influence on company culture”
– NewCo Shift.
Again, I thought that the world had gone full circle through costly mistakes to reach the conclusion that ‘your culture matters’. In 2002, Louis V. Gerstner, who served as chairman and chief executive officer of IBM from April 1993 to March 2002 and oversaw the salvation and turnaround of the behemoth IBM, said “Until I came to IBM, I probably would have told you that culture was just one among several important elements in any organization’s makeup and success — along with vision, strategy, marketing, financials, and the like… I came to see, in my time at IBM, that culture isn’t just one aspect of the game, it is the game. In the end, an organization is nothing more than the collective capacity of its people to create value.” – Who Says Elephants Can’t Dance? (2002).
Organisations from the brick and mortar days of doing business such as Unilever, GE, Xerox as well as new generation tech businesses such as Microsoft, Google, Zappos, Apple have spent inordinate amounts of money, time and effort to keenly cultivate an inclusive positive culture that their executives and managers can be submitted to. These organisations built company cultures based on enduring values. Systems and leaders are then raised to sustain it. Where a values-based culture is king, teamwork reigns – the sum being greater than the parts. Where a values-based culture is king, the feeble are protected. Where a values-based culture is king, leaders show restraint.
Relegated and Unimportant Human Resources
As reported: “Uber had an HR department, but it apparently was broken, according to Fowler’s account. Recode later reported that Ryan Graves, head of operations, was essentially in charge but didn’t really take the responsibility seriously. Renee Atwood, who served in the head of HR role before Liane Hornsey, reported to Ryan Graves and not Kalanick—unlike most other positions at the ride-hailing giant”.
– Mashable
So many human resources related issues suggests to me that HR didn’t have the importance that forward looking companies accord it. Issues such as absence of workplace harassment policies/procedures; faulty hiring and weak background checking; uncoordinated and non-definitive response to workplace harassment; reactionary hiring practices; high undesirable staff turnovers; hiring strategic staff from competition; and a litany of others are some of the tell-tale signs.
With the kind of early investments gotten by Uber it would have been easy for them to have a well-staffed human resource department . . . if they’d wanted to. Or does disruption suggest that HR is an unnecessary expense? Anyone following the Uber story will know they have since corrected this error by hiring Liane Hornsey to head HR and Frances Frei to oversee leadership and strategy development.Liane was once Vice President, People Operations for Google and Frances was, until recently, a Professor at Harvard Business School.
Today it is Uber, tomorrow it might be . . . Except a more complete message
From the reports, there is data that suggests that many other enduring business values suffered under the Travis-led Uber. For example, there was insufficient care for exemplary leadership; too much power was incorporated in the co-founder and CEO; signs of executive hubris; etc. It is however heartwarming to hear of the many strides being undertaken by Uber to rise out from under the rubble.
It would be to Uber’s credit that we all learn from their missteps. In every corner of the world there is a conversation around disruption. Entrepreneurs, venture capitalists, investors, business leaders, human resource practitioners, college students and governments are in the middle of the discussion. But is the conversation not one-sided? The present messaging subtly suggests that disrupting existing business model licenses us to disrupt enduring business values.
The present messaging suggests by omission that you can disrupt enduring business values just as you are disrupting business models. Remember that what is left unsaid strengthens what is said. Should disrupting existing business models mean we should also disrupt enduring business values? No! We learn from Uber that that is counterproductive.
The purpose of disruption is to unlock hidden value by creating new business value chains, some through the substitution/omission of existing players and others through the creation of new partners. It is not disruption for the sake of it. As we search and pursue opportunities for disruption, we should leverage on the lessons of the past. Our mantra should be: disruptive business models with enduring values. We must signpost this more complete message. Thank you Uber.
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]]>
National People Management and Development (Part 3)
/national-people-management-development-part-3/
/national-people-management-development-part-3/#comments
Wed, 11 Oct 2017 11:03:30 +0000
/?p=1049
Human ingenuity is infinite when translating power and discretion into personal gain…
We allowed the courts to treat proof that an accused was living beyond his or her means or had property his or her income could not explain as corroborating evidence that the accused had accepted or obtained a bribe. – Lee Kuan Yew
How they kept the Govt Clean
We conclude our three-part summary of the book From Third to First Worldby Lee Kuan Yew, hoping to glean insights for our use as a nation in transition. “When the PAP govt took office in 1959, we set out to have a clean administration. We were sickened by the greed, corruption, and decadence of Asian leaders. In 1960, we changed the outdated anticorruption law and widened the definition of gratuity to include anything of value. The amendments gave wide powers to investigators, including arrest and search and investigation of bank accounts and bank books of suspected persons and their wives, children or agents. We allowed the courts to treat proof that an accused was living beyond his or her means or had property his or her income could not explain as corroborating evidence that the accused had accepted or obtained a bribe. Also, it was our opinion that for an honest govt, candidates must not need large sums of money to get elected, or it must trigger off the cycle of corruption. Before we got into govt, we got govt to make voting compulsory and to prohibit the practice of using cars to take voters to the polls. Govt officials must be paid a wage commensurate with what men of their ability and integrity are earning for managing a big corporation or a successful legal or professional practice or else it would be difficult to attract talented people into govt. We proposed to Parliament to settle a formula so that revisions to salaries of ministers, judges, and top civil servants were automatic, linked to the income tax returns of the private sector.”
Modelling Decisive Leadership and Making Tough Calls
After recovery in 1975, we could afford to be more selective. When our EDB officer asked how much longer we had to maintain protective tariffs for the car assembly plant owned by a local company, the finance director of Mercedes-Benz said brusquely, “Forever,” because our workers were not as efficient as Germans. We did not hesitate to remove the tariffs and allow the plant to close down. Soon afterwards we also phased out protection for the assembly of refrigerators, air conditioner, television sets, radios, and other consumer electrical and electronic products.
Guinness had already paid a deposit for a site in Jurong for a brewery when we had to tell them we would not allow even one bottle of stout to be imported. So, they set up brewery instead in Malaysia and offered to allow us to forfeit their deposit. We returned it. Years later we repaid their compliment when we refused to reduce the import duty on stout from Malaysia. Guinness eventually settled on a Singapore brewery to produce it for them under license.
We used to also have a situation where Indian cowherds were bringing their cows into the city to graze. We gave owners of cows and goats a grace period, after which all such stray animals would be taken to the slaughterhouses and meat given to welfare homes. By December 1965, we had seized and slaughtered 53 cows. Very quickly, all cattle and goats were back in their herds.
We set up Singapore Airlines and got landing rights to Hong Kong, Tokyo, Sydney, Jakarta and Bangkok. But the most important destination was London, however the British were reluctant to give us landing rights. When I was told later how difficult it was to get landing rights, I asked them to let the Secretary General of our unions know about it because I had earlier agreed to his proposal that if the British were difficult, we would get Singapore unions at our own airport to apply pressure by going slow on servicing British aircraft. Within weeks after applying pressure though our unions, we obtained landing rights in London.
They mixed Socialism and Capitalism
The government took the lead by starting new industries such as steel mills (National Iron and Steel Mills) and service industries such as shipping line, Neptune Orient Lines (NOL), and an airline, Singapore Airlines (SIA), and Chartered Industries of Singapore (CIS), a mint and a factory for small ammunition. We later spun off Singapore Technologies, a high-tech company that, among other things, a set up water fabrication plants in joint venture with top MNCs.We had to put faith in our young officers who had integrity, intellect, energy, drive, and application but no record of business acumen. Our top scholars had been chosen from the best of each year’s crop of students and sent to the top universities in Britain, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, Germany, France, Italy, and Japan and later, when we could afford it, America. We made them our entrepreneurs to start up successful companies like NOL and SIA. I was fearful that these enterprises would result in subsidized and loss-making nationalized corporations as had happened in many new countries. The projects succeeded. As a result, many new companies sprang up under the auspices of other ministries and their ministries. When these also were successful, we turned state monopolies such as the PUB (Public Utilities Board), the PSA (Port of Singapore Authority), and Singapore Telecom into separate entities, free from ministerial control, to be run as companies, efficient, profitable, and competitive.
Winning over the Unions
Our union practices, I explained, were forcing employers to become capital-intensive, investing in expensive machines to get the work done with the minimum of workers. The ministry of health implemented their new wok system for cleansing workers. Next one of the unions went on a wildcat strike. The police arrested the leaders and charged them with calling an illegal strike. The registrar of trade unions issued notices to the union to show cause why they should not be deregistered. At same time the ministry of health declared that the strikers had sacked themselves; those who wished to be reemployed could apply the next day. This coordinated firmness panicked the strikers. 90% of them reapplied for employment. I tried to convince them at their annual labour congress that industrial relations between employers and workers were more important for our survival than wage increases, and that together we had to get the labour movement into better shape by cutting out restrictive practices and the abuse of fringe benefits. We made it illegal for a trade union to take strike or industrial action without a secret ballot. If it did so, the union and its officers would be liable to prosecution. They also held amodernisation seminar and convinced union delegates of the need to modernize their functions tomeet the changed environment.
How the Lee Kuan Yew’s Govt managed the Media
My early experiences in Singapore and Malaysia shaped my views about the claim of the press to be the defender of truth and freedom of speech. The freedom of the press was the freedom of its owners to advance their personal and class interests. Once the Press Foundation of Asia, issued a statement asking us not to cancel a paper’s license and invited me to speak at their annual assembly. Before leaving for the assembly, I cancelled the printing license of the newspaper. Had I not attended, the assemble would have passed resolutions condemning Singapore in my absence. I told them I did not accept that newspaper owners had the right to printwhatever they liked.Unlike Singapore’s minister’s, theyand their journalists were not elected. My final words to the conference were: “Freedom of the press, freedom of the news media, must be subordinated to the over-riding needs of Singapore, and to the primacy of purpose of an elected govt.” A few years later we passed laws prohibiting any person or his or her nominee from holding more than 3% of the ordinary shares of a newspaper, and created special category of shares called management shares, which the minister gave to Singapore’sfourmajor local banks. We enacted a law to restrict sale of foreign publications that engaged in our domestic politics. If after they had misreported or slanted stories on Singapore, they must be willing to publish our reply unedited otherwise the distribution of their publication was severally cut down.
How they creatively managed their compulsory Pensions Scheme
The colonial govt had started the Central Provident Fund (CPF) as a simple savings scheme for retirement: 5% of wages contributed by the employee with a matching 5% by the employer, to be withdrawn at age 55. We considered it inadequate. We expanded it into a fund that would enable every worker to won his home. Workers were allowed to use their accumulated CPF savings to pay the 20% home ownership down payment and service the housing loan for the balance by monthly installments over 20 years. From 1955-1968, the CPF contribution had remained unchanged. I raised it in stages from5% to 25% in 1984, making a total savings rate of 50% of wages. This was later reduced to 40%. The minister for labour was usually most anxious to have the worker’s take-home pay increased and would urge me to put less into the CPF. I regularly overruled him. I was determined to avoid placing the burden of the present generation’s welfare costs onto the next generation. Later on, we made all CPF members set aside 15 of their monthly expenses in a special account that could be used to co-pay medical expenses for themselves and their families. It was gradually increased to 6%. We allowed the CPF to be used as a personal savings fund for investments. Eg we revamped the bus service and formed Singapore Bus Services(SBS), listed it on the stock exchange, and allowed to use up to $5,000 of their CPF to buy shares. Thereby created a disincentive to demand for cheaper bus fares and govt subsidies for public transport.
Rejuvenation, Training and Development for the President
After I [Prime Minister Yew] had settled policies to counter the loss of Britain military spending, in the autumn of 1968, I took a short sabbatical at Harvard. I had been in office for nine years and needed to recharge my batteries, get some fresh ideas and reflect on the future. The Kennedy School of Government made me an honorary fellow and arranged breakfasts, lunches, dinners, and seminars for me to meet at a host of distinguished scholars. During the exchanges, they sparked off many useful and interesting ideas. I learned much about American society and economy by reading and talking to Harvard Business School professors such as Professor Ray Vernon. Vernon gave me a valuable lesson on the ever-changing nature of technology, industry, and markets, and how costs, especially wages in labor-intensive industries determined profits. He dispelled my previous belief that industries changed gradually and seldom moved from an advanced country to a less-developed one. Reliable and cheap air and sea transport made it possible to move industries into new countries, provided their people were disciplined and trained to wok the machines, and there was a stable and efficient government to facilitate the process for foreign entrepreneurs.
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/national-people-management-development-part-3/feed/
1
National People Management and Development (Part 2)
/national-people-management-development-part-2/
Wed, 04 Oct 2017 10:58:04 +0000
/?p=1046
After grappling with the problem of unemployment for years since we first took office in 1959, all of us in cabinet knew that the only way to survive was to industrialize – Lee Kuan Yew, From Third to First World
“Dr Tan Wee Kiat, former head of NParks, recalled how even though funds were short in those years, Lee Kuan Yew prioritised nationwide efforts to green the city’s roads and vacant spaces. Lee’s successor, Goh Chok Tong, once remarked that Singapore was the only sovereign nation he knew of that read a gardening report in the Cabinet”- www.eco-business.com
They devised a National Strategy
We continue with the summary of the book From Third to First Worldby Lee Kuan Yew, hoping to glean insights for our use as a nation. “I, [Lee Kuan Yew] gradually crystallized my thoughts and settled on a two-pronged strategy to overcome our disadvantages. The first was to leapfrog the region, as the Isrealis had done. This idea sprang from a discussion I had with a UNDP expert who visited Singapore in 1962. In 1964, while on a tour of Africa, I met him again in Malawi. He described to me how the Isrealis, faced with a more hostile environment than ours, had found a way around their difficulties by leaping over their Arab neighbors who boycotted them, to trade with Europe and America. Since our neighbors were out to reduce their ties with us, we had a link up with the developed world- America, Europe, and Japan- and attract their manufacturers to produce in Singapore and export their products to the developed countries. The accepted wisdom of development economists at the time was that MNCs [Multinational Corporations] were exploiters of cheap land, labor, and raw materials.
This “dependency school” of economists argued that MNCs continued the colonial pattern of exploitation that left the developing countries selling raw materials to and buying consumers goods from the advanced countries. MNCs controlled technology and consumer preferences and formed alliances with their host governments to exploit the people and keep them down. Third World leaders believed this theory of neo-colonialist exploitation, but KengSwee and I were not impressed. We had a real-life problem to solve and could not afford to be conscribed by any theory or dogma. Anyway, Singapore had no natural resources for MNCs to exploit. All it had were hardworking people, good basic infrastructure, and a government that was determined to be honest and competent. Our duty was to create a livelihood for 2 million Singaporeans. If MNCs could give our workers employment and teach them technical and engineering skills and management know-how, we should bring in the MNCs”.
They sought to provide First World Standards of Service
Lee Kuan Yew continues, “The second part of my strategy was to create a First World Oasis in a Third World region. This was something Isreal could not do because it was at war with its neighbors. If Singapore could establish First World standards in public and personal security, health, education, telecommunications, transportation, and services, it would become a base camp for entrepreneurs, engineers, managers, and other professionals who had business to do in the region. This meant we had to train our people and equip them to provide First World standards of service. I believed this was possible, that we could re-educate and re-orientate our people with the help of schools, trade unions, community centers, and social organizations.
If the communists in China could eradicate all flies and sparrows, surely we could get our people to change their Third World habits. We had one simple guiding principle for survival, that Singapore had to be more rugged, better organized, and more efficient than others in the region. If we were only as good as our neighbors, there was no reason for businesses to be based here. We had to make it possible for investors to operate successfully and profitably in Singapore despite our lack of a domestic market and natural resources”.
How they pursued economic development without Oil or any natural resource
Now, in 1965, we too faced a future so bleak that I asked Kim San, then minister of finance, to send a trade delegation from our four chambers of commerce and the manufacturers’ association to Africa on “the off-chance of picking up some business.” The delegation went to East and West African Countries, but little trade followed. After grappling with the problem of unemployment for years since we first took office in 1959, all of us in cabinet knew that the only way to survive was to industrialize. We cast around for solutions and were willing to try any practical idea that could create jobs and enable us to pay our way. One of our soft drink manufacturers suggested to me that we promote tourism; it was labor intensive, needing cooks, maids, waiters, laundrymen, drycleaners, tour guides, drivers, and makers of souvenirs handicraft. Best of all, it required little capital.
We formed the Singapore Tourist Promotion Board and appointed our film magnate, Runme Shaw of Shaw Brothers, as chairman. He was the right man for the job. . . To my relief it did create many jobs and put coins into many empty pockets. It reduced but did not solve the unemployment problem. For that [unemployment], we concentrated on getting factories started. Despite our small domestic market of 2million, we protected locally assembled cars, refrigerators, air conditioners, radios, television sets, and tape-recorders, in the hope that they would later be partly manufactured locally. We encouraged our own businesspeople who set up small factories to manufacture vegetable oils, cosmetics, mosquito coils, hair cream, joss paper, and even mothballs! And we were able to attract Hong Kong and Taiwanese investors to build factories for toys, textiles, and garments.
Attaining Regional Leadership through Technology
While HP negotiated to acquire a site for its own factory, it decided to lease the top two floors of a six-story building. The elevator to lift the heavy machinery needed a big transformer for electricity, but there was none in place in time for the visit of Mr. Hewlett himself. Rather than have him walk up six flights of stairs, the EDB [Economic Development Board, a one-stop agency, so that an investor need not deal with large number of departments and ministries], got a gigantic cable extended from a neighboring building, and on the day of the visit the elevator worked. Hewlett-Packard invested. These stories went through the boardrooms of the American electronics industry, and other American electronics companies soon followed. We welcomed everyone, but when we found a big investor with potential for growth, we went out of our way to help it get started. By the 1970s, glowing reports on Singapore had appeared in American magazines, including US News & World Report, Harper’s, and Time. In 1970, General Electric (GE) set up six different facilities for electrical and electronics products, circuit breakers, and electric motors. By the late 1970s, GE was to become the largest single employer of labor in Singapore. American MNCs laid the foundations for Singapore’s large high-tech electronics industry. Although we did not know it then, the electronics industry was to mop up our unemployment and turn Singapore into a major electronics exporter in the 1980s. From Singapore they were later to expand into Malaysia and Thailand.
They passionately recruited and developed good people from all over
“My experience of developments in Asia has led me to conclude that we need good people to have good government. However good the system of government, bad leaders will bring harm to their people. On the other hand, I have seen several societies well-governed in spite of poor systems of government, because good, strong leaders were in charge . . . the single decisive factor that made for Singapore’s development was the ability of its ministers and the high quality of the civil servants who supported them. Whenever I had a lesser minister in charge, I invariably had to push and prod him, and later to review problems and clear roadblocks for him . . . because of our relentless and unceasing search for talent both at home and abroad to make up for the small families of the well-educated, Singapore has been able to keep up its performance . . . After several years in government I realized that the more talented people I had as ministers, administrators, and professional, the more effective my policies were, and the better the results”.
“After independence, I searched for some dramatic way to distinguish ourselves from other Third World countries. I settled for a clean and green Singapore.One arm of my strategy was to make Singapore into an oasis in Southeast Asia, for if we had First World standards then businessmen and tourists would make us a base for their business and tours of the region . . . Visiting CEOs used to call on me before they made their investment decisions. I thought the best way to convince them was to ensure that the roads from airport to their hotel and to my office were neat and spruce, lined with shrubs and trees. When they drove into the Istana domain, they would see right in the heart of the city a green oasis, 90 acres of immaculate rolling lawns and woodland, and nestling between them a nine hole-golf course. Without a word being said, they would know that Singaporeans were competent, disciplined, and reliable, a people who would learn the skills they required soon enough.
Dr Tan Wee Kiat, former head of NParks, recalled how even though funds were short in those years, Lee prioritised nationwide efforts to green the city’s roads and vacant spaces. Lee’s successor, Goh Chok Tong, once remarked that Singapore was the only sovereign nation he knew of that read a gardening report in the Cabinet” (ref: www.eco-business.com)
They launched various social change programmes
Got this quote from Singapore’s Infopedia: “The Keep Singapore Clean campaign was one of Singapore’s first national campaigns as an independent nation. The campaign reached out to every stratum of society and sought to instill in Singaporeans the importance of keeping public places clean. It was part of a larger public cleansing plan that included changes in public health laws, relocation and licensing of itinerant hawkers, development of proper sewage systems, and disease control. The government believed that improved environmental conditions would not only enhance the quality of life for Singaporeans and cultivate national pride, but also attract foreign investors and tourists to Singapore. During the period of the campaign, posters and banners in Singapore’s four official languages were displayed in public places such as shops, restaurants, offices, factories, community centres, bus shelters and public notice boards. Mini posters, stick-up strips, leaflets, pamphlets and car-bumper stickers were also distributed, while postal items and cinema tickets bore stamps with the campaign slogan.In addition to the distribution of collaterals, various public education activities were organised. These included talks and lectures by health officials, inspections and spot checks by government officials, and house visits, rallies, exhibitions and estate cleaning exercises by grassroots organisations. Competitions for the cleanest offices, shops, restaurants, markets, factories, government buildings, schools and public vehicles were also conducted. The results of these competitions were announced publicly, highlighting both the cleanest and the dirtiest. Film clips and photographs of dirty premises or people caught in the act of littering were also shown in the mass media.
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National People Management and Development (Part 1)
/national-people-management-development-part-1/
Tue, 05 Sep 2017 10:50:24 +0000
/?p=1037
“What is it I am trying to do? I am trying to create in a Third World situation, a First World oasis. I am not following any prescription given to me by any theoretician on democracy or whatever. I work from first principles, what will get me there: social peace and stability within the country; no fight between the races and the religions or whatever; fair share for everybody. I want investment. I’ve got nothing except skilled manpower and infrastructure. I build up infrastructure. I educate the people. We have the best educated work force anywhere in Asia. And I will say within another 10 years, anywhere in the world. They are all educated in English which is our working language and they keep their mother tongue, whether it is Chinese, Malay, or Tamils or whatever. Must I follow your prescription to succeed? Do I want to be like America? Yes, in its inventiveness, in its creativeness. But do I want to be with America like America, with its inability to control the drug problem? No. Or the gun problem? No. These are my choices. I go by what is good governance. What are the things I aim to do? Healthy society that gives everybody a chance to achieve its maximum”
– Lee Kuan Yew (interview with Fareed Zakaria, CNN 2008)
Introduction
How do you set out to manage and develop a nation? Is there a right or best way? Is there even a universal one-way or a set of options? Should we begin after we know or should we experiment ourselves to success? Or is it collaboration between knowledge and experimentation? Is what we think we know about national development skewed, outdated or incomplete? Can we say we truly know the paths our political leaders should tow or what our contribution as citizens should be? Have leaders and followers become trapped and incapacitated