Anniversary at Singapore

Well it’s been now more than a year that I am living in Singapore. Although I have been traveling across the world for over a decade now, it’s been a transition for me and my family to a foreign land over the last one year. And a year it has been to shatter some of my old school beliefs, some assumptions which I had taken as a given, but in a global world I am coming to realize them as too narrow to have a meaning for me today. Let me explore some of these.

1. Education System: Our education system has never been able to address global behaviour and ethics. So my learnings have been mostly first hand. Every day that I spend here I am now able to appreciate, not only Singaporean culture, Chinese culture, North and South Asian Cultures, Australian culture but have started to appreciate Indian culture and things that I miss here.
2. Etiquette: When people ask you, “How are you?”, they are very seldom genuinely interested in your story. All they want to hear is everything is hale and hearty and never could be better. No one has time for your sob stories. So standardize your answers as “Brilliant / Never Better / Great / Having Fun / You know last weekend, we went to this fabulous … “ yada yada.
3. Time Management: Between the two extreme ends of the region I operate in, there is a narrow margin of one hour when both ends are in their working hours. To be able to manage a conference to match everyone’s expectations is an acrobatic feat in Microsoft Outlook Calendar Management. And time does mean differently in different parts of the region. The Japanese people with whom I worked like to work till late in the night in their offices and drink till wee hours of the morning. Australians like to keep things short, focused and finish in time for dinner at 6 and beer for later. Singaporeans love their lunch. Indians have Indian Stretchable Timetable all the time. Jakarta reminded me of traffic jams in Chandni Chowk and Ghatkopar – how the hell do people do more than two customer meetings in a day is a mystery to me.
4. Culture: I realized that just like when we generally look at a sardar, we cannot make him out as different from another. I mean facial features are so similar that unless you understand the person well, they may seem similar. On a similar note, I for one never could differentiate between a Chinese, Korean, Japanese and a Singaporean. At least I have learnt some special habits, cultures, practices and diction that differentiate in my mind these set of people. It has been a very revealing experience and an education which continues as I live on. I have learnt to love Japanese food – who says you cannot have uncooked food? I found amazing Khimchi in Korea.
5. Being a Singaporean: I learnt the passion of an average fellow Singaporean that I can learn from includes, their passion for multi culture cuisine, their favourite pass time of shop till you drop attitude (its amazing to see how they can find out the best sale and discounts, the most value for money deals in any market across the globe) and oh the drive to keep up physical fitness (I have actually seen people jogging on the roads at 3 am – when I usually am not awake, but happened to chance on a late night flight that got delayed).
6. Advancing Years: As I grow older, I have been able to appreciate the “loneliness” of older generation. Most amazingly I have been approached at least couple of times by elderly Singaporeans who said Hi and asked if I would like to become friends with them. Indeed, I now realize that after an age of active life, life after is one filled with pain and loneliness. I hope I will have friends, family and foes to keep me busy.
7. Management: There are tremendous learning that we can take from major management events. F1 Grand Prix Night Race which was witnessed by people from all over the world, was immaculately planned and executed. Every office that I go for government services, its planned and thought through. Transportation system so good, that at times I feel that I own the bus in which I am traveling coz I am the only one and yet, the buses run on time and rarely break down. Means their maintenance schedules are very well managed. Even a Zoo and its management is worth looking at. There is so much to learn all around.
   

I will write again as I live life as a seasoned Singaporean this year.

Making History at Olympics

Yesterday while watching the closing ceremony at Beijing Olympics, I felt pride.

Pride about two very important things. That as a Foreigner living in Singapore, I watched with equal passion and trepidation that final between Singapore and China in ping pong game. I cheered every point that Singapore won. And I loved the fact that small TVs in different small shops or large screens in large malls were all showing the golden moments. And I loved the pride in my fellow Singaporeans hearts about this amazing winning feat which they won after 40 plus years of effort. It was a moment in HISTORY.

If Michael Phelps was a country, he would be placed high in the list of countries.

Secondly, I had written a while back about “will 1 be all …” in which I wrote about India and the fact that it takes a lot to get that 1 gold medal and I am not just proud of that moment but many more.

Today while reading on the net, I saw this article by Shekar Gupta which I completely agree with and wanted to capture for this discussion. I am proud of the fact that for once parents are getting out of their stereotyping the career of kids. They are quickly accepting the fact that “sports” can be a “career”! I remember in good old school days in one of the debate competition, we had a topic called “Padoge Likhoge Banoge Nawaab, Kheloge Koodoge Hoge Kharaab”! (means “if you read and write, you will become a “Prince”, if you play and jump, you will become a rot.). I distinctly remember one of our great debaters who happened to go ahead and represent my state “Rajasthan” in Ranji Cricket had come on the stage against the motion and had put across what he saw as the emerging “career” in sports. I did not have the guts then to go against my parents to do the unthinkable, and give a go at the sports that I loved.

And nothing more be said about sports than what Shekhar just pointed out. We are now witnessing the coming of age of that thought / philosophy on “Padoge Likhoge Banoge Nawaab, Kheloge Koodoge Hoge Kharaab”. There is nothing wrong then, and there is nothing wrong now. At those times, India required good quality professionals like Engineers, Doctors, Lawyers, Architects etc. Today we need good sports people to build our nation’s pride and status. Interestingly, Shekhar at the end points to a very interesting “PS” post script about Dingko Singh. You know what I am also absolutely proud about the “salt-of-the-earth” behaviour which is so Indian.

Telecommuting

Today I would like to look at this increasingly used model of working in Corporates. While many companies still believe in face to face as the only method of interacting within employee community, many have started on the path to telecommuting as a way of life. 

As a partial telecommuting professional, here are some of my experiences of the pros and cons. As always, there are two sides of the coin, and here too I have tried to keep it balanced.

POSITIVES:

1. We save a lot of carbon footprint if we telecommute. Think of cars, public transport etc that get reduced load since people are putting less pressure on the resources. Especially relevant for countries that see tremendous traffic jams during peak hours. And especially relevant also to countries where Car Pooling is considered almost a “crime” and looked down upon. On the flip side, it really puts the pressure on your own home infrastructure since you are consuming more Airconditioning, Lighting, Telephone and Wireless.
2. You get to see your family more (only for those who are married and have a family). 
   We used to joke about how our kids are growing up laterally coz we don’t get time to see them horizontally, meaning since you work so long hours, the kids go to sleep way before you land up at home. That way you only saw them growing up in their sleep. On the flip side, I do remember my wife asking me to take the kids to the school bus stand. They are yet to wake up to the fact that we are working, so what if we are still in our PJs. 
   One of the days I remember we were having a conference call and a very serious fight broke out about what should be the relevant strategy to move forward, and lo behold, there was a very naughty little voice that started talking baby gibberish. For a moment the whole conference went silent, and then the whole group broke out laughing. It seems that one of the participants son had picked up the extension and started giving his advice.
3. It improves your ability to influence your “work / life balance”. I have seen many people trying to juggle a budding career with priorities at home. In the process they lag behind in both the aspects of their life – work and home. And then it soon spirals into a trying to catch up on things game. On the flip side, it gives into the hands of most people an ability to do whatever you please with time. As you know non productive work does expand to fill up your time. So there is a serious concern felt by many that individuals do personal work when official work needs to take priority. 
   It’s like the Biology experiment of frog in water that is kept for boiling. At the end of the experiment boiling water brings the death of the frog. The frog does not understand the changes in the environment as it is subtle but keeps degrading to a point where it looses all its body controls to take corrective action. My point, this freedom to manage your time is a big responsibility and only the best know how to manage it well and to your benefit.
4. It reduces the infrastructure cost per employee. For many companies their sales reps, service reps, and logistics teams are constantly on the move. Does it make sense to have dedicated workspaces for such members when their most productive (read revenue generating time) is out with customers? On the flip side, there are employees like project managers, call center workers, product line managers, shopfloor folks and workers who need that infrastructure to support teams who are mobile. Using the same yardstick in the name of cost rationalization is a stupid idea.

NEGATIVES

1. It stifles brainstorming and creative thinking within groups. There are many instances when most admirable campaigns happened across the pantry with caffeine and smokes. The strongest of business strategies have happened when the boss has brainstormed with his employees on the fly in a “5 minutes” discussion which turned out to be great strategies on which companies spent millions of dollars.
   
2. It reduces your ability to socially network. Think Office Romances, those chance meetings that get you great jobs, those water cooler talks about office politics and some cool things to do. But what the heck, in today’s world of facebook, orkut and linkedin, many find it more convenient to be digital than physical.
   
3. Costs seem to reduce in short run, but over the long term cost structure of doing business will increase. Now I put costs as one of the primary positives earlier. However I mention it now. The reason is simple. If you see all the savings company gets above starts to tell on the balance sheets and profit & loss accounts quickly. Any cost savings gets reflected in hard currency saved. However, what these measures fail to measure is the ease of doing business which goes through the roof, in a negative manner. Imagine, the amount of money a company will need to spend to make its employees interact with each other. Imagine the amount of money spent to create knowledge sharing tools which at best are still very static. Imagine the cost of brain storming. When an employee gets a brilliant idea, he will not be able to share it instantly. It will need a formal ideas capturing mechanism, which again costs money. Imagine …

That’s all for today.