GE2015 – Lessons learnt

The biggest lesson learnt from the GE2015 911 effect must be the importance of being relevant as opposition parties to stay in touch with issues and matters that affect the people and their interests. Chee Soon Juan caught the drift and demanded more transparency in accounting to what really happened in the hepatitis C crisis. What happened, when did it happened, who said what and when, who was informed what and when. These simple questions are going to rub some people the wrong way and instead of answering them, may be retorted with more questions or challenges.

Following closely behind the heels of Chee Soon Juan is the WP. WP had for the last few years avoided questioning the govt on current issues and adopted a strategy of looking after their constituents and their backyards. Work the ground real hard to show the people that the WP was very good in municipal affairs.

The result of the GE was punishing in a way. The WP must have done a lot of soul searching to find out what’s wrong and must have concluded that keeping quiet on current and national issues would not do. As politicians they cannot afford to shut up and only open their mouths during a GE.

And there you are, Leon Perera, the second generation leaders that would likely take over from Low Thia Khiang and Sylvia Lim, has changed tack. They are going to speak up and take the bull by the horns. Here is a clip of what Leon Perera said on the hepatitis C crisis.

‘In the case of the Committee of Inquiry into the 15 and 17 Dec 2011 MRT breakdowns and the 8 Dec 2013 Little India Riots, the deliberations of the committee were made public so as to strengthen public confidence in the security and public transport systems respectively. In this case, we recommend that the deliberations of the committee likewise be made public. The Hepatitis C outbreak is at least as grave an incident as the MRT breakdowns and Little India riot, with serious implications for the public confidence of Singaporeans and foreign stake-holders in our vital national institutions. So as to facilitate this and in line with the norms established by the COIs relating to the MRT breakdowns and the Little India riots, we recommend that the current review committee be reconstituted as a Committee of Inquiry (COI) under the Inquiries Act.’

Yes, the new blood in the WP understood what should be done, what the people expected them to do. As opposition politicians, they must engage the ruling party all the way to the next GE on issues that affect the people. There is no running away or walking away if they want to win the hearts and minds of the people. They must continuously be there to speak up for the people, not to wait until the next GE.

The other nonsensical parties also have learnt their lessons. They are nonsensical parties and should just shut up, not be seen and not be heard, and hopefully not be seen and heard again in the next GE.

Tan Jee Say and whatever that is left in the opposition that thinks they are not nonsensical parties must also take the cue and stand up and be counted. Don’t reappear only in the next GE. The battle starts now and either they stay on to fight or take flight.

This is a brave new change in the WP, to stand up to face the music no matter how loud or unpleasant, to fight on, to represent the people and to fight for their well being at all times. To ask unpleasant and uncomfortable questions and not to shy away from a fight is now the new strategy of the WP.

Lean-Sizing Solution for Singapore – How it Works

Going Lean - The Best Organisation for the Marketplace

By MIKOspace

 

Singapore wants to maintain a low but sustainable foreign workforce growth as she engages with increasing decline of the local labour force.   In essence, Singapore needs to learn to grow its economy and to do more with less.  It means going beyond hitherto low human productivity growth to deploy new mind-sets to unleash unconventional innovative approaches to everything that Singapore managers and workers have been accustomed to doing so far. 

 

“Problems cannot be solved with the same mind-set that created them.”

― Albert Einstein

 

The empowered lean business corporation is the proven most effective organisation. No business success is based solely on technology.  Quality people make products/services distinctive through superior quality and total customer satisfaction.  And it is their commitment, determination and resourcefulness which drive the business organisation to achieve excellence and advances in technology and systems for a sustainable excellence in the marketplace. 

 

The Secret of Successful Lean Organisations is Empowered People.

 

Empowered people in a company have a profound sense of control and ownership over their jobs.  A high-commitment human resource strategy will encourage empowered employees to take on more responsibilities, emphasising mutuality or team synergy and produces a stronger commitment to excellence.  Within such a corporate culture, and guided by leadership providing clear mission and strategic directions, your people will focus on getting the job done, and having more responsibility further makes their work more challenging and rewarding.

 

Exceptional management leadership in lean business organisations focus on corporate values such as openness, honesty, self-direction, development and the promotion of innovations in the workplace. 

 

The fundamental management task is to motivate ingenious, creative and responsible marketplace-oriented contributions from its people.

 

HOW TO BEGIN TO GO LEAN?

It starts with a strategic business review and planning to clarify the future direction and nature of the business given the increasing crunch in manpower.   Only then will it be possible to design, develop and build the most effective organisation that will “do more with less”..  "Business" and "Organisation" are not the same thing.  A Business applies resources to create superior products and services to meet the market needs; whereas Organisation is the way in which those resources are administered; referring to the systems, structure, jobs and corporate culture.

 

Companies who want to command continuously sustaining competitive positions in their current marketplace must continually renew their organisations.  They do this by changing the organisational "shape" and "size", reducing “layers” and increasing the “span” of responsibilities as well as embedding “agility” and “adaptability” in their corporate culture to engage new and dynamic challenges in the changing marketplace environments.

 

The values, beliefs and norms that constitute corporate culture also provide the cohesiveness for corporate activities and affect the implementation of the flexible corporate strategies by the language and manner that strategy is communicated from one organisational level to another, vertically as well as horizontally.  Shared values and beliefs define the fundamental character of a lean business organisation, providing that unique organisational personality that distinguishes it from all others.

 

The Human Talent Oracle empowers organisations and people with a greater awareness of your corporate values as well as helps to develop an ongoing organisational response, driven by these values, to the ever-changing and competitive business operating environment and marketplace.  The Mission as a Human Talent Oracle is to facilitate the growth of lean business organisations and empower the people inside to achieve greater effectiveness and success through understanding and discovering the value of leadership in human resource management.

 

The “Secret” in growing effective Lean Business Organisations is High-Commitment People Teams nurtured from the foundation supported by the corporate pillars of Leadership, Culture and Strategy. 

 

This is how you can “Grow Big by Going Lean”, through working on the following sequential areas:

 

[1] Culture Development & Strategic Planning

[2] Strategic Human Talent Management

[3] Lean Sizing and Organisational Development

[4] Training and Development for Fewer Jobs with Higher Pay

[5] Corporate Employee Conversations Strategy

[6] Impact Oriented Rewards Sharing System

[7] Continuous Corporate Values Reinforcement

 

 

Related:

The Secret to Lean-Size Singapore Economy

Tweaking or major changes to the Education Policy?

We have been hearing a lot of noise about what the education system should be like and how this new ideal education system will be good for the students and the future of the country.  We have had many education ministers and everyone went into the ministry, poked their fingers here and there and claimed that things would be better. The plight of our graduates not getting good jobs, not employable, dearth of talents in banking and finance, in IT and in dunno what industries speaks for itself. Can I safely say that our education system and policies to date are a big flop despite the glowing comments, achievements and accolades showered on us, and the students aceing their exams here and overseas in the best universities?

No, I am wrong, our education is the best in the world or among the best in the world? Really, then why are the new ministers talking about more changes and more good things to come? Ong Ye Kung said, ‘Singapore is in a position to develop its own system by combining the best of examples set by other countries.’ Did the past education ministers did this? No? Must be or else there is no need to talk about it now.

So, who has the best system for us to copy? The rigours of European education or the pragmatism of the American system? Actually in reality both the European and American systems are not that good except in the ranking systems and the biases built up over the years that they were good. The best education today is in India. The proof is in the pudding. Just look at the flood of Indian talents into our country. You can see them everywhere, in the private sector and the public sector, they are the leading light to bring Singapore forward to the next century. They have all the talents we need.

There is no reason to reinvent the wheel and hope for the best. Just adapt the Indian education system and we will have all the talents we need to bring the country forward.  Stop messing around and sending more missions overseas to study other country’s education system. We know which country has the best education system and we have been sending our recruitment agents there to get the best here.

But of course if change is a must, then think very carefully what education is all about. It would be good if education is just for education’s sake, to get an all round education. They called it holistic, hopefully not full of holes. Very few of our young have millionaire ministers as parents and can get a holistic education and no need to work after graduation. We do not need an education that produces misfits and duds that are not employable like what we are seeing today.

The most important thing said by Ong Ye Kung is this, ‘…One that requires employers, education institutions and training providers and society to more in tandem.’ What is the key missing in our education system today? Two words, employers and tandem. The educationists or MOE can have all their wet dreams of what education is all about and what they want. They can be very holistic to produce graduates who know a little of everything but in reality nothing, no skills. A wholesome person, knows a bit of this and that but no core skills that the employers want. Why would employers want such holistic graduates that did not have the skills they want? This could be the reason why the employers are going into little villages all over the 3^rd World, to dig into their dustbins, and say, these are the talents we need and want.

The employers must have a say in the education system. Or the employers must be handcuffed and told, you employ our graduates from our holistic system. Without the employers involved, without pointing a gun at the head of the employers to employ our best graduates from our world best education system, we are wasting the time and money of our children to get an education that would end up as a piece of paper, cannot be eaten.

It is ok to fool around, oops, sorry, wrong choice of words, on our education system. Let’s be real. Make sure their education ends up with good employment or make sure the employers must employ them. Be mindful of what you do to the education system and the lives of our young. This is not play play thing. Not masak masak. Many of them need to earn a living after passing out from our education system.

What do you think?

CNA hits by Pinkerton Disease?

Channel News Asia has established itself as a very credible news provider with a niche formula that is missing in a world dominated by westerners writing Asian news from the perspective of westerners. CNA engaged Asians to write their own news from an Asian perspective, eg Indians writing and reporting about India, Indonesians about Indonesia, Korean and Japanese reporting about their respective countries. This formula is not only important, it gives the readers a truly Asian perspective of what is truly Asia and not faked westerners’ view of what they think Asia should be. And there are very serious long term implications as Asians fed with a diet of potatoes and hamburgers would eventually think and behave like potatoes and hamburgers.

The integrity and respectability of CNA have taken it so far and wide with increasing readerships and popularity, with more countries being covered. The news is like a breath of fresh air setting it apart from the stale westerners talking about Asia with two fish balls in their mouths to look authentic.

I was quite surprised, shocking really, to see a Pinkerton reporting from Jakarta last evening instead of Sujadi or his colleague. I kept asking myself, no Indonesians good enough to report Indonesian news, or is it that the Pinkerton Disease, thought eradicated from CAN, is resurfacing?  They did not apply the anti fungal cream for the full two weeks to rid it for good? Is CNA suffering a relapse or someone there thought it is so sexy to flirt with Pinkerton again? When would they get rid of this colonial disease for good and be Asian, think Asian, truly Asian perspectives?

What is CNA without Asians reporting their own news? Isn’t CNA stands for Channel News Asia? Or is it Channel News Angmoh now?  Or is it that some Pinkertons are sneering at the Asian news readers for not speaking through their nose, not sounding like native Angmohs? So some Pinkerton lovers quietly sneaked in some angmohs to test water?

The CNA I enjoyed and respected is Channel News Asia, definitely not Channel News Angmoh. Why would Asians want to listen to western perspectives of Asian news and affairs? Have Asians not had enough of two centuries of western propaganda and mind games and want to pursue this line of indoctrination all over again?

China and her neighbours

China shares a common border with 17 countries and despite losing a lot of territories to them when it was semi colonized by the western powers, it only has problem with one of its neighbours on border issues. China has lost territories to Russia and Mongolia but has agreed to live with the status quo. The only other country that is giving China border problem is India, for wanting to seize the disputed territories cut away from China by the British that ended in a very embarrassing border war in 1962. In a way the humiliating defeat has kept the Indians from having more funny designs over the last 50 years and the border relatively peaceful.

If China is an expansionist country and harbouring bad intentions to covet its neighbour’s territories, China would have no peace with so many countries sharing a common border with her. And many of these are very small and militarily weak countries, like Laos, Bhutan, Nepal and bigger countries like Myanmar, Bangladesh that China could take advantage of. But no, they live in peace with no border claims issue.

And who are the countries that have border issues with China other than India? Japan is well known for stealing Chinese territories and claiming the Diaoyu Islands as Japan’s. Japan did not share a common border with China and is separated by sea. The other countries with border issues with China are like Japan, separated by sea, are Malaysia and the Philippines. And the problem arises from their claims on Chinese islands. Vietnam is also claiming Chinese islands in the South China Sea.

Vietnam, Malaysia, the Philippines and Japan are having border problems with China not because of China claiming their land but instead they are claiming China’s territories in the Seas. The accusation of China being an aggressive and expansionist country is therefore an irony, a fabrication. The problem China had with these countries is caused by these countries claiming China’s territories. These countries are the aggressive and expansionist ones, wanting to seize China’s territories, not the other way.

It is a case of robbers calling and yelling thief. They are trying to steal China’s territories but calling China the thief. If they have no designs on China’s islands in the seas, they would have no trouble with China. They are the trouble makers for China. China is the victim of aggression by these pesky small countries, with the US poking them from behind to keep provoking China.

This is another perspective of the South China Sea problems. Ask those neighbours of China if China is expansionist and claiming their lands? Don’t ask India. India is claiming Chinese territories like some Asean countries and Japan.

Singapore will say thank you to Wee Cho Yaw

I read this comment in TRE on my post ‘The equity casino is going to draw its curtain soon’.

new world order:

October 31, 2015 at 1:07 pm  new world order(Quote)

The derivative market is worth a quadrillion dollars of bubble awaiting to burst.

When it burst, it will be the crash of all crashes.

Most of the banks will be affected, and depositor can expect their cash deposit to be used for bailing in the collapsing bank.

Therefore, you people should crash the bank before it crashes

 

The derivative game is like building a house of cards with nothing but air. It is pure shuffling of papers, printing papers as money. What it takes is for a few cards to be pulled out and the whole house of cards will simply collapse and nothing is left. The last American financial crisis did not teach them anything and the bubble is now even bigger, building the banking and financial industry with a fraudulent system is simply idiocy.  The next collapse will bring the banking and financial industry its knee.

The other lesson of too big to fail is still being followed here mindlessly like the Two Child Policy. No one had the guts and wisdom to turn it around when it was over taken by events and the changing economic needs in the island. There was the talk of Singapore could not have too many banks but one or two big banks. The lesson of too big to fail in the USA fell on deaf ears again. It was so fortunate that there was Wee Chow Yaw to resist the intent to cut down the number of local banks to one or two banks.

When the banking industry collapses due to the fictitious and fraudulent derivative trades, yes it is still bringing in big money but unsustainable, just like what is happening to the stock market. The stock market has collapsed if one is willing to see the truth. The denial that it is still healthy and kicking is irresponsible. When the derivative market crashes, all the banks now laughing at the easy profits will go bust, and so will their high net worth customers.

Then we will say thank you to Wee Cho Yaw. Because of him we still have 3 local banks and hopefully at least one or two will still be standing. Those banks still deep in derivative trades should quickly wind up their dabbling in this fraudulent instrument or at least cut down the exposure substantially to minimize the exposure should that day comes. All fraudulent schemes are like Ponzi Schemes, unsustainable and must collapse. It is a matter of when, not how. A scam is a scam.

Hopefully there will still be a UOB and a OCBC left. But they must not join the derivative band wagon and get intoxicated in the easy money. It is better to earn decent money from solid traditional banking than gambling. The banks and financial industry must not be turned into legalized casino with little or no regulations. At least the casinos are very well regulated and the risk minimized. Or at least no gambler is gullible enough to think otherwise punting in a casino. But a banking and finance industry, with deregulations and little regulations and allowing itself to turn into a casino without the strict regulations is creating a false sense of security. Everyone is pretending that it is not a casino in different forms.

The end game will come soon. There are two major risks. A highly risky banking and finance industry dabbling with derivatives and still drugged to think derivatives are the new designer’s drug for the well heeled or sophisticated clients. The other risk is too few local banks, only 3 and if 2 were to go, could even be 3, there will be nothing left.

But the experts would have everyone to believe all is fine.

The crime against the citizens

‘Acturial science graduate Michelle Lew has sent her resume to more than 100 firms since last December, hoping to land a permanent job. But almost a year later, she has not received a single job offer.

“I think it’s because the economy is bad. I’m not sure why. I’m working in an insurance firm as a temp….”’ Quoted from ST dated 2 Nov 15( Acturial should be spelt actuarial).

The difficulties in getting employment by our citizens have gone down to our young graduates. Our very own children are being employed as temp workers while hundreds of thousands of foreigners with silly degrees from silly universities are taking away their jobs. And no one is raising an eye brow, thinking that it is normal. This is a crime against our very own citizens committed by our employers and unproductive foreigner companies allowed to set up business here and to employ their own kind.

I thought after the last GE the govt will change its policies toward more pro citizens. Lim Swee Say is working hard to change the pro foreigner policies of the past to be more pro Singaporean. Hopefully this is the beginning of things getting betterer. He has started to give the breakdowns in employment statistics for citizens and PRs. But from this reported case, many Michelles are still left in the lurch. Our very own children cannot get a normal employment and we are giving hundreds of thousands of jobs to half baked foreigners.

What is happening? No, it is not the economy is bad. It is bad policies. If the economy is bad, why would so many foreigners of average or under average grades at executive and middle management or even senior management be employed and NOT Singaporeans?

Michele and her peers must not be misled to thinking it is the economy. We need to take care of our citizens first. We need to give jobs to our citizens. All the changes in education policies will be hogwash if we do not take our citizens, graduates of our education, seriously and give them jobs. We might as well close down all our universities if we continue to employ foreigners instead of our children.

Go figure why is this the case? You vote for a govt to take care of you, at least to give you good jobs, not temp jobs, not to give jobs to foreigners and say you are not good. Fully employed citizens do not need subsidies.  Is this not a crime against our citizens, our children?

Michele and many of her peers are not lazy, choosy and stupid Singaporeans. They are graduates from our world class universities and willing to work, wanting to work. Who is there to help them, our children?

MOM could simply not approve a few more applications for EPs and there will be plenty of jobs for our citizens. These are not highly skilled and difficult jobs that need special talents.

Ong Chuan Yan, a HR major has sent out applications for more than 6 months. He said, ‘It’s quite stressful because it’s already very competitive and, on top of that, there may be a decision made not to hire anyone.’