The beauty of working in tough times

I love tough times.

That is because these are the moments when you actually spot the best teams and to some extent, the best leaders. The truth of the matter is that during the blissfully good periods, everyone (and I do mean everyone) can be made to look like a superb leader or team player. This is the same principle that states that it is far easier to look good steering a ocean liner on calm seas then it is keeping a rickety sailboat afloat in stormy seas.

And a large proportion of it boils down to team during these dark periods. Bad times filter out these superfical folk. Not more fairweather friends hanging around and all the once-good team players seem to do disappearing acts.

No doubt, tough times test passion. These are times where you keep going on as a team. And the best people to work with are those who argue with you for the sake of the cause. Embrace these people because they keep your from getting too one-sided. I know that all too well because I have been fortunate to work with two of the most intelligent and fiercely passionate team members, and much more importantly friends, in the past year who backed me up in my blindspots of finance and relations. I deem their advice is priceless and their friendship even more so.

I'm thankful to have had the chance to work with a wonderful team of great people. It's never easy when the going gets rough and there are times you can't help but question the value of what you do. But what keeps you going is to be able to look around yoursefl and find the folks who are fighting alongside because they believe too believe in the common vision.

That is indeed the beauty.

World Development Report 2007 and Singapore's Youths

The topic for this year's World Development Report is "Development and the next Generation" and it focuses on how policies affecting youth development can affect the economic growth and povety reduction efforts for countries worldwide.

This focus stems from the fact that there are 1.3 billion youths (defined as aged 12-24) in the world today, forming a significant sector of the world's population.

In terms of developing this growing number of citizens, there will be significant problems faced both in terms of finding the means to provide quality education and also giving them sufficient employment opportunities. Conversely, this "youth bludge" also provides opportunities to create more effificient and productive workers with less dependencies.

A couple of interesting points were raised during the report and it made me relfect on the general situation amongst local youths in Singapore. And given that context, there are 3 thoughts I have based roughly on it:

1. Firstly, that while local youths have been well able to grasp and deploy factual knowledge, they may well fall short of the other importance criteria which demanding employers are looking out for these days. These include skills such as ability to communicate well, think and analyse facts quickly, solve problems and work well in teams. Many youths are short-changing their educational journey but tackling the grades rather than lessons, seemingly trading off a chance to pick up long term skills for the more immediate benefits.
   
   
2. Secondly, there are more supply of well-educated youths entering the market than job creation may be able to cope with. This in part explains the government's greater emphasis on the need for entreprenerial business creation as this is one of the methods that can create greater employment for the nation in the long run. While this drive has been successful in the short run, it would take more than risk-taking youths without the entrepeneurial propensity to keep the momentum and culture of entrepeurship going for the long term.
   
   
3. Thirdly, there is an important need to ensure that the lesser educated youths or youths who made previous mistakes (ex-offenders, for example) are not needlessly marginalized while that rest of the economy drives on. In this respect, we need to ensure that there is an equal emphasis placed on the development of substainable social entreprises which can self-reliantly provide support and assistance to the needy sector of our population. The fact that there has been recent focus on the goverance issues of charity organisations should not be a reason to shun the fact that we still have a pressing need to ensure that our society progresses as a whole, not leaving certain segments behind and unable to fend for themselves.

These are the 3 ideas that youths today can and should ponder about. Reason being that these affect not only themselves but the society as a whole.

I believe that if enough youths can develop along these notions and really think hard about how one can bring a difference to the nation, perhaps we can achieve much more, more quickly than what would otherwise be achieved merely by depending on national policy.


[ Official WDR 2007 Website]
[ Watch the Press Release Webcast here ]

More updated links!

More links to click ! :

All these are the nice folks I've managed to meet at E27's great event, Startup Republic, a couple of nights back (shouts back to the organising team for a great job !!) :

Coen Ching : Very insightful and brillant chap with great ideas. Terrible pity he doesn't blog very often though (*hint hint*)

Garry Huang : Yet another of E27's wacky crew. If you haven't met him before, try to visualise a skydiving web 2.0 dude who loves his mac.

Nay Min Thu : Interesting dude who has already stepped into the tech world with his own IT Solutions firm, ZillionTech.

Why get a job?

I kind of had this interesting exchange with a friend lately because she was still looking for a job after having graduated for a couple of months. She told me she needed a job soon but then I thought, is it that 1) you really need a job or 2) you really need the pay that comes with a job ?

I would think that for most, having a job is more like a means to an end. Why? Because it pays the bills and feeds the kids. True. But that doesn't help you like what you do any more, does it? And chances are, the further one trudges along this path, the more entrenched your need for the job (actually the pay) becomes and even if one is less than satisfied with it, there is little one can do but slog on.

Let me set another scenario which I see quite a bit too -- students flocking to high paying jobs (Most recently what I've seen is a near universal yearning to be Investment Bankers.)

Ok, the true of the matter is that yes, Bankers do make quite a nice bit but that's only because of plain ol' economics. They need to have 1) the ability to take stress and 2) willingness to work extrememly long hours. So my questions to folks looking to be Investment Bankers (or actually any other high-paying but demanding field for that matter) -- Are you into this for the money or for the thrills?

If you tell me "its for the money" then I would think that there are other ways to go about doing that which may be more fulfilling for you in the long run. If you tell me "its for the thrills" then let me ask you "so, you would still want to do it if you just got paid enough to survive?"

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I do strongly believe in having passion in what you do and the belief that what you do is making a difference. Some tell me passion is over-rated, others say it does not feed you.

Well, if slogging through life in a less than satisfying job that pays well is the other option, then I guess I'll take my chances.

Top 10 Business Friendly Countries Compared (Part 2)

Here's the second part of the comparisons I've decided to do based on the World Bank's list of top 10 business friendly countries.

This time the 2 datasets in comparison are Internet Pentration levels (again!) and Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity which is a measure of the entrepreneurial capacity of a nation.



Once again, have fun trying to determine if there are any cause-effect relation between the 3 factors.

(N.B : Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity figures not available for Hong Kong, hence the break in the line)


Sources :
Business Friendliness -- World Bank's Doing Business Rankings
Early-Stage Entrepreneurial Activity -- Global Entrepreneurship Monitor 2005
Internet Penetration -- Internet World Stats

E27 3.0: Startup Republic

Some promotion for E27, run by the best bunch of tech blokes I know :



When: September 13th (Wed) @ 7pm - 11pm

Where: SMU School of Information Systems, Level 2, Student Lounge.

Cost: Free


Register here : http://entrepreneur27singapore.wikispaces.com/

More info here : http://www.entrepreneur27.org/sg

See you there!

Top 10 Business Friendly Countries Compared (Part 1)

Since the World Bank has released its survey findings on the top 10 Business Friendly Countries, I've decided to do a quick and dirty comparison of those rankings against each of those countries GDP per Capita as well as Level of Internet Penetration :



Have fun figuring out if there are any relation between the three sets.


Sources :
Business Friendliness -- World Bank's Doing Business Rankings
GDP per Capita -- CIA World Factbook
Internet Penetration -- Internet World Stats

Updated Links!

Phew, been a tad on the busy side lately so I've updated my links so all you folks who come back looking for updates can check out those other blogs :

Gwen, Bjorn, Justin : 3 very colourful personalities I've had the pleasure of knowing.

No More Cubes : A resource for those who want to leave their cube- business ideas, tips and tools to help you work on your own terms.

Jack Yan, the persuader blog : Good Stuff on Branding in a real world context and how it can change the world.

Will add on more soon ... :)

5 Key Shifts of the Information Paradigm

I guess no one can deny that information equates to power. But its no longer about just possessing it that gives one an edge anymore. It is important to note what has shifted and how to cope with this new information age when thought and ideas literally travel at the speed of light. Here are 5 ways in which the way we interact with information has changed (from the perspective of a layperson like me) :

1. Having versus Finding information - In the good ol' days before the Internet was born, information was mostly written down in black and white. So, the amount of information one had access was only roughly the summation of one's memory and perhaps the amount of reading material one had access too. Simply put, the genius staying near a library was king then. Now, internet has opened the doors to the masses with its seemingly infinite collection of literature and data. Nearly everyone with an internet connection has equal access to this massive pool of collective knowledge. The shift then becomes that it will be the folks who benefit the most will be those who know how to find what they need, and fast. This is not to say that the ability to find information was not important in the past; it was, but it has become crucial now. And given the diversity of accumulated knowledge out there, knowing how to find information will beat having information any day.
   
   
2. Too little versus Too much information - And with the massive flood of digital information we are now subjected to, the problem we face with information quantity wise is no longer having too little of it, but too much of it. Same information can be presented in different formats these days - text, audio or video. It has taken on more mediums and similarly, begins to confuse us even more. Whereas previously, what every precious bits of information was absorbed and thought about, we have been so swarmed with data these days that we barely give a cursory glance when we reproduce it somewhere else for one reason or another. Most of the time, this adds up to more confusion which negates the benefits we reap from being able to gather data faster.
   
   
3. Relevant versus Irrelevant information - Major bane of academics, statisticians and the ike where the ruling thought is "more is better" Sadly, more is typically less. It confuses, it misleads and it causes us to miss important facts and patterns. This I believe is nurtured in education where plunking down a 10 pages paper seem to net more than a succinct 2 pager. Chances are that it was because it just have confused the heck out of the grader. May work in school but this habit is deadly in business, where getting muddled in useless information is like sinking in quicksand. Messy and deadly in both cases. This is why the skill to present not only relevant data but also the relevant trends is important. The art making tons of complex data into meaninful trends is known as data visualisation which I think is only going to become an increasingly important skill to have.
   
   
4. Accurate versus Inaccurate information - And given the large swarms of data out there, the flipside is naturally that some of it is just, well, incorrect. With the dawn of the internet age, there has never been a better time to be more curious and skeptical. Like when I said I have a list of 5 when there's only going to be 4 points? How many folks would have just read my blurb and assumed there would be 5? And with the way information can be easily duplicated in the digital form, it would be just as easy for wrong data to appear in different places, making it seem credible. Stay critical and observant to avoid this issue.
   

And so, that's how I see the way information works has changed.

So if you want to be a "knowledge worker", better understand these trends well then!


(PS: Finally I get to use the words "shift" and "paradigm" together in a post title. Boy, do I feel like a Management Consultant with a MBA.)