This article was published as part of the book “America: A Singapore Perspective” edited by Tommy Koh and Daljit Singh. The full book can be purchased here: https://www.amazon.com/America-Singapore-Perspective-29-Writers-ebook/dp/B09MTR2CDK

Koh Shiyan and Karen Tay 

Chances are, you can access this article from a smartphone right now: a device that was unimaginable for most just twenty years ago. In milliseconds, it serves up real-time directions, messages, music, entertainment and distraction for six billion people around the globe. 

It would not be an exaggeration to credit the major technological innovations behind your smartphone — silicon chips, 5G, cloud computing, and iOS and Android operating systems — to Silicon Valley, the global hub for technology and entrepreneurship over the past few decades. 

Covering less than 130 square kilometres in the San Francisco Bay Area, it accounts for more than a fifth of all venture capital dollars invested in the United States, and is home to many of the world’s largest high-tech corporations, thousands of start-ups and three of the top five American companies by market capitalisation. 

DISCOVERY AND EFFICIENCY 

As Silicon Valley’s long-time residents, we are often asked what makes it work. On the surface, its biggest asset is like Singapore’s: talent. It thrives on a virtuous cycle of attracting the best from across the globe. 

However, its history and operating principles are vastly different from Singapore’s. 

Singapore’s initial operating system was designed for efficiency. As a survival imperative post-World War II, Singapore pursued a successful path of industrial efficiency, producing goods and services at competitive costs and becoming a trade hub for global business and talent. Educational paths were efficiently mapped out for different roles, sorting students into tracks which took them to jobs and sectors to support the economy. This relentless drive for efficiency has led Singapore “from Third World to First” within a generation. 

An operating system based on efficiency makes complete sense when you know what you are trying to optimise, such as reducing costs or educating labour for pre-planned industries; it is less relevant when you do not have a sense of the objective function you are trying to optimise. Efficiency works well when you are playing catch-up, but is less helpful when you are trying to chart new frontiers. 

In contrast, Silicon Valley’s operating system is designed for discovery. By definition, discovery means we do not know the answer. It acknowledges that predicting game-changing success is near impossible. Therefore, a system that optimises for discovery accepts that there will be failures and near-misses far more often than successes. The high rate of failure is a feature rather than a bug of the system. Silicon Valley’s discovery operating system can best be understood through four paradigms. 

Take Big Swings 

If the most likely outcome is failure, it makes sense to bear the high risk of entrepreneurship only when the pay-off is exceptionally large. As it turns out, the biggest pay-offs come when you are imagining what the world should be and innovating towards that ideal, rather than aiming for incremental change. 

In Silicon Valley, entrepreneurs take only big swings towards the ideal. An example is Netflix. In the 1990s when most people were renting DVDs and only a small proportion had home internet access, an incremental thinker would have focused on optimising the supply of DVDs across brick-and-mortar rental stores. 

Yet Netflix’s CEO, Reed Hastings, dreamed of creating a “global entertainment distribution service” on the internet. Based on advances in computing and internet technology, he knew that streaming on-demand video would be possible in the future. He did not know when, but that did not stop him from building towards that future, sending out DVDs in the mail and collecting data to build a catalogue and a recommendation engine which is now Netflix’s key competitive advantage. 

Similarly, lofty goals to organise all of the world’s information, connect everyone regardless of geography, and have anything you want delivered in a day fuelled Google, Facebook and Amazon. 

Don’t Punish Failure Prematurely 

Given that failure is the median outcome, a discovery operating system does not punish failure prematurely. 

Trying and failing are seen as valuable learning experiences rather than a judgement on someone’s competency. Tech giants view people with start-up experience (even if said start-up failed) as valuable employees because they have experience taking initiative and working with limited resources. Contrast this to the attitude of most Asian employers, who prefer candidates with credentials and experiences at other large companies. 

Investors also support experimentation by making early bets with limited information rather than waiting for greater certainty of success: early-stage funds, angel investors and early employees throw money and time behind companies that have rudimentary initial products, few if any customers, or founders who have previously failed. If a start-up shows strong market signals, additional funds are given. If not, companies are allowed to die with no further cost to the founder. 

This is not considered waste, but part of the game. In fact, in the Venture Capital asset class, just one in a hundred investments is expected to provide the lion’s share of returns. 

Work Fuelled by Curiosity and Play 

We use the word, “play”, deliberately because the idea of work as play is still relatively uncommon in much of the world. Technologists spend nights and weekends playing with immature new technologies, incubating and experimenting without immediate commercial intent. Talent leaves comfortable successful unicorns to help build and fund new ones: the “PayPal mafia” of the early 2000s were instrumental in founding a host of new companies such as YouTube, Yelp, Reddit, LinkedIn, Affirm and Palantir. 

We remember meeting a Singaporean in the Valley who was confused by why his colleagues invited him to hack on weekends; to him, his skills were a means to a high-paying job — when he was off the clock, he had little interest in exploring new technologies. In contrast, much of Silicon Valley’s ethos is fuelled by intrinsic motivation: the point of winning the game (for example, taking a company to an Initial Public Offering or an acquisition) is not to retire but to play the game again. 

High Rate of Idea Exchange through Networks 

Another hallmark of the discovery operating system is its high rate of idea exchange through dense, intersecting networks. 

There is a permeable membrane between industry and academia. Professors from Stanford University; University of California, Berkeley; and San Jose State University often take time out from their tenured roles to start businesses, invest in their students and consult for startups. Cutting-edge researchers thus have a consistent pulse on commercial problems, and the system is flexible enough to accommodate their varied interests. 

High housing prices in the Bay Area have led to most single people needing to find roommates. This boosts the velocity of idea exchange, as newcomers to the area meet others in the field via their housing. Roommate barbecues lead to informal gatherings that help newcomers plug directly into the ecosystem; ideas, opportunities, strategies and challenges are traded freely. 

The density of experienced operators means that even as newcomers enter the ecosystem, they can easily tap on the experience of others to get up to speed quickly. This prevents the reinvention of the wheel, and creates a much higher baseline of entrepreneurship skills and know- how than in less developed ecosystems. 

REFLECTIONS FOR SINGAPORE

Given its tremendous success, it is easy to overhype Silicon Valley as an example. As long-term residents, we have witnessed the darker sides of a system dominated by high-tech entrepreneurship. It is a high-cost, competitive region where only a small proportion make it very big. Even dual-income tech workers leave the area for lower-cost American cities because they cannot sustain the lifestyle, especially after having children. The technology sector is also known for its ageism. 

Singapore cannot afford the full extent of these downsides. Silicon Valley is a sliver of America, while Singapore is a country which must cater to a diversity of skills and aspirations, life stages and needs. 

Risky high-tech entrepreneurship can be only one part of Singapore’s economy. We find, however, that being in one of the richest countries on earth has not released enough Singaporeans to focus more on discovery. Most still aspire to land high-paying corporate jobs so that they can retire early. 

To build the next generation of global tech businesses and get to the top of the value chain, Singapore must move towards the discovery operating system. It is not just about direct incentives for innovation, which Singapore does very well, but reviewing practices which were based on the efficiency operating system. 

What might it look like to introduce more flexibility at the margins, allowing space for discoveries? 

For example, Singapore’s criteria for immigration are tied to applicants’ track records (education, qualifications) and how they fit into desired industries. Predicting success based on existing pathways makes sense for the majority, but what if a small proportion of visas each year are assigned by lottery, à la America’s Diversity Immigrant Visa Program? Successful cases can be tracked to identify new factors which predict success and contribution. 

While government subsidies for flats enable widespread home ownership at a young age, taking on large mortgages can unintentionally disincentivise entrepreneurship. Could young people be granted flexibility in housing benefits so that taking big swings in their twenties becomes the norm? 

In an innovation economy, entire occupations come and go in a decade. Overly focusing on examinations gives students a false sense of linearity about life. How might Singapore help students see that school is less of a vocational exercise than an opportunity to try many new paths in a low-risk environment? 

Singapore could also work on boosting the rate of idea exchange through tight networks. This is not just a matter of events and programming. What undergirds Silicon Valley’s networks is a sense of respect for individual contributors — treating them not according to their position in a company hierarchy or their previous educational qualifications but as individuals holding tremendous drive and potential. People also invest in the future of relationships, expecting repeated interactions over time. As one of our mutual friends said: “In Silicon Valley, you have no idea who will be rich or important in five years, so you should just try to be helpful and nice. The newest member on your team may end up founding a unicorn and hiring you later!”

CONCLUSION 

The global tides bode well for Singapore. A new global technology order is emerging where Silicon Valley is no longer singular in its ability to generate innovation and attract talent: 

• Technological leaps in cloud computing and software operating systems have made it easier for creators to build technology products regardless of location — wherever talent can be found. Sea Group, which was founded in Singapore, has produced hit video games and e-commerce services tailored for mobile-first emerging economies, outperforming its US-based competitors such as Amazon in Latin American and Asian markets. 
• Big moves by the US, China and India to limit dependence on one another’s technology, coupled with a tighter immigration posture in America since 2016, mean that technology and talent will be less concentrated in one location. 
• The COVID-19 pandemic has accelerated the push toward decentralisation. Companies have announced permanent remote working options, talents have dispersed from Silicon Valley to lower-cost areas, and it remains to be seen whether they will return. 

Already, we have witnessed an encouraging shift in aspirations among Singaporean technologists in Silicon Valley. While the older generation moved to Silicon Valley with no plans of moving home, the younger technologists largely see their time abroad as temporary: a chance to learn from global tech giants before moving back to build their own unicorns. 

Yet, for aspiring technology entrepreneurs to succeed in building a new generation of global technology companies from Singapore, critical mass is sorely needed: in technology talent, risk-appetite and entrepreneurial ambition. 

We argue that Singapore must make a leap towards a discovery operating system at this critical juncture. In turn, these local heroes and success stories will shape our country’s economy, work culture and ethos for the next few decades. They will be the proof and strongest justification for keeping Singapore’s doors open to the world’s best global tech talent. 

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Ms Koh Shiyan is an experienced operator and investor. She is currently a co-founder of and General Partner at Hustle Fund, a global pre-seed venture fund. Prior to Hustle Fund, she was VP of Business Operations & Corp Dev at NerdWallet (employee #10), growing annual revenue from $1 million to more than $150 million. Prior to NerdWallet, she was an investor at Institutional Venture Partners and Bridgewater Associates. 

Ms Karen Tay coaches technology start-ups on talent, culture and employer brand. Prior to this, she was Director at Singapore’s Smart Nation and Digital Government Group and Economic Development Board, where she built a global team in San Francisco, New York, London and Singapore focused on attracting the world’s best technology talent to Singapore and the Singapore Public Service. She is an experienced operator, strategist and communicator. 

Together, they hold degrees from Stanford, Harvard and Princeton, though they hope this matters less to their credibility than their experience. 

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One of the objectives of http://www.techandpublicgood.com is to bridge the worlds of tech and Government so that technology can be deployed for maximum public good.

Today I welcome a contribution by Kaijie Ng, a friend and previous co-worker, who is currently Strategy Director at Carousell (one of Southeast Asia’s most promising tech start-ups). At Carousell, he’s delivering public good outside the Government, leveraging technology. I love his insights on how Governments can learn from the mindsets of technology companies, and how the future lies in public-private-people collaboration so that technology can be maximally beneficial for everyone, not just the privileged few. The Covid situation has provided a great laboratory for this.

5 Insights Doing Tech for Public Good, for a Post-COVID Reality

Kaijie is currently seconded to Carousell, one of the world’s fastest growing classifieds marketplace start-ups, from the Government of Singapore. He heads up the Strategy Team, overseeing corporate strategy for a start-up valued at $850M. Prior to this, he worked with across three Ministries, including developing an applied education pathway for the future of work, tackling a real-world economic question of regulating a natural monopoly to ensure service standards and fiscal sustainability, and developing a future-forward foreign workforce policy for Singapore’s economic arrowheads.

Disclaimer: The views expressed are personal , and do not reflect that of any organisation.

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When I first got seconded to Carousell, the key learning objective was clear: To understand the tech start-up sector and bring back fresh perspectives to improve policy development and service delivery.

I also had a personal learning objective: To see how tech start-ups, which are some of the foremost harbingers of change today, can power the public good, whether it be in manpower and economic development, social support, and even the environment.

Then COVID-19 hit, and it all became very real in my dual responsibilities as a public servant, and in Carousell’s Strategy Team, to do what we can to help from the outside, in. With Singapore moving into Phase 1 re-opening, it’s a good time to share some personal reflections , doing work on the other side of the fence — feel free to hit my up for a discussion!

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1. The problem is global, but the solution can be local.

Let’s face it — efficiency has won over effectiveness is almost all aspects of our lives — we emphasise scale and mass reach, at the expense of targeted, and potentially greater delivery of value (though for every “Scaling to Your First 100k/Million (add as many zeroes as you like) Users” article, there’s also one on how it’s more important to have 100 users love you, rather than a million like you).

But COVID-19 changed that, with the breakdown of established global and mass supply chains (read: masks embargoes, buying of electronics, fitness gear, books). Even market leaders have challenges providing enough delivery slots to cope with demand, while remaining sustainable.

It is in this context that hyperlocal apps like Goodhood have sprung up, to more effectively request and provide help between users in a community, bridged by proximity and trust.

China, which many look at as the future of tech, has also shown a remarkable rise in community e-commerce, as community-based group purchase are on the rise with lower prices and greater proximity, and citizens stranded at home turn to WeChat to deliver groceries to their doorsteps.

However, long-term financial sustainability could be a concern, especially if this requires dedicated resourcing from the private sector alone. And this is where companies need to look at their values as their guiding star, or work with public/people sectors to bring more resources to bear. For instance, Fairprice on Wheels, which brings grocery shopping nearer to residents in 5 mature estates, is an initiative that likely doesn’t scale. It would also likely not make sense to, but it is equally, if not more, important for the vulnerable among us.

And that is why Carousell rallied the local community and #supportlocal, be it for casuals, businesses, or non-profit organisations. As a platform, it can deliver greater help to end-users by bridging giver and receiver, much more than going it alone. This becomes more amplified with hyperlocal sensitivities, by surfacing organic user behaviour that is genuine, and ground-up. Take for example the items for free category, which was started after noticing users giving away masks and sanitisers for free, amidst price gouging.

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2. We crave 0 to 1s, but we have to accept 0.5s that are dead simple.

Digitalisation can be an intimidating word, especially for brick-and-mortar businesses who have not started the journey yet. This is made worse by the mainstream expectation that business transformation needs to be from 0 to 1, and something incredibly new, from physical retailing to AI-powered, automated fulfillment.

This actually scares the heck out of businesses who prefer the past tried-and-test ways. They are now caught on the backfoot by COVID, and struggling with both the mental stress. How would they be able to spare the cognitive load needed to understand new, untested (at least to them) technologies?

Funding support to lower the financial barrier to entry has been the established way, and we’re seeing more user-centric approaches to lower the mental barrier.

That’s where we could temper our expectations, and start with the user in mind. How might we create tools that are dead simple, with clear and direct feedback loops, so that they can ramp up , and realise the value quickly (rather than having to use spreadsheets or APIs)?

I sat in chats with Carousell sellers, and this was a great reminder: the affinity for Carousell was down to it being simple to use, easy to improve visibility, and that leads to more business. Often, we forget that digitalisation is a journey that we need to bring everyone along, as a society. How many times have we expressed irritation at our parents or grandparents, who are struggling with features familiar with us digital natives?

IMDA’s work to bring Tekka Market online via Facebook is an inspiration of how we don’t need to reinvent the wheel by creating new apps/platforms, but to repurpose existing ones, where the features have already become second-nature, for other uses. For sure, these are not 1s. It does not radically transform the way we do business, or enable all merchant aspects.

There is nothing wrong in tech to continue to pursue 1s. but in public policy, and harnessing tech for public good, 0.5s are absolutely essential, to get over that first mental hurdle with our users.

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3. Don’t be afraid of launching with 0.5s or even less, as long as you learn from them.

A general observation is that we are sometimes so caught up with full-cooked perfection. We think we can/want to get it right with the best features from the get-go. Anything lesser would be a disaster.

But this is not always the case, especially during the COVID crisis, where speed is of the essence to deliver much-needed value to users. It’s not wrong to be hacky with existing limitations, as long as users can see that you genuinely care.

In response to the F&B challenges with the circuit breaker and high delivery fees, Carousell created a new F&B category to help hawkers and restaurants list for free and reach a bigger base of diners. It was a small SWAT team which worked with constrained resources and managed expectations that this was intended to help and learn quickly.

Having this small sampan brought the team closer to the users, and a better understanding of the F&B sector’s challenges. We crafted an informational approach by engaging amplifiers, including a step-by-step WhatsApp message that hawkers could use to onboard and forward to their friends. This was nowhere near a 1 or 0.5, but the value proposition (free) and our involved execution gave users the sense that we cared, and deep insights about a category that we were largely unfamiliar with, without over-committing at the start.

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4. Public-private-people partnerships can be real, and democratised.

We often think of 3Ps as only public-private partnerships. Even then, there are many that catch the public eye for the wrong reasons (so much so that HBR has to write an article on the key success factors). But the People sector has been one that has stepped up during this episode.

Each side has their strengths — the public sector in coordinating and directing the weight of Government resources and signaling to bear, the private sector in responding nimbly, and the people sector in having the most direct understanding of on-ground problems.

Carousell was the private player and platform inbridging the SG COVID-19 Creative/Cultural Professionals & Freelancers Support Group with the Singapore Brand Office in a Made in SG campaign. This allowed creative freelancers, who found their jobs cancelled, to have an avenue to continue to pursue their passions by selling their merchandise online. It was a way of providing help, with dignity and skin in the game, across three parties.

People can be the platform too. In the early stages of COVID, when Singaporean students found their internships and exchanges cancelled, Adriel Yong created a scrappy spreadsheet to compile internships for these affected students. This got many organisations, including start-ups and government agencies on board, and generated more than 200 positions.

Sure, this is less than 1% of the the positions provided through the SGUnited Traineeships (which is a very meaningful programme that I fully support), but it was done by an undergrad, with a public Google Forms and Sheets tool, and could inspire the likes of Bytedance and Temasek to action. The scope for partnerships is becoming much flatter, with the power of the tool.

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5. Can we build an open-source partnership platform, for a more resilient society?

This is more an open question. If anything, the various responses has given me more optimism for the future.

All we need, is to suspend judgement and assume best intentions. So that the usual cynicism and arms-length can be held at bay. And the amount of collaboration across organisations has shown that COVID-19 has, ironically, brought everyone closer.

We are already seeing communities such as better.sg building open source products to bring out the best in society, and events such as the GovTech Idea Sprint for COVID-19. The question is, how can we harness these energies, and create a platform where we can build this understanding on a regular basis, and develop the capacity to respond even more quickly and effectively? Who could provide this platform, and how would it be designed? Each generation of Singaporeans had a lasting legacy attuned to their times — the pioneers who built the foundation, the Merdeka who strengthened them.

What do we want our generation to be known for?

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Thanks Kaijie!

Here’s presentation I did at the HRMAsia Tech Fest on May 13th 2020. I share about my experience in global tech talent attraction and tech talent community building for the Singapore Government.

This presentation is aimed at C-suites, Chief People Officers, Business Leaders and Hiring Managers who need to attract top tech talent to help their orgs digitally transform, but are having a hard time doing so. From the feedback I’ve received, it also applies to any sector where top talent produces disproportional value for the organisation.

I can’t stress enough how attracting the right tech talent is the key competitive edge in digital transformation, whether it’s building a Smart Nation, overhauling your traditional bank or building a market-disrupting product. Yet so often we adopt talent practices that destroy our repetitional capital rather than grow it.

In this presentation I share with you five shifts in talent attraction paradigms that you need to stand a chance at attracting (and keeping) the talent you need.

Happy to answer follow up questions.

This article was first published in Today Online https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/keep-telecommuting-teams-well-effective-challenges-work-from-home?fbclid=IwAR00knCsJkm39W6uWAQgmOpa0adjAE9A-E0i2GRMkQb-jx9Vc2-Lf1Njyyg

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In the past three years, I’ve largely been a remote worker. I co-lead a global team spanning San Francisco, London, New York and Singapore. Those of us based in San Francisco have an office, but because our work usually takes us all over the country, we meet in person only once or twice a week. 

A month ago, the San Francisco Bay Area went into “shelter-in-place” mode – all schools and childcare centers are closed, and we can step out of our homes only for essential services or exercise. As a working mother of children aged four and two, whose husband also works, having children around 24/7 is an additional adjustment. 

Since many people around the world are now working remotely, I would like to share some tips on how leaders and employees can keep themselves and their teams well and effective while working remotely. 

Don’t take this as a prescriptive list — everyone has to make it work in their own way. I hope, however, that you find some of my experiences helpful. 

1. THE CHALLENGE OF PSYCHOLOGICAL SAFETY 

A few years ago, Google ran a study on what influences high performance in teams. One of the most important factors is psychological safety: A shared belief that team members can take risks, ask for help, and need not be afraid of looking stupid or bringing up difficult issues.

Achieving psychological safety is difficult as it is, much more so when working remotely. Without face-to-face interactions, bosses can be more worried if their staff are on top of things.

Employees may wonder if their boss acknowledges the work they are doing, or thinks they are slacking off. Depending on the original state of the relationship, the degree of stress varies. 

What are some things that can help remote teams foster psychological safety? 

First, it’s important to lean forward in gratitude and recognition. Bosses can send individual team members words of appreciation, and acknowledge the challenges they face.

This can be in the form of: “Thanks for the great presentation!” or “I know how hard you are working to manage this new project. It’s especially difficult when we’re all remote, since I know you rely on face-to-face interactions to build trust with the other team”.

Team mates can show more appreciation to each other, and to their bosses too.

When replying to emails, including a simple emoji can help better convey your actual tone. 

If we are unhappy with someone, face-to-face interactions can smoothen some of these tensions easier.

In remote situations, I’ve found that clarifying quickly, setting expectations and avoiding accusations is especially important. A frame I use is “Situation, Behaviour, Impact, Expectation”.

For example: “We need this item for our management meeting on Friday. When you did not reply to my email for 24 hours, I felt nervous that there was no progress. In future, please drop me a quick update that you are working on it, and share your timelines.” 

All these can enhance a climate of safety for your remote team.  

2. THE CHALLENGE OF BLURRED WORK / LIFE BOUNDARIES 

When working from home, there are fewer boundaries between work and life. I used to find myself working all the time, never really disconnecting from my devices — especially since I cover four time zones.

Additionally, if someone is insecure about his position with his boss, he might feel the need to immediately reply all the time. This can be detrimental to mental and emotional health. 

What are some things that can help your team draw clearer work-life boundaries so that they can stay mentally and emotionally healthy?

First, try to schedule meetings as consistently as possible to provide structure to your days and weeks. For example, my operations meetings with the US, United Kingdom and Singapore are on Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday respectively.

Bi-weekly one-on-one meetings with team members are prescheduled for months. I still get asked to jump on last minute calls, but only those that are truly urgent.

Secondly, it is useful for bosses to be a role model in taking a break. For instance, message the team to say you are going for a run and will be online again in an hour or two. This simple act can make them feel freer to take their own breaks. 

Thirdly, acknowledge that team members may have children at home, and find ways to accommodate one another. Since all schools and childcare centres are closed, my husband and I draw up a schedule to take turns with child care.

[This is the schedule of when each of us gets to work] 

I communicate my working blocks with my team, and encourage them to come up with their own. We then try to accommodate each other’s boundaries when scheduling meetings.

When someone’s child wanders onto the screen, we say hello and show warmth — recognising each other as humans, not just workers.  

I highly encourage managers to write to their teams, or tell them at the next meeting, that things have changed and we should not expect when, how much and what we work on to be exactly the same as before (just remote). Give your teams permission to figure out what the new equilibrium will look like for them. To be honest, the hardest thing for me in the past few weeks has been “trying to get back to the old version of normal”. Things are not normal. 

3. THE CHALLENGE OF ORGANISATIONAL COLLABORATION AND CONNECTION

When teams work remotely, it’s common to fall into silos since interactions become more work-focused. What are some things that can enable organisational collaboration and connectedness for remote workers? 

First, consciously invite people who work on adjacent issues into your team meetings. When working remotely, you might notice that meetings shrink to include only those who are absolutely essential. This is not a bad thing for productivity.

Counterbalance this occasionally by inviting other teams to a segment of your meeting. Share the notes with the wider organisation, if there’s nothing confidential.

If you are a boss, team members like to know what’s keeping their leaders busy. Where appropriate, forward emails which give them a sense of the broader organisational context. 

Secondly, make it a routine to informally check in with people in your wider organisation.

I regularly WhatsApp call different people across my organisation for 15-minute chats just to ask how they’re doing and share what’s going on with my work.

It is a discipline which has helped me build relationships across the organisation despite being fully remote. Many “serendipitous” collaborations come from these informal check-ins. 

Finally, consider collaboration software. A big shift in my sense of connection came when we set up “Microsoft Teams” this January. The app organises various teams and projects into “chats”, which we can all access.

We can see people’s views and informal interactions on various issues, picking out what is relevant to ourselves. We can celebrate each other’s successes easier.

I find it a lot more effective than email in keeping track of organisational context. Slack is another option, and there are free versions. 

4. THE CHALLENGES OF SOCIAL LIFE 

Last but not least, workplaces are often a source of friendships and social life. It’s there where we understand how our team mates are doing, and provide mental and emotional support to one another in difficult times. I’ve found some effective ways in bringing this to the remote world.

During our regular team video calls, I’ve introduced a quick “social” question at the start such as: “What’s the song you listen to when you had a bad day?” or “What’s one thing you stress-ate recently?”

It only takes five minutes but we usually have a good laugh together before jumping into work. Several teammates have mentioned that they look forward to this personal connection at the start of our calls.  

Since the Covid-19 crisis broke out, I have also made it a point to call my teammates on the front-lines for 15-minute chats once or twice a week.

The point is not to ask them about work, but to ask them how they are doing, how their families are, and anything else that they might like to share.  

I have heard other ideas like having virtual team lunches. While these work for some, others, such as caregivers, might feel too time-strapped to participate. Giving people options is key.  

Conclusion

These are difficult times for everyone. Many people are worried for their loved ones who are vulnerable or have lost their jobs. Others have children at home 24/7. 

Having a psychologically safe workplace that promotes mental and emotional wellbeing, organisational collaboration, and social connection will help your team weather this season well. 

This can be an incredible opportunity to become even more human in how we interact with one another, and this will make for a stronger team and organisation when things go back to normal. 

This article was first published in Today Online: https://www.todayonline.com/commentary/keep-telecommuting-teams-well-effective-challenges-work-from-home?fbclid=IwAR00knCsJkm39W6uWAQgmOpa0adjAE9A-E0i2GRMkQb-jx9Vc2-Lf1Njyyg

ABOUT THE AUTHOR:

Karen Tay is a director in the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group (Prime Minister’s Office) and Regional Vice President in the Singapore Global Network (Economic Development Board).

This article was first published in Ethos and Govinsider. Publishing it here with the permission of the Ethos team.

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Singapore’s tech ecosystem has accelerated rapidly in the past five years. Tech start-ups have blossomed, Venture Capital has poured in, global and regional tech firms like Google, Stripe, Grab and GoJek have set up significant engineering operations, and even traditional organisations like Singapore Power, Singtel, DBS and the Singapore Government have charged ahead with ambitious digital transformation plans.

I currently work in the Silicon Valley where one of my roles is to engage, cultivate and recruit tech talent for opportunities in Singapore. Hardly a day goes by without a Singaporean employer reaching out to me to discuss the tech talent shortage. One gets the sense that the ambition and speed of tech development in Singapore is being held back only by a talent shortage.

To be fair, the shortage of tech talent is a global phenomenon: even hiring managers at Silicon Valley giants like Google and Facebook have complained about talent scarcity! This is also why countries like Canada, Israel, Thailand, Vietnam, New Zealand and many others have come up with strategies to enhance their attractiveness to tech talent.

The rate of technological development and its relevance to all sectors of society is accelerating faster than people can be trained: the talent shortage is here to stay for a while yet.

If you are leading a large, traditional organisation and want to attract technical talent, what can you do?

Answering the Million Dollar Question

In an attempt to answer this question, my team has engaged over a thousand Singaporean tech professionals living in the Silicon Valley. We have software engineers, product managers, data scientists, cybersecurity specialists, cloud architects and hardware engineers, just to name a few common roles. They range from junior engineers to Senior Vice Presidents in top companies like Google, to Chief Technology Officers and founders of start-ups. I feel a sense of pride when I see Singaporeans excelling—Silicon Valley employers I’ve spoken to recognise the Singapore brand.

What are these Singaporeans up to? When and why did they move to the Silicon Valley? Would they be open to moving back home at this critical juncture, to take on leadership roles and help build our own tech ecosystem?

My team seeks to understand these issues as we run large events like the Singapore Tech Forum (which drew 850 attendees this year), host domain and expertise-specific engagements, and conduct one-on-one conversations. We have also validated our findings with U.S., Southeast Asian, Chinese, Indian and other global tech talent.

Here, I want to focus on one critical insight that has arisen from our many interactions with tech talent: the importance of engineering culture.

The importance of “engineering culture”

When we speak to overseas Singaporeans about tech in Singapore and Southeast Asia, they are at once surprised at the growth of the tech sector, and sceptical about how hospitable the place will truly be to tech talent in the long run. “What’s the engineering culture like? Has it truly changed?” is a question that dwells beneath the surface of most of our conversations. Tech talent in their 30s and older remember vividly the Singapore tech scene they left in the 2000s: one where they felt unvalued because less technically skilled managers were telling them what to do (even if unfeasible or sub-optimal), their salary scales would always be lower than managers, and they were at risk of having their work “outsourced” to cheaper vendors.

They contrast this mindset with Silicon Valley employers, who respect engineers as the true engines of the company’s growth. For example, Google is famous for valuing engineers who directly solve problems, eschewing the whole concept of “managers”—until the company grew to a size where appointing management was unavoidable.

How to enable a healthy engineering culture

So, what is a proper engineering culture and how have Silicon Valley companies gone about creating it?

My conversations with hundreds of tech talent and Silicon Valley companies suggest that there are four elements to a healthy engineering culture:

1. An ethos of user obsession

In your average Silicon Valley company, software product development teams are empowered to make decisions based on users’ needs, pain-points, and intuitive interactions with the product. They carefully observe how their design and engineering decisions impact the user’s experience, engagement and utility, and then iterate quickly to boost these metrics.

This ethos of user obsession means that regardless of rank and seniority, there are no “super users” who can dictate product decisions from outside the team. Managers give product development teams broad objectives and boundaries: but when it comes to the specifics of what is developed, how it is developed, the features to include and metrics to measure success, managers are regarded as just some of many “users”, whose inputs the team are not obliged to take.

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If you are leading a large, traditional organisation and want to attract technical talent, what can you do?

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This need not be taken to the extreme. There are some great use cases for centralised, top-down planning: for example, when creating data sharing platforms or common infrastructure that many departments can share.

However, managers seeking to enable a healthy engineering culture should be very deliberate about: (a) balancing topdown plans with space for ground-up initiatives which respond to user needs, (b) remembering that they are not “super users” in the product development process, and (c) empowering the team to say “no” to them.

2. Technical expertise is respected and rewarded 

A healthy engineering culture recognises and respects technical expertise. Coding, design, cryptography—these are disciplines that demand mastery. Some talented tech workers do not want to give up on their path of mastery in order to become managers.

In Silicon Valley companies, it is possible for individual contributors to be compensated as much as C-suite executives as long as they drive big, complex, technical projects with their skills. Some individual contributors are highly esteemed for designing the architecture of the company’s systems or platforms, or developing algorithms to optimise matching of supply and demand in a marketplace. It is not that they are lone wolves or have no social skills—many of them are happy to provide technical advice, mentorship, and even coordinate technical projects. But they do not want to be a “reporting officer”.

Good HR and compensation design rewards technical expertise well relative to managers . Most Silicon Valley companies have parallel tracks in their engineering organisations for engineering managers and individual contributors. Their pay bands are equivalent, level-for-level, with the same pinnacle points. Most individual contributors I spoke to acknowledged that they might not rise up the compensation ladder as fast as managers—it’s difficult for one person’s impact to match the scope of a ten-person team. However, they felt it was important to have that possibility clearly defined.

Pay is only one way that deep technical expertise is rewarded and recognised. Softer elements can also convey respect for technical expertise. Whose opinions are sought and valued in key company decisions? Whose profile, projects and stories are mentioned in the company’s newsletters and all-hands meetings? These are subtle signals of what types of expertise and experience are valued, and traditional organisations would do well to pay close attention to them. A culture is built on thousands of such micro-decisions every day.

3. Respected engineering leadership supported by new HR capabilities 

When tech talent considers working in a traditional organisation without a “tech” brand, they often base their decisions on the strength of the tech leadership team. They cannot be sure that the organisation has a good engineering culture, no matter what senior management or tech recruiters tell them. The best proxy is whether the organisation has strong engineering leaders whom they can trust to champion a good (and constantly improving) engineering culture.

Hence, a traditional organisation seeking to attract good technical talent has to first focus on recruiting its top tech leadership. Ideally, some of these leaders should be from companies recognised for their brand and culture. They must be given the mandate to optimise for a vibrant engineering culture, which includes (but is not limited to) deviating from organisational rules about the tools they use, their office spaces, dress codes, work-from-home guidelines, and even the procurement process.

Since talent begets talent, these tech leaders must be the face of recruitment. Senior tech leaders in Silicon Valley unicorns have told me that they spend more than 50% of their time recruiting: reaching out to candidates; cultivating them; negotiating attractive packages and job scopes. In some cases, tech leaders have been allowed to hire their own talent partners separate from the existing HR machinery, giving them maximal flexibility in process, pay bands and titling when building the founding team. Of course, this is not to be done lightly: companies that tried this have also expressed some regrets. Proper metrics are still needed to ensure accountability.

Finally, an oft-overlooked but critical factor to attracting top talent: building new capabilities in your corporate functions.

For example, tech talent has told us that actions and attitudes of HR professionals during the talent cultivation and recruitment process implicitly communicate an organisation’s engineering culture. Are they committed to long-term cultivation of talent, or are they transactional? Are they empowered to be flexible and quick in the recruitment process, or are they bogged down by bureaucracy? Are they transparent and willing to explain the process and considerations, or are they elusive? If you are a potential job candidate, do they make you feel that they are acting in your best interests? Or—as one candidate interviewing with a traditional organisation recounted—does it feel like “they are trying to squeeze every last drop of blood out of you”?

If you are serious about bringing in tech talent, you need People Operations and HR leaders who see this as a fierce competition for scarce resources: people who cultivate longer-term relationships with talent, are willing to push the boundaries on what the organisation can offer talent, and have the ability to drive new workflows between tech leaders, HR, and senior management to drive results and make risky calls. This is a stark contrast to process-driven recruitment which is more commonplace in HR functions today.

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Some talented tech workers do not want to give up on their path of mastery in order to become managers.

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4. Flexibility to experiment, pivot, and even stagnate

A healthy engineering culture is built on a good understanding of tech talents’ aspirations. As a group, tech talent is less interested in climbing career ladders in a single organisation. A study we did found that the average time overseas Singaporean tech talent stayed in a job was only three years. A combination of their user obsession and their desire for mastery and growth drives them towards the next most impactful and interesting problem to solve, or a role where they can optimise for learning.

What does this mean for traditional organisations seeking to attract tech talent? Don’t assume that traditional career progression incentives are attractive. Instead, continually seek new incentives and structures that appeal to their needs and motivations.

One important perk is the flexibility to experiment, pivot, or even stagnate within the organisation.

One of the value propositions of smaller Silicon Valley companies vis-à-vis tech giants (where roles are much more specialised) is the flexibility they can give people to experiment and pivot across different roles and fields. For example, some allow tech talent to experiment with different proportions of management versus individual work (50-50? 80-20?). They also provide opportunities to pick up new skills within the organisation. An employee may move from pre-sales engineering to product management, while picking up software engineering skills along the way. As one interviewee from a Series C start-up puts it: “I don’t want to be pigeonholed right now, I want to learn.”

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Don’t assume that traditional career progression incentives are attractive. Instead, continually seek new incentives and structures that appeal to their needs and motivations.

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Offering the flexibility to stagnate— temporarily or permanently—can be a surprising benefit. Googlers talk about a “respectable Level 5”, the point in a Googler’s career where they can choose to tap out of further promotion and not run the risk of being let go (Google’s scale runs from about 3 to 11 for engineers). For one employee, a mother of two in her 30s, this was a relief as she could still make a good base salary and potentially a large bonus for good performance at a scope she was comfortable with. It’s a win-win for the organisation, as she is still doing good work for them. Traditional organisations should think about how to change their “up or out” culture, especially when it comes to tech talent.

Conclusion

In light of global tech talent shortages, it is clear that organisations must step up their game to compete for the tech talent they need to deliver impactful digital products, services and platforms.

However, attracting tech talent is not a simple recruitment game. The goal cannot just be to bring top tech talent in, only have them leave because of “organ rejection”— a costly and ineffective path.

Attracting and retaining top tech talent demands that organisations take a hard look at their inherited cultures and start to redesign them to better suit the attitudes, needs and aspirations of talented tech workers. Organisational design, reward structures, the quality of tech leadership and HR, and how management sees their role vis-àvis product development teams are all factors that contribute to culture redesign. The good news, I believe, is that most talented people—not just those in tech—find these principles and guidelines attractive, and organisations that can implement them become more attractive cultures overall.

While building a healthy engineering culture is an important start, the end point of cultural transformation is not yet clear. There is a messy in-between, which is the phase most organisations are in right now. Some split up or form separate entities with different cultures; others stay as a single organisation with bi- or even tri-modal cultures. Change takes time, and perhaps it is too early in the journey to determine what is the “right” end-point—we have to keep experimenting, learning, and embracing the uncertainty.

While challenges remain, I am optimistic about Singapore’s ability to attract tech talent and transform our nation with technology. I have witnessed in so many Singaporean organisations—including GovTech—the ability and willingness to adapt and experiment, make difficult decisions, and collaborate such that we are more than the sum of our parts. I believe this is the same spirit that brought Singapore to where we are today. With it, we can build the culture we need to carry us into the future.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Karen Tay works in the Silicon Valley for the Smart Nation and Digital Government Group as well as the Singapore Global Network Department in the Economic Development Board. She is building an international tech talent attraction strategy and machinery for Singapore, among other roles. She also edits www.techandpublicgood.com, is faculty at Singularity University, and is a certified executive coach for tech professionals. If you have friends who work in tech in the U.S. and are considering Singapore, connect them with her #techmetoSG.The views expressed in this article are the author’s own.

I’m excited to feature Choy Yong Cong on the blog today. I’ve long admired how he is a reformer and innovator in every job he takes on. He is also well-loved by many of the men and women he has led as a commander in the Singapore Army. 

Most recently, he created an app to solve a problem he saw around motivation in the army (Singapore has compulsory military service). It’s received strong reception by users and continues to grow.

Techandpublicgood.com is all about regular people using tech to solve problems they care about, so read on and be inspired by Choy’s journey. 

Hey Choy, it’s great to have you here! Tell us a little about your life and career journey so far, and how it has shaped your goals

Hey Karen, thanks for having me here. I’ve been an avid reader of your blog, and it’s an honour, and a surprise really, to be featured.

In the past ten years, I have been in various roles in the Singapore Army, from leading ground combat units of up to 700 National Servicemen, to serving as a staff officer in the Ministry of Defence. That has given me both the strategic and the soldiers’ perspective.

The leadership motto I live by is our “Mission and Men” – how to take care of our mission and our men (and women) in better ways. Hence the starting point for me has never been technology, but how technology can serve this motto.

I’ve always been asked – which is more important, Mission or Men? But the genius of the motto lies in the word “and” – instead of the tyranny of “or” – as the best leaders have always strived to take care of both at the same time. It is this philosophy that has guided my approach and shaped my goals.

What vision were you trying to create when you thought about this app? Why was it important to you? 

In Singapore, all men at around age 18 are obligated to serve Full-Time National Service (NS) for two years, and then maintain their operationally-ready (OR) status for ten years in ORNS.

Throughout my time on the ground, I’ve noticed many practices that have not changed, despite the changing demographic and technology. For instance, when I started out as a young Platoon Commander almost ten years ago, we used to paste sheets of results and training programmes on the windows and walls. As a Battalion Commander, we still did the same!

The practices were not only inefficient, they also held us back from tapping into the intrinsic motivation of our soldiers – without real-time information about their upcoming training programs and past results, they could not take ownership of their growth and hence tended to rely on commanders for instruction and direction.

This is something I really wanted to change. I wanted to create a better experience, foresight and ownership of their own journey in NS. Hence, I set out to prototype an app that could enhance a National Serviceman’s sense of growth and mastery. In the two years, they go through several defining milestones, complete achievements and earn badges, and are also put through fitness (IPPT), vocational, and competence training and tests to improve their soldiering skills.

Through the product development journey, we decided that the three most impactful modules to create in the app were Milestones, Badges and Results, allowing soldiers to track and trend their performance.

For the benefit of folks trying to innovate within large organizations, tell us about the challenges you faced and how you overcame them   

Having identified the needs and problems on the ground, I created several versions of the wireframes and did our “user testing” with the soldiers. We tried to keep the soldiers – the users – at the centre of our decisions. We watched their behaviours, interviewed them, and asked them for suggestions. It was very rich process where I learnt as much about the soldiers as I did for the app.

For instance, I found out that one of the soldiers actually kept reflection entries about his Army life on his phone, which became a heartening conversation about his NS journey so far. They also gave blindingly obvious suggestions which we didn’t think about, such as a countdown timer to the end of their active service – which we eventually worked into the prototype!

Having said that, here are some of the challenges I faced, which might be common to innovators within large, bureaucratic organizations:

• Resources and expertise for app development were scarce within the organisation.We had to look outside the organization, and I dedicated personal resources to get the prototype off the ground. Also, while reaching out to like-minded people, who believed we can have tech for public good – we found an equally ambitious and noble agency to collaborate with – 2359 Media (a big shoutout to the guys) – who helped us with the coding and technical development.

• Integrating with legacy infrastructure, especially when it comes to classified data. The military has daily business to run – operations need to happen, training needs to continue, results and records need to be properly recorded. So there are already existing legacy systems on an intranet that we already work with. This creates duplication when we started to test the app – for instance, results now needed to be recorded on two back-end systems, as integration with the original back-end systems are costly and long-term. We mitigated these effects and costs as much as we could, such as the extensive use of wireframes and data that fall below the threshold of classified information. But it is a real tension nonetheless, and we only expect it to grow as we attempt to promulgate the app going forward.

• Discipline to focus on only the most impactful features. During our user research, soldiers recommended a full laundry list of modules they would like to see, from bulletin boards, feedback channels, chatbots, to administrative processes. Clearly, it would be costly and complex to code such a comprehensive app. We had to resist the temptation, to be really focused about the primary modules and what would contribute most to the goals.

• Innovating while maintaining accountability for public funds.Burning through hundreds of thousands of taxpayers’ dollars only to end up with a failed product is not responsible. But, failure is a part of experimentation, so what kind of “failures” are acceptable in a public institution with daily business to conduct? Perhaps this is why we are perceived to be slow in adopting tech innovations. My personal approach is – as an individual and leader, do what you think is necessary and right for the organisation, even at your own risk and expense. But the caveat is – we must be responsible in mitigating the risks and be ready to accept the consequences if things do go south. So why would one do it? Because we care about the fundamental mission, and we want to do right by our people.

You effectively served as a product manager and user experience designer for the app. How is this role similar and different to the other jobs you’ve done? 

Having gone through the process, I’ve realised that “user testing” and the empathy in “design thinking”, these are just fancy tech equivalents of what good military leaders are supposed to do.

To be effective leaders, we need to know what the soldiers care about. The problems and needs were picked up as I did my rounds around the camp, watching implicit behaviours, and talking to the guys. As we sought feedback about the app, it was akin to seeking feedback about their army experience and what they would like to do better.

Another ground-up innovation I am proud of, is when I led the initiative to collaborate with GrabShuttle to provide services from far-flung army camps to neighbourhoods around Singapore. Again, this stemmed from observations and feedback from the soldiers, as they commute for hours and walk kilometres to get to their place of duty. The process again was similar – data survey to identify the highly populated catchment areas, several rounds of user-testing, rolling out a trial with a few neighbourhoods, and finally promulgating to more camps and more neighbourhoods.

The difference and added complexity with tech in public good is that it also has to serve a larger purpose. The challenge with “product managers” and “UX designers” in the public sector is to connect both the needs of the user and the needs of a greater good, within constraints of responsible and frugal use.

But there are certainly many good things we can learn too. The maxim “don’t re-invent the wheel” may be outdated – the status quo of doing things may not always be the best. This experience has also taught me about the importance of collaboration – to have a good product, you need a designer, a developer, and a domain expert.

Last, the ideas of user-centricity, rapid prototyping and MVP can be applied to not just tech products, but everything we do in the public service – from government policies, social services, to tactical military actions.

Now that you have a prototype, what is your vision for this app? 

For the app, we already have a working prototype so we will promulgate it to a few units for use and continued user testing. The immediate next steps are to make it configurable for different units so it can be promulgated to any unit which is interested – making it sort of an open-source product.

In the medium-term, we do want to expand the functionality of the app, while keeping it manageable and focused. We want to introduce social and gamification elements to it, so that soldiers feel connected to each other as they go through their journey, through tools such as cooperative targets and mini-competitions.

Again, this enhances the best aspects of our army – it is built on social cohesion and competition, and so much of it are ripe for gamification – I find myself thinking about work as I play Battlefield and Call of Duty, a rather pleasant occupational hazard! The app can also help with recent efforts to improve operational and training safety – with safety information at their fingertips, we arm our young soldiers with the knowledge to report hazards and increase transparency. Geolocation tools can also map out a hazard/safety environment. When our soldiers are each armed with a smartphone and take ownership of their NS journey, training, and safety, it can be a powerful army indeed.

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You are a person whose heart is set on serving public good. What have you learned about the different ways this can be achieved? What stays the same and what changes?

I think there are many ways to serve the public good. Diversity is crucial in any large organisation, to prevent groupthink and to create healthy and constructive tension to move it forward. Personally, I have never been the most obedient of a public servant, but with the blessing of understanding and often merciful bosses, I have been given the space to do what I think is needed.

I believe there are broadly two types of good people in large organisations. One, you have rule-abiding people – running systems, governance, and ensuring compliance. They are generally accepted to be necessary to ensure that the daily business gets done. But there is another type of good people – those who understand the deeper intent, purpose, and desired outcomes, and try to do things in a better way when it is possible and necessary. We may seem like rule-breakers sometimes, but while doing something different, we have thought through the impact, possible scenarios and consequences, and mitigated downsides as much as possible. We also accept personal responsibility when there is failure and fallout.

But some will ask, why risk it? First, the process in trying something new is fun and exciting in itself! But more importantly, I believe strongly that we can achieve better outcomes by embracing new ideas and trends while anchoring on our mission and values.

The alternative frankly, is to be left behind, and to become irrelevant. And in providing for the public good, that would be very tragic indeed.

Thanks Choy for taking the time to share. If you’d like to get in touch with him, let me know!

Everyone has their favorite podcasts, and one of mine is Krista Tippett’s On Being Project.  Krista hosts some of the wisest, deepest conversations with neuroscientists, poets, priests, and behavioral economists, exploring how these wildly different fields shed light on what it means to be human.

In a time where knowledge is abundant but wisdom seems hard to come by, her podcasts always give a new perspective  to topics that have been talked to death. In the Silicon Valley, AI is one of those topics.

So when I heard that Krista Tippett was hosting a conversation with AI experts Jerry Kaplan and Mehran Sahami on AI and humanity in Stanford, I immediately signed up.

Here are some of my takeaways:

In gist, where AI will take us is not a matter of technology, but of our values and vision for humanity.

AI amplifies the current state of humanity. AI works by identifying patterns in data, many of which are invisible to the human eye. Hence when we look at what AI has predicted based on these historical patterns, what we see is a starker, clearer reflection of our historical blemishes. How we have discriminated against certain races, genders and neighborhoods are on full display.

Hence, we shouldn’t blindly automate what we did for the past 100 years. We need to think about where we want to go instead (a question of values) and design AI accordingly. 

But who are the arbiters of values today? It is private companies who design algorithms which build-in value judgments on fairness, privacy and a host of other civil rights. But are private companies designed for such civilizational impact? They aren’t accountable to the people they impact in the same way that democratic Governments are. Are regulations the only way that a Government (as a proxy for the people) exerts influence over the values behind AI? This seems too blunt, but do we have realistic alternatives? 

We don’t need to worry about “General AI” that you see in sci fi. AI and humans have far different comparative advantages. Hence, the goal of AI development is not to replicate human beings but to use machines for what they’re particularly good at (many areas that humans will never match) – in a way that serves humanity.

On that note, remember that when it comes to decisions about using AI, “efficiency is always a second order principle”, – it should only have value in relation to some other value.

Humans need to make value judgments on what should be made more efficient through AI, and what shouldn’t or needn’t (We can automatically fine you each time you go above the speeding limit, but should we?)

Needed: AI practitioners in Govts, shaping how society, values and AI interact for public good.

I’m currently working on bringing tech talent into the Government to do precisely this, and would love to talk to you if you’re a technologist thinking about how to maximize public good in your career. 

 

 

Many friends have recently asked me for advice on starting up new roles. New roles come in many forms, whether you are tasked to set up a new function in an organization, transform an existing team to do new work, or if you decided to set up your own start-up. The common thread is that no one has done what you’re tasked to do, so you have no precedent to reference.

I’ve been in these roles to varying extents, and here is the gist of what I’ve learned/shared with my friends.

As a caveat, these lessons might apply more to folks who started their careers in more traditional backgrounds and are now breaking out into more original, start-up roles; less to lifelong entrepreneurs.

1. Give yourself the license to “not know”

High achievers pride ourselves on figuring everything out quickly. In the first week, or first month of the new role, we expect to have a clear and coherent strategy. We expect that everyone else understands what we are doing and is supportive. We expect to have figured out the solution to this problem. It seems absurd and most of us would never expect these of others. Yet if we are honest, we expect these of ourselves.

The result: the resistance, confusion and lack of clarity you inevitably face in this new role sets off a strain of the following narrative: “I must be the wrong person for this job”; “I must have been crazy to leave what I was good at to do this”; and it may even get to “I should get out of this right now, and cut my losses.” Not a good place to be, I’m sure many of you would agree.

The most important thing when starting out is to give yourself the license to “not know”.

• I do not know the best strategy to achieve this objective – hell, maybe the objective was the wrong one to begin with and it’s my job to call that out.
• I do not know which stakeholders I need to involve and how to get them to align with me.
• I do not know what this role will look like in 6 months’ time.
• I do not know how I am going to manage this particularly snarky team member.

I do not know many things, but you know what? Nobody knows. There is no “correct” answer. My boss (or if you are a start-up founder, your customer) is not hiding the answer and waiting to slap me on the wrist if you get it wrong. He/she does not know how to solve the problem, and I am here to figure it out. Lean into the “not knowing”. Shut down the inner critic who says you should “know by now”.

This brings me to the next point.

2. Set your learning agenda, not just your performance agenda

“I just want to do this job well”. “I want to get results”. When high achievers start unprecedented roles, their goals are typically performance-driven.

Unfortunately, only having a performance agenda can be very discouraging. When you are in an unprecedented role, the gap between where you are and the results you wish to achieve is much wider than in a steady-state role. It makes total sense: when you are doing something unprecedented, you don’t yet have clarity about the different steps in the chain-link to success [you may not even know how to define success]. In contrast, when you are in an existing function, a lot has already been done to establish this chain-link, and you can focus on delivering results.

How do you cope with this? I often advise friends or coaching clients to develop a learning agenda to complement their performance agenda. Setting small, achievable learning goals will keep you on track to performance and help you battle through the inevitable discouragement.

First, what is your professional learning agenda? A useful exercise I’ve learned: in the first months of a new role, don’t just keep a “to-do” list. Also keep a notebook of questions – things you wished that *someone* had an answer to. As part of your professional learning agenda, put some timelines on these questions. By month 1, I would like to have answered these questions or at least have some clarity around them. Similarly, for months 3, 6 and 9. Review your questions periodically; pose them to different people you work with. With this tool, you can be assured that you are building the chain links to success, without burdening yourself with the unnecessary pressure of reaching the highest objective immediately.

Second, what is your personal learning agenda? What do I, as a person (not a worker), want to learn from this experience? In the chaos of starting up, we often forget that we chose this path because we wanted to change, to learn. If you left your consultant job for a start-up, perhaps you wanted to learn the ins and outs of operationalizing change. If you left a cushy local role to set up operations in a new market, perhaps you wanted to learn about operating cross-culturally. If you decided to take on a larger team, perhaps you wanted to learn about people management.

Whatever it is, don’t lose sight of why you chose to take on this role, and what you personally wanted to learn from it. Keep yourself accountable to your personal learning agenda, whatever is happening on the performance front. This has often helped me press through the most difficult starting up months. Of course, if you realize you are getting nowhere in personal learning, it should also trigger a re-evaluation!

3. Don’t take resistance personally –  put on your “consultant hat” often

When you are in an unprecedented role, you will run up against resistance. It’s almost tautological if you think about it. When starting something new, you and a few others might see the gap, but most people don’t yet – if not, your job would likely already have been done!

The majority of people you work with might feel that your work is irrelevant at best, and at worst encroaching into their territory, creating more work for them, making them look bad. Even if some agree with your objectives, they might disagree on how you should do it. Depending on workplace culture, critiques can often become personal in nature, casting aspersions on your character, motivations, intelligence, judgment and so forth.

The idea is to not take it personally – but how? I’ve been in several situations like this, and one of the most useful pieces of advice I heard was “put on your consultant’s hat”. When coming into a messy situation, a consultant’s advantage is often that they are not personally invested. They see things from an organizational point of view.

Instead of asking personal questions like “why are these people so resistant to change?” or “what’s wrong with me, why can’t I get buy in?”, ask organizational questions like “What conversations need to take place to alleviate this situation, and how can I facilitate them?”, “if my voice alone is insufficient, who else in the organization is well-positioned to be an advocate for my strategy?”. One of my ex-consultant friends suggests: “What help can your boss or peers provide for you to be more effective sooner – be it mandate, role clarity, or warm introductions? Help them help you – you are the closest to the situation, you know what you need, so take time to analyse the situation and ask for the help you need”.

Putting on a consultant’s hat (and taking out the personal lens) helps me focus on changing what I can about others’ responses, and leaving what I cannot. It also inclines me towards constructive and kind behaviours since I’m neither villainizing myself or others.

4. Aim for quick wins, embrace opportunism and experiments

I mentioned that in the early days, you don’t always know what success looks like, let alone how to be successful. Instead of going for big wins that demonstrate that you are a resounding success, focus instead on small, “quick wins”. A good “quick win” demonstrates the potential of your new solution, and very importantly – how it can benefit the organization AND other teams. It makes others more likely to want to work with you AND give you resources; an important chain-link to larger success.

In my experience, embracing opportunism and an experimental mindset are essential to scoring early quick wins. For example, instead of aiming for the best partners or the most impactful problems to begin with, aim to find just one or two groups who have an urgent need. Work quickly with them to establish the problem, define, and measure success. Try your new method. Experiment. Measure. Publicize. Tweak your solution and repeat.

This sounds very intuitive to people who grew up as entrepreneurs. But if you came from a corporate, steady-state role, it is extremely unintuitive. You might feel the urge to have a coherent strategy before you begin or to only go for the solution that has a clear path to scalability. Resist this – starting up is all about trying and learning, and there is a whole lot of opportunism in finding the right partners to begin with.

Small, quick wins are what will help you gain confidence, and bootstrap your way to better strategies and bigger “successes”.

For example, when I was setting up a new strategic communications team in the Ministry of Education, no one quite understood what “strategic comms” was and how it was different from “regular” comms. A good quick win was to find an issue where the traditional comms model was not working, evidenced by huge pushback from educators on the policy. We defined success as a shift from educators being critics to educators being advocates, and redesigned the communications processes to enable it. Once we could demonstrate success, we had more business than we could handle.

Recently, I was asked to bring back tech talent for Singapore from the Silicon Valley. I told my network that I wanted to figure out how best to approach this problem. A few months later in Dec 2017, Facebook reached out on Linkedin, asking if we could collaborate to attract talent to Singapore. I said yes immediately: in fact, could we hold an event at Facebook Menlo Park in March 2018, since several key Singaporean tech personalities would be flying to the Silicon Valley at the time? A very small group of us got to work, and within 2 months, drew top-notch speakers and 700 registrants – three to four times the number we were expecting. Feedback was overwhelmingly positive. We spent so little money that it surprised everyone at home. Most importantly, we got what we needed to bootstrap towards even more effective strategies: data on who these tech talents were, what were their timeframes for relocation, their skills, passions and how they needed to be served.

5. Build networks outside your team and organization

It’s easy to lose your bearings when you’re starting something new. You will face resistance at work. Your family might question your decision to do this, when “life was so much easier in your previous role”. You more-than-occasionally might wonder if you are crazy; if this idea is worth pursuing; if it’s the right time to give up.

When you are starting up, it is essential to build new networks outside your regular circles, especially in two areas:

• With people who are walking (or who have walked) the same journey of starting up. They will give you a reference point as to which parts of your experience are normal, and which parts you perhaps should be concerned about (like if you are going off the rails, or if you really should give up instead of press on). They can also share what worked for them in overcoming the challenges of starting up. You can even look within your organization for these people, as one friend suggests: “Are there others in the broader organization who might be in similar positions, though not necessarily in the same function? What did they do to navigate the situation? Can you extrapolate from their situation?”

 

• With people who are tackling similar problems to you in adjacent domains or industries. From my experience, these people end up being your source of professional ideas, contacts and partners in experiments. Friends asked me how I was invited to speak at top tech conferences like CES, SXSW and become a faculty member at Singularity University so quickly, starting with zero network in the Silicon Valley. The short answer is that I met a few like-minded Americans in the early weeks. We chatted over common interests, both personal and professional. I shared with them my objectives, challenges and ideas. We became friends and genuinely enjoyed each other’s company. As and when I met a connection or saw an article which would interest them, I shared it. Over time, this small group became great advocates for my objectives. They referred valuable connections; they pulled me onto panels they were speaking on so we could debate on stage just as we debated in-person; they nominated me to bring Singapore’s voice on various technology issues they were working on. This network has enabled me to achieve all my other objectives more effectively.

The biggest tip here is to not be transactional in relationship-building. Approach networking building with desire to build meaningful relationships. Don’t expect something out of every person and every conversation. Be ready to put in more than you expect to get out of the relationship. Sometimes a collaboration or connection might emerge immediately, but many times you build a good relationship and wait – the outcomes will show themselves over time.

Your views?

These are five lessons I’ve learned on how to stay sane, and succeed, in starting up new functions, teams and ventures. I’m sure many of you have more experience and insights to share. Would love to hear from you!

 

 

 

A couple weeks ago, the #BusinessTimes asked me where I think #STEM needs to head. I shared my vision that technology becomes understandable to the layman so that everyone who has a problem to solve is able to understand how technology can exponentially help them.

This is particularly close to my heart. I was a STEM student most of my life. In the final years of high school in Singapore, all I studied was science – physics, chemistry, biology and math (back then they allowed us to be completely specialized!)

While I excelled at STEM subjects, the content felt increasingly irrelevant to the things I cared about, such as equity, fairness and inclusiveness in society (and the world). At Princeton, I completely dropped my plans to be a doctor or engineer and pursued a career in governance and public policy. (Although I could not resist the occasional engineering statistics and chemistry class).

In those years, technology progressed exponentially, becoming pervasive in all parts of life and work. As I plunged back into the field two years ago, I realized STEM applications are relevant to ANY problem you or I care about and want to solve. I’ve found my way back to the STEM world with a greater sense of purpose and relevance.

What bothers me however, is the divide between the STEM and non-STEM worlds. A young intern in my office recently shared that she was studying philosophy and ethics for undergrad, and immediately added (with some embarrassment): “I know… so much less useful than the engineers”. I have heard this sentiment echoed over the few years.

Yes, let us value technical experts, AI researchers, hardware engineers, for pushing us beyond what we thought was possible. But please, you don’t need to be a hard-core engineer to contribute to the STEM world. We know from history that technological innovation will continue marching forward. The question is whether it will be used to solve the world’s biggest problems – or exacerbate them.

What we really need now are people who can play the role as “bridges” between the STEM world and other domains, where inefficiencies, lack of transparency, and inequality affect the lives of millions of people every day. We need people who want to solve problems in healthcare, education, financial inclusion, gender equality, people who are curious and driven to know how STEM can help them fulfil their missions. People who have the trust of stakeholders, who can convince the users, who reach out to late-adopters who are most vulnerable in our tech-driven society.

I am all for STEM education – I deeply appreciated my own experience. We should raise the baseline of STEM education and importantly, help our students see the relevance of everything they are learning to daily life.

But let us be very careful not to give the impression that only “STEM” is in vogue, and everyone else is less relevant. For STEM to progress for social good, we need to create a movement which involves and values people with a wide variety of skills, interests and passions, not a few brilliant renegades who tell everyone else what the future should look like.

Let’s work together to make this happen.

 

 

Hello readers! It’s been awhile. I’ve taken a short hiatus to invest more time in a personal passion of mine: Professional Coaching Certification. I’ve been a coach and received coaching in many situations over the years and have seen how useful coaching can be in raising professional effectiveness, navigating transitions and improving relationships.

This article gives an overview of how coaching may be relevant to you and what a coaching session typically looks like. Do shoot me an email if you have other questions! (karentay at gmail dot com). I’ve also started a personal website, www.karentayengage.com, where you can read more coaching and personal articles by me.

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Want to make a shift in how your career is going, or make your current role more manageable or meaningful? Perhaps start a side-gig or become a better manager? A coaching relationship could help you. Here are some basics about coaching. Email me at karentay@gmail.com if you’re interested to learn more.

What is coaching and how can it be relevant to your life?

The aim of a coaching relationship is to help you obtain clarity in your professional and personal goals, and to create forward momentum towards achieving these. Together, we will achieve your hoped-for future.

Coaching can be helpful to you in all sorts of situations. These could include:

1. Transitions. Be it taking on a managerial position, moving city, company or role, having a new baby, starting and ending relationships, transitions disrupt our existing ways of being and doing. Working with a coach can turn transitions into the most fertile grounds for learning and growth, rather than a source of resentment.

2. Achieving Goals. You may have a clear goal in mind – such as getting that promotion, becoming a better manager, hitting that fitness level or improving a significant relationship – but you’re having some frustrations staying on the course. A coach will help you take a candid look at what hinders and helps you, and work with you to design a more effective path.

3. Decisions. Decisions may leave you tangled up in knots in your head. You may feel paralysed from the immensity of the decision and the breadth of possible options, or exhausted from trying to do it all and please everyone. You can work with a coach to carve a path that is true to who you are, giving yourself the right level of challenge without being overwhelmed.

4. Unspecified unease. You may feel a vague sense of unease about how work, family or a relationship is going, but you’re unable to pinpoint why, or what to do. With a coach, you can achieve better awareness and begin to take action.

How is coaching different from other conversational professions, such as consulting or therapy?

There is no definitive answer to this, but I would point to two distinctive traits of coaching:

• Coaching conversations focus squarely on creating your future. Our conversations will help you clarify your goals, illuminate your possibilities, and design a path forward with you – one that is unique to who you are. At times we may explore the impact of your past on the way you perceive your situation, but it will always be in service of the goals you want to achieve.

• A coach’s role is primarily to ask good questions, rather than to give you answers – quite unlike a consultant or advisor. In a coaching conversation, don’t be surprised if you find many of the answers within yourself – my job is to help you discover these.  This approach is borne from a deep respect for your agency, experience and abilities.

Why have a coach, rather than talk to a family member, peer or boss?

Bosses, peers and family can all be incredible resources. However, here are two ways a coaching relationship could be more effective.

• Want to be truly challenged? While I will support you, I am trained to challenge you. When we talk about the issue you want to tackle, we will challenge your cultural narratives, assumptions of what is possible and not possible, and your self-assessments – because these all limit your possibilities for action. In general, someone who is part of your day-to-day work and family settings is more likely to share your interpretations of a situation, which limits how much they can challenge you.
•  Ever felt that you don’t want to tell a boss or family member something because they’ll have a strong opinion on what you should do? Wanting to please the person you are talking to (or make sure their interests are met) can get in the way of delving deep into what really matters to you, and what you are willing to stake for that.  As a coach, my role is to create a neutral space for you to discover things about yourself – I will have no judgment or vested interest in what you decide to do. This can be an avenue for the free-est and deepest conversations.

What will a typical coaching session look like?

 There is no formula for a coaching session, but broadly, we will cover the following areas:

1. Clarifying your goals.

Come to each session with a problem or issue you want to work on. It need not be fully formed, so we will spend some time clarifying why, what’s at stake, and what you want to achieve from the coaching conversation.

2. Creating awareness: exploring your perspectives on the issue.

When faced with a problem, it’s tempting to go straight into developing new solutions. While it seems the most ‘efficient’ way to do things, sticking to this level of discussion narrows your options significantly. If you’ve come for a coaching session, chances are that you’ve tried several solutions, and you already feel tired thinking about the rest.

To open up new options – ones that motivate and inspire you – we’ll have to first go a little deeper and uncover your perspectives on the situation. Windows into this include:

• Your language, which reveals beliefs, assumptions, interpretations and narratives

• The emotions and moods you experience in this situation, how they impact your effectiveness, and what influences them

• The way your body is responding to the situation, how it impacts your effectiveness, and what influences this

This step is all about becoming more aware of who you are in this situation.

3. Challenge: New perspectives and possibilities

 As we uncover your perspective on the issue, we’ll also explore where it might not hold up. I will challenge you. For example, where are you turning your assumptions into “facts of life”? Which beliefs about yourself and others are grounded, and which are not? How does your mood affect your effectiveness, and can your mood be shifted? How?

 These are springboards into a greater curiosity about what else you could do to achieve your goal. It typically opens up possibilities and realms of change which you never saw before.

4. Designing an action or practice, setting up accountability

We will end off by designing an action or practice which will serve your goal. You will commit to doing it between now and the next coaching session. We’ll scope it together to make sure it provides a challenge but is not overwhelming.  The key is to take baby steps, assess our progress at the next session, and re-evaluate.

 Finding an accountability mechanism is an essential part of this step. As your coach, you can ask me to be part of this. We will discuss the timelines for your commitment and conditions of satisfaction. Accountability is an essential part of helping you stay on course to achieve your goal.

 How do I get started?

I recommend committing to four coaching sessions to start with (30min to 1 hour each).

I suggest committing to four because at the start of a coaching relationship, we will spend a large part of our sessions on steps 1) and 2) above – clarifying goals and creating greater awareness.

 Having been coached myself, I know this is the territory that generates most impatience in the person being coached – why can’t we get to the solutions now? I have a decision to make and a life to live! No kidding – I was tempted to shut down a coaching relationship because I was so impatient.

Yet, I have seen time and again that if we skip the hard work of this part of coaching, we will be stuck in the cycle you know very well – of finding limited solutions because we are living within a narrow perspective.

Once you and I get into the groove of coaching after the initial sessions, the actions will come. They will feel more congruent with who you are and more energizing than you imagined.

Confidentiality and Ethics

All that you tell me within a coaching relationship will be strictly confidential. If a potential conflict of interest arises which I know of, I will inform you immediately. Please let me know if you see a potential conflict of interest as well. We can have a conversation to evaluate how we want to proceed.

 A coaching relationship is always in service to you. If at any time you want to end the coaching relationship, I will be happy to refer you to a network of coaches.

In-person, online, on the phone?

I am based in Palo Alto and do coaching via Zoom/Skype or in person (in Palo Alto or Redwood City).

Ready to get started? New possibilities await in 2018.

Email me at karentay at gmail dot com for a free no-obligations 45 minute coaching session.

I’ve never thought deeply about gender issues because I personally haven’t experienced gender-based discrimination. In high school/junior college I was a Science and Math student (back then, it that meant that I only took these subjects, no humanities). In my class, girls outnumbered boys, and did as well as them – there was no differentiation. When I went on to college, and work, I didn’t experience gender-based discrimination.

So when I was invited to a “Women’s Forum” in October, I hesitated. Would it be disingenuous to identify myself with “women’s issues” if I had never suffered on behalf of being a woman? I went ahead anyway, because I wanted to explore this question. I have also been more conscious about minority issues since moving back to America in the midst of the polarizing 2016 Presidential election.

Fast forward… last week, I was in Paris for the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. I participated in a panel on ‘How Technology Can Keep People in Work’ with Christele Genty (Google Europe), Elisabeth Moreno (President of Lenovo France) and Heather Cykoski (ABB), and was nominated for the Rising Talents Initiative for Women leaders under 40. As a result, I got to hang out with a bunch of really talented and driven women for three days straight, all sponsored by the Conference organizers.

Here are five takeaways from my experience:  

1. Women’s issues are real

To many, this seems like a “duh” point to make. But I write this because for those who have not personally experienced discrimination, it is easy to downplay or distance ourselves from the issue. For example, at the back of your mind, you may ask, “is he/she overplaying this? Does he/she have a hidden agenda?” – that’s you distancing yourself, and I’m guilty of this too.

I took the opportunity to ask many women about their experience, and more than I expected had experienced some form of harassment or discrimination. Examples:

• Harassment: anything from a boss saying “hey, I’m bored, send me an explicit video of yourself now” to inappropriate touching
• Conscious and subconscious discrimination: the pay gap with their male counterparts, having one female toilets in manufacturing and chemical plants for the sizeable female workforce.

Listening to personal stories helped me realize, deep down, that this is real – the lived experience of thousands of women. I should – indeed I must – care, even though it is not my own lived experience.

2. Women’s issues are a small sub-set of minority issues. Let’s treat them as such.

Emphasizing women’s issues can lead us to unintentionally de-emphasize issues faced by other minorities, especially if you turn it into a “men vs women” debate.

Case in point: at my hotel in Paris, all the room cleaners were men. I found myself inherently suspicious of them, and more cautious about my valuables. Why? I had an unconscious bias against men, who are a minority in domestic and caring jobs. Why do we not wage war on disparaging attitudes against men in these roles, in the same way that we wage war against disparaging attitudes against women in executive roles? The situations are not completely parallel, I admit. But you get the idea. Men can be minorities too and let’s not understate their experiences.

I have not even talked about racial, religious, educational minorities. The point is – minorities exist in every micro-context. I see Women’s issues as a sub-set that points us to the broader set of minority issues. We need to be aware of the existence and experience of minorities, which brings me to my next point.

3. Accept it: If you are in the majority, you are blind to your blindness on the barriers faced by minorities.

 I spoke to several women from big tech firms, who shared their experience of making complaints about harassment. “In the end, the only thing you can do is leave” – was the overwhelming sentiment. Some companies require you to give a written statement of the incident, without telling you how the statement will be used and the implications it might have. Others advise you that you can take it to senior management, or the courts, but then your own reputation would be dragged through the mud. Bosses tell you “oh, that guy is just a jerk. Just ignore him”. I’ve heard similar stories for racial minorities – one just happened to a college friend of mine in an investment firm.

Rules and processes for dealing with harassment and discrimination really have to take into account the experience of the minority – often one of disempowerment and sometimes shame. If you are in the majority in any particular context, you have to go out of your way to ensure that processes that enable reporting of harassment or discrimination make the minority feel safe.

Here’s one good example: the most inspiring woman I met at the conference was an international human rights lawyer who started a non-profit, “We are Not Weapons of War” to provide advocacy and legal services to victims of rape in conflict zones. She found that it was impossible to get these girls to go to the doctor or seek legal assistance because of their aversion to men and deep feeling of shame. Technology, she shared, enabled her organization to support the girls without requiring them to leave their comfort zone.

4. Women-specific events are helpful, but be careful to be inclusive

I see a place for women-specific events. In my experience, women tend to come out in greater force when the event is women-specific. I don’t quite know why, but this seems to be a common experience. Furthermore, if you are in a minority, solidarity and community helps with gaining new perspectives on your particular challenges.

However, we really shouldn’t forget that the nub of the issues is diversity and inclusiveness. We need to be careful about making sure these women-specific events do not turn exclusive by either disparaging men or subconsciously excluding other minority groups from the agenda.

5. Educating our next generation of female leaders to rise in a male-dominated professions without conforming to male stereotypes

It was a lot of fun participating in the Rising Talents Initiative, which recognized a dozen women leaders under 40. One very cool lady I met through this program was Estelle Touzet, the Chief Sommelier at the Ritz. She is only 36, and oversees a team of 8 sommeliers. We visited her at work late one evening (she works 14 hour days). Witnessing her excel in such a male-dominated industry with grace and femininity was inspiring. It’s a beautiful thing when women rise to the top of their profession without altering themselves to fit the stereotypes of the dominant gender. 

It made me reflect on my school experience. I went to an all-girls school which advocated breaking female stereotypes. Looking back, I appreciated the spirit of equality – women can achieve whatever men can. But I am more wary about the subtle messaging that we have to give up our femininity to do so. How can we avoid mixing up the two for the next generation of female leaders?

A further thought – it is not just women who are pressured to conform to male stereotypes in leadership. Many men also do not display such traits naturally and suffer for this, which brings me back to point 2: let’s realize that women’s issues are only a small subset of minority issues. They point us to something larger.

And now, for some personal anecdotes:

1. There’s a stereotype that women tend to prepare better for professional meetings and engagements. This was my first time on an all-women panel and this was absolutely true. Our incredible moderator May Busch arranged two pre-conference calls to establish the angles that each of us, based on our experiences. Everyone added their points to a Google document. May shared her facilitation plan. Result = dozens came up to us to say that we worked like magic together, that they had never seen such chemistry between panelists and blow after blow of impactful points. I’ve attended too many sessions where I’m like – wait – are these panellists discussing the same topic? Or worst – why does this Very Important Person seem so…unoriginal? Lesson learned when it comes to assembling panels, preparation >> raw genius. So is it true that women tend to prepare better, or just my one-off experience?

 

2. I learned some personal lessons from my co-panellists: May Busch (ex Morgan Stanley banker) and Elisabeth Moreno (President of Lenovo France). Before our session, they said: before you speak, think of what you want your audience to think, feel and do after you’re done. I’ve subconsciously thought of panels as ways to convey ideas. Connecting and inspiring? Perhaps incidentally, but never a main goal. These two ladies showed me that you can connect, inspire and share new ideas without coming across as cheesy and unprofessional. May was very deliberate about engaging the audience. At the start, she asked them to look out for that one point to take away, and at the end, she reminded them to share that point with one person. Elisabeth wanted to give the audience conviction that they could rise to the challenge of harnessing technology to improve their jobs, rather than fearing that technology would take their jobs. She was very deliberate about addressing the audience personally and used her body language to do so. These two women gave me food for thought on how I communicate.

 

1. I am not sure how I feel about this yet, but I’ll write it here for entertainment. In typical conferences, all the booths are related to ‘work matters’, but in this one… photo-taking studio (super long lines), free Philosophy (cosmetic) products. 😉

Overall, I’m really thankful for the opportunity to participate in the Women’s Forum for the Economy and Society. It was a really helpful step on my journey to greater empathy and advocacy for those who are marginalized by society. Hope this has been interesting for you and I would love to hear your thoughts 🙂 

Here’s a quick video they did of me for the Rising Talents Initiative. They picked the part on my advice for young leaders. Check it out here. 

 

 

 

 

I’m excited to profile Annalyn Ng, a self-taught data scientist and #womanintech, who is pushing for the adoption of data science in the public service. She currently works at the Ministry of Defence (Singapore), where she analyses data to identify predictors for personnel performance in military vocations.  Originally a psychology and economics major, she first learnt about data science in a statistics class, and has been addicted ever since.

She co-authors a blog, algobeans.com, that teaches data science in layman’s terms, and has recently published a book: Numsense! Data Science for the Layman, which is used as reference material in Stanford and Cambridge.

In this article, she outlines the challenges and solutions to enabling data science in the public service, and ideas about how to build these capabilities individually and in your own organization. All opinions here are her own.

Introducing Data Science in the Public Service: Challenges and Solutions

My plea for wider application of data science is a personal one. My mum passed away due to a misdiagnosis when doctors administered wrong medication while stalling the treatment she required. Then, I wondered—if we can teach machines to play games like Go and Starcraft, can we invest as much to teach machines how to save lives? While we’ve had breakthroughs, such as in automated interpretation of medical image scans, similar success for general diagnosis seems lacking.

Many people regard data science as a craft that is exclusive to tech companies. Let’s dispel this myth. The fact is, wherever there is data, there is potential for data science. If fashion retailers can use purchase history to recommend products and predict trends, we can easily apply the same methods on past medical data to recommend treatment and predict diagnosis.

Despite being a profit driver in the private sector, the use of data science is still relatively immature in public service. Healthcare analytics is one specialised domain with untapped potential, but data science can also be applied in mainstay departments like policy (e.g. analysing public feedback), finance (e.g. flagging fraudulent transactions), and human resource (e.g. personnel deployment).

So, what’s stopping us?

There are two parts to data science: 1) data collection, and 2) data analysis, each with its own unique set of challenges to overcome:

Data Collection

Getting data is often the hardest part of any data science effort. As public data is sensitive, infrastructure is needed to collect data systematically and securely. To reach deeper insights, data from different agencies and ministries need to be merged, and this process usually begs questions on confidentiality.

Hence, data collection requires collaboration across agencies. Mutual trust must be built to ensure that useful data is exchanged for insights to be uncovered. Ownership and maintenance of IT infrastructure should be established, and stress tests conducted regularly to ensure data security. We rely on senior management to set this stage, before public servants can take cue to play their part.

Data Analysis

Once we have data, we need to analyse it. Skilled data scientists are required for this role, but talented ones might be enticed away by private companies while those committed to stay might not be given the support to learn, thereby resulting in a lack of expertise.

However, expertise can be developed. It is a misconception that data science is solely quantitative. Data literacy can be divided into two levels: 1) knowing how data analysis works, and 2) executing the actual analysis.

The first level is basic knowledge on how algorithms work and their assumptions. These do not involve much math, and thus should be made accessible to everyone.

Algorithms are increasingly being automated, lowering the bar to allow people with non-technical backgrounds to do basic data exploration through apps and dashboards. As data science research becomes more accessible, we need to improve data literacy among regular public servants, to ensure that conclusions made from such research are accurate.

Besides checking results for errors and assumptions, a broad understanding of data analytics can help managers to identify potential data sources, as well as to facilitate collection of data in a suitable format for analysis. In turn, analysts are likely to be appreciative of managers who provide conditions for work to be done effectively.

The second level is technical know-how of math and coding that data scientists, rather than managers, need to master. To nurture expertise, we need to build an ecosystem for experts to thrive. Many agencies have made the mistake of recruiting data scientists in isolation. Without peers who can provide feedback and healthy competition, data scientists may have fewer ideas to build on and less motivation to improve. Therefore, it is crucial to deploy data scientists in teams.

While data scientists can either be trained in school or self-taught, enlightened employers have since realised that the medium of learning is less important than the rigor and continuity in learning. Many companies, including Google and Facebook, have sought out programmers with no formal degree but nonetheless armed with a solid portfolio of coding projects.

Regardless of our current level of expertise, data science is an evolving field, so a data scientist’s learning journey never ceases as they seek to add new techniques to their toolbox through constant reading and practice.

So, how do we start learning?

Traditional classroom training is growing obsolete as they are costly, time-consuming, and possibly ineffective as participants are likely to forget technical details without constant review. Moreover, data science is a fast-moving field, and any one-off training is unlikely to suffice for public servants whom we wish to groom as experts.

As a data science convert myself (having majored in psychology and economics), I have a few alternatives to suggest:

Enrol into massive open online courses (MOOCs), which are video courses available freely or easily priced within $20. Examples of established course platforms include Coursera, Udacity and Udemy. Participants can choose courses based on reviews, and good instructors are also prompt in addressing Q&A on forums. With courses spanning a range of difficulty levels, both beginners and experts can find content suited for their needs. Moreover, as course videos are usually made available for a lifetime, participants can review them whenever they need to.

Learning is not just about sponging up knowledge, because knowledge is easily forgotten without practice. Therefore, to apply what I learn, I’d usually pair my learning with relevant projects. Managers can also encourage a proactive learning culture, such as allowing staff to reserve time for research and experimenting with new data science methods.

After mastering new techniques, I’d share what I learn with others because teaching reinforces learning. Writing blog articles is a convenient way to do this. To engage a non-technical audience, I’d leave out the math and jargon, and instead focus on intuitive explanations and visuals. I eventually compiled the tutorials into a book: Numsense! Data Science for the Layman, which, I’m ecstatic (!) to share, has since been chosen by top universities like Cambridge and Stanford as reference text. Nevertheless, simply keeping a blog can be gratifying, knowing that your tutorials can benefit a global audience.

As for colleagues just starting out in data science, I frequently encourage the recruitment of interns with statistics or computer science background to help with relevant projects. This is a win-win arrangement—supervisors get to learn more techniques, while interns get to appreciate data science applications in the public sector. To ensure accuracy of results, projects can be vetted by trained colleagues.

Finally, there are opportunities for everyone, regardless of expertise, to get together to share ideas. Data science meetup groups are common in major cities, often featuring a range of speakers from different industries, and attracting large audiences interested to learn and network.

So, where do we go from here?

Learning data science is just a means to an end. In public service, the end goal would be to use data science to improve lives.

A predictive algorithm to diagnose heart disease would be useless if we cannot pack it into a fast and intuitive interface that any doctor can use. To build products incorporating data science, we need to plug data scientists into interdisciplinary teams of engineers and designers. Here, good communication is essential to facilitate teamwork, as well as to convince end users of product benefits.

In implementing a data science product, we also need to validate it regularly, to ensure that it remains effective over time. This is not as straightforward as it sounds. Take, for example, an algorithm that predicts whether a person requires medical treatment for a latent disease. To conclude that the algorithm is more accurate than doctors’ judgement, we need to compare the health outcomes of two groups—one selected by the algorithm, and the other selected by doctors. This inevitably raises ethical questions of whether we’d be denying early medical treatment to the group judged by doctors, at the possible expense of their lives. There is no perfect solution to this problem, but awareness is a good start.

Apart from conducting data science within the government, we can also consider publishing non-sensitive data, to put public service into the hands of the public. Open satellite imagery, for example, has enabled community involvement in humanitarian search efforts for missing Malaysian Airlines flight MH370, as well as detection of illegal forest fires in Indonesia. Pollutants from forest fires can be a regional health hazard, and boycotting culpable companies has been a way for the public to fight back. Crowdsourcing has emerged as a check and balance to ensure that corporations and government maintain social responsibility.

With more data available and data literacy improving, the potential for data science to improve the lives of citizens has never been greater. Whether we can successfully introduce data science in the public service will depend on how ready we are to tackle its accompanying challenges.

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Thanks, Annalyn! We can’t wait to see what you get up to next.

 

 

The field of AI has progressed significantly in recent years. Breakthroughs in machine learning have enabled computers to mimic humans in areas such as image understanding and speech processing. However, many problems remain unsolved, such as teaching computers to read and understand anything. It will be decades before we have Artificial General Intelligence which surpasses human intelligence, including runaway bots that humans can no longer control.

For now, we must be realistic about what AI can achieve for several reasons.

The Risks of Unrealistic Expectations in AI

First, unrealistic expectations create incentives to deploy unsafe or unreliable systems. Take autonomous vehicles for example. AI systems enable a car to accurately perceive its environment, plan and execute its path. Ensuring that these systems work safely and reliably together is a mammoth task. There is a reason Waymo has not made commercial deployments despite having tested for years.

Unrealistic expectations from investors and customers on the timeline for commercial autonomous vehicles may pressure companies to deploy unsafe or unreliable vehicles prematurely. Uber’s deployment last December was one such example. In this case, regulators were able to clamp down quickly. However, cases will become less clear cut in the future, and will depend on self-regulation of technologists. Premature testing puts human life at risk, and when public opinion plunges due to an accident, the entire industry is delayed from delivering the enormous safety benefits of autonomous vehicles.

Second, hype about Artificial General Intelligence misfocuses our attention. We often forget that as technology has progressed, humans and organizations have historically evolved to master it. We should focus our attention on facilitating this evolution, for example, by enabling a cycle of re-skilling and job re-design so that people increasingly play roles which machines cannot. New value arises when people focus on what they do best. For example, pharmacists in Singapore provide better patient counselling now that intelligent robots manage medicine packing.

Finally, AI researchers need a reliable stream of funding to make long-term investments in basic research that yield step changes in the field. Unrealistic expectations make the field of AI susceptible to funding crashes, hindering progress – the history of AI winters demonstrates this. One side effect is that during these winters, only large players with deep pockets can continue to cement their advantages. If this privilege is not used responsibly, what does this mean for the distribution of benefits arising from AI? On a side note, this is  why I think that Governments should commit long-term funding to basic AI research.

How Can We Better Distinguish Reality and Hype?

The hype surrounding AI can be detrimental, but how can we help people better distinguish reality and hype?

Personally, I feel that reality and hype are best distinguished in the context of problem-solving. The AI community needs to work closely with people who own problems such as improving preventive health, boosting educational equality and solving unemployment. What can, and cannot be solved through AI? What are the risks? How can AI systems be designed to supplement humans? Google set up People + AI Research (PAIR) to explore this. However, the onus is not on the AI community alone. Problem owners must become advocates and critics of AI in their own contexts. They must play a role in public education.

One challenge in distinguishing hype from reality in AI is the competitiveness in the community. The market incentive is for emerging companies to upsell what AI can deliver to raise investment.

On some issues, the AI community needs to lay down their guns and unite. Educating the public to differentiate hype and reality in AI is one of them, and big companies have to take a disproportionate share of responsibility because their existence is less dependent on their ability  to upsell. The technical community must also work together to solve problems such as AI safety, which should not be a basis for competition. This is the intent of the Partnership in AI. I personally hope to see the Partnership build strong relationships not just within the commercial community, but with third parties such as Governments and Non-Profits who, in some contexts, are trusted as neutral arbiters on technology issues.

Ultimately, what is at stake is the tremendous value AI can bring to humanity if it progresses quickly, safely, and with the trust and collaboration of users. To this end, fostering realistic expectations about AI is instrumental.

 

 

This is a contributed post from Katarina Hasbani. Drawing from her deep experience in the energy sector, Katarina gives advice to start-ups looking to work in highly-regulated sectors, arguing that regulation is not always the enemy.

Katarina is a specialist in policy and regulation surrounding the energy sector. She has almost 15 years of experience from Europe, Middle East and South-East Asia. She moved to Singapore from Dubai, where she was directing Dubai Government’s efforts to reduce the Emirate’s energy consumption by 30% in the horizon of 2030. In the European Commission, she was involved with EU’s gas diversification efforts in its Easter and Southern Neighborhood along with policy work on electricity and gas market liberalization, increased use of renewables and improvements in energy efficiency.

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Regulation and startups: An unexpected opportunity (Katarina Hasbani)

For tech startups, government regulation can be more than just necessary evil to deal with. Regulation can be an opportunity for growth, partnerships and influencing future direction of regulatory regimes for new products and services. Take a wild leap of faith and read on.

Is marriage between regulation and start-ups set up for a crash landing? Let’s revisit the reasons why some might think so.

There are inherent conflicts in the operating speed and style of start-ups and Governments. Governments use regulation to protect the environment or consumers’ health, and to correct market failures. The process of government regulation is a long, formalized and yes, boring process.

On the other hand, startups are created with the purpose of challenging the status quo. Their new services and products are created where there is a need. Startups work fast and iterate often as they advance in their execution. Because of the need for speed, they have tended to take the approach of “going in first and dealing with regulations later”. As a result, many start-ups have experienced regulatory backlash:

• Airbnb is facing tough restrictions to its operations in several cities, including Amsterdam where Airbnb guests cannot rent their premises for longer than 60 days a year.
• Zenefits, a corporate benefits software startup, hit a significant regulatory snag in 2015 when media reports revealed that its insurance offerings were being sold by salespeople who were not licensed in the heavily regulated insurance industry.
• In June 2016, new U.S. government regulations limited commercial drone service for deliveries and squashed Amazon’s drone delivery service plans in the country. Amazon took its plans to the U.K., which doesn’t have such strict regulations, and completed its first drone delivery in December 2016.

However, this is only one side of the story: Government regulation does provide opportunities for start-ups, and founders would be wise to pay attention to where this is happening.

Government regulation sometimes helps to introduce competition and foster innovation in a market, creating opportunities for start-ups. One way to do this is to regulate entities with a dominant position in the market. Start-ups can benefit from competitive market situation and push through a new product and service. Tech unicorns of today might forget that it was the breaking down of telecommunication giants in the US by government regulation, which brought about greater innovation in this space.

Regulating competitive practices is central to the role of the European Commission (EC), which has been systematically assessing impacts of mergers on innovation. Interesting evidence is emerging to illustrate the impact of mergers and consequently dominant position in a market on innovation. The research states that mergers, both horizontal and vertical, may reduce innovation by, inter-alia, decreasing budges allocated to R&D. The EC has been eying tech industry and dominant position by some of its key players in an attempt to spur competition. Its ruling against Google for abusing dominance in its market comes with an astonishing fine of 2.42 billion EUR. Google’s case might incentivize other large tech players to open up their respective market segments, resulting in more competition, innovation and opportunities for start-ups.

Regulating on data availability is another way that governments can create opportunities for building businesses. UK land registry publishes data on house transactions allowing Zoopla to create a model valuing all UK properties. Transport for London makes its data freely available spurring a plethora of apps to help with journey planning. The Competition and Markets Authority in UK is reshaping the energy market: Energy supply data on customers will soon have to be made available so that customers can be approached with a lower price offer from one of the alternative suppliers.

How to capitalize on regulation: Lessons for startups

I’ve argued that Government regulation is not always detrimental to start-ups. But how can start-ups find opportunities in highly-regulated sectors? If you are a start-up looking to enter a highly-regulated industry, here are three tips from the experiences of the energy sector, which I have worked in for many years:

1. First, Government regulation can be a market opportunity but you need a transition plan in case regulation changes.

European governments decided few decades ago to give favourable treatment to electricity produced from renewable energy sources. The mechanism used was a feed-in-tariff, which provides renewable energy generators a remuneration above retail rates of electricity. What came about in Europe was a renewable energy boom and pressure to innovate among technology providers. The number of patents in renewable energy increased three times in Germany between 2007 and 2013. Three years in a row (2010 -2012) Germany added on annual basis more than 7 GW of solar installed capacity, which equals to half of Singapore’s total power generation capacity.

Until today, Several German companies stay technologically ahead of the game despite the competitive pressures from China and its cheaper products. Would the renewable energy revolution happen anyway without government regulatory support? It might but it would not happen as fast.

2. Second, not all the governments regulate the same way and there is always a window of opportunity that can be used to pioneer your product or service with a friendly government regulator.

The case of hydraulic fracking represents the contrast between regulatory approaches in the US and the EU. The US regulates only when any issues of public concern arise, the EU takes preventive measures to avoid any possible negative public impacts.

Fracking involves injection of highly pressurized liquid in the rock to extract natural gas and petroleum from previously unreachable locations. The technology was pioneered and actively pursued in the US with relatively limited regulation until some of the negative impacts started emerging. Accidents and exposure to harmful substances used at fractured wells were raised as main concerns, which resulted in ban on hydraulic fracking in some states (Vermont and New York). While controversial in its environmental and public health impacts, hydraulic fracking is widely credited for the comeback of US energy independence based on its domestic production of natural gas and reduced role of the Middle East in global energy supply.

This contrasted with the EU approach, which has taken preventive rather than reactive approach and has banned the fracking before larger application by the industry. France banned fracking in 2011 and other countries in Europe introduced measures limiting fracking in subsequent years.

3. Third, follow how government regulations are shaping their industry and/or market in country of their operation and worldwide. Regulatory changes might make incumbents more open to potential partnerships.

Finally, the German utilities sector offers an additional view on potential macro-consequences of government regulation. RWE (now Innogy) and EoN, two of Germany’s largest utilities are changing their business models completely as an unintended result of the government policies and regulations in German energy market. A mix of renewable energy targets and obligations to improve energy efficiency has forced both companies to restructure. The traditional energy assets remain with the legacy company while a new entity was created by both entities with a focus on services in decentralized energy and energy efficiency. The move puts incumbents on equal footing with number of young, agile startups, which are exploring the energy services space. Incumbents are keen to create partnerships to capture new market niche faster.

In summary, my advice for start-ups seeking to enter highly-regulated sectors is that Government regulation will have a profound impact on your startup, whether you want it or not: so make sure it works to your advantage.

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Thanks, Katarina!

Since publishing my last article “Three Harmful Ideas About Leadership and Shifts You Can Make”, I received lots of messages from folks with further questions. Two themes emerged:

1. Does your advice apply to team members who are unmotivated? If not, how should I go about managing them?
2. How do I balance being a coach, collaborator and challenger with urgent demands to deliver?

Truth is, Google, Linkedin and Facebook, as premium employers, can hire all their staff for strict criterion such as high motivation, capacity and adaptability. I have worked in some places like that, where it is easier to make the shifts I suggested. Everything seems to flow.

On the other hand, I have also worked in places where motivation, capacity and attitudes were varying. This is the more common experience of the two. What do you do when you are a new manager, your boss is breathing down your neck for a deadline that was yesterday, and there are team members who simply cannot do the job “up to standard” or simply do not want to do it?

These are extremely complex and painful questions that many managers face when working with a team of varying motivation, capabilities and attitudes. Besides what my previous article advocated –  building a network of peers who can provide sounding boards and coaching – I would give three buckets of advice:

1. Self management
2. Boss management
3. How to address “less motivated” team members

Very briefly on self- and boss-management: more later

On self-management: if you are a high performer, chances are verything seems “urgent” to you because your frame of reference is how fast it can be done. You need to stop and think about what is truly urgent, and whether the standards you are applying are truly necessarily (a silly example but some of you may identify: do I really need people to write in perfect English ALL the time, or is it just my preference??) Think hard, because cost is alienating your team by trying to deliver everything that 10 clones of yourself could do. More on self-management later, but I define this field as understanding your own triggers and tendencies that make your over-react, so that you can catch yourself before the damage is done. We all have these: I have many.

On boss management: If you are a high performer who recently became a new manager, perhaps you think your boss hired you to make his life easier.You want your boss to have the perception that everything is under control, so you try to settle as many things without knocking on his door. Pick your bosses carefully, and if you find a decent one, he/she will be more sympathetic than you think. Having honest conversations with your bosses about priorities and staff development should be inbuilt to your monthly routine. Sometimes, stepping out and having your boss work directly with your team members helps bring issues into focus. More on boss engagement here.

How to help “less-motivated” staff

Now for the hard part: how to help “less-motivated” staff, especially when your team is under pressure to perform. My friend Sandra Soon, who has had more than a decade of management experience, mentally sorts her team along two dimensions: capacity and alignment.

• Capacity refers to the ability to do the job as the organization requires.
• Alignment refers to the closeness between the individual’s motivations and the organization’s motivations.

The matrix below shapes her developmental strategies.

	HIGH CAPACITY	LOW CAPACITY
HIGH ALIGNMENT	Coach	Coach
LOW ALIGNMENT	Try to persuade them briefly and if that fails I exit them	Work on exiting them immediately

My last article works better for the top half of the table. For the groups in the bottom half of the table, the challenging part is not making value judgments immediately; Sandra says: “I try to control my natural urge to be critical and make an effort to assume the best of people at the beginning — often lack of motivation stems from quite benign reasons eg they are distracted due to their many other interests, or they may not actually realise that they can do so much better.” In other words, don’t jump to the exit option too early.

My friend Pearlyn Chen further points out: “all of this is framed first by seeing each team member as individuals with their own potential and not just a management issue.”

Aaron Maniam, another respected leader with years of experience under his belt, provides elaboration on strategies you can take to help “less motivated” team members before considering exiting them. These are particularly pertinent in work contexts where exiting staff may be very difficult (another difference from Google/Linkedin/Facebook) – bureaucracies and family business are examples.

1. Unearth external and seasonal factors.

   Aaron writes: “If people *seem* unmotivated, we need to talk to them and find out why. The answer could be something as simple as stuff going on at home, or a bad spell. Our job as leaders is then to help them through this bad patch or transient valley. This might involve some reallocation of work, having them work from home for a while so they can take care of kids, etc”.

2. Unearth reasons for disengagement.

   “If the problem is not external, then perhaps they may not feel engaged by their work. Then our job is to help figure out what makes them tick – and not everyone understands themselves, sometimes, so having conversations about personality type, natural preferences, sources of energy and motivation, etc can be helpful. We might then be able to help them reframe their work to find stuff in it that is motivating. Eg not seeing writing minutes as a chore, but a way of learning the deep language of an organisation so that a person internalises its thinking process and hones his/her own analytics. Or helping a fresh graduate who enjoyed learning in uni, to see how there are also learning opporunities at work, even if those look like merely routine tasks.”

3. Fix the structure and infrastructure of work.

   “I remember having introverts on my team who really found open offices difficult (this was an open office that wasn’t well designed and there weren’t enough quiet spaces for people to go to if they need to do extended thinking/writing). I just let them telecommute as much as they needed, and suddenly their productivity went through the roof. We had to do some norm setting in terms of how everyone on the team would stay connected if some were “off site”, and we did this collectively so everyone bought into the norms. Once the norms were set, they generally worked well.”

4. Accept, and figure out a strategy towards unambitious team members.

   Aaron writes “I personally think it’s ok for people to make decisions that they don’t want to be particularly ambitious, and are content to work at a steady pace, go home at a regular hour on most days, etc. They of course need to be realistic and accept that this means they aren’t going to get promoted super soon or get an enormous performance bonus — but as long as they keep their expectations realistic, I think this is fine and a perfectly legitimate life decision. They might change it later on, or someone who was once a high performer might decide to reallocate their energies a bit after a few years, and good leaders/bosses need to know how to work around this. If the expectations are unrealistic, then of course a clear and firm conversation needs to be had.” Adding to this, Sandra points out that if you choose to retain an average performer, you will need to manage the perceptions of the rest of the team, who might feel they are shouldering an unfairly large share of the work. 

What is a good exit?

Sandra and Aaron also address what it means to exit team members well. Exiting team members must be done with a sense of responsibility towards both the individual and the organization. It is not about passing them to other teams as quickly as possible, but helping them find a better job fit: “for example, some people who are motivated by short-term, quantifiable targets will do better in sales jobs than in policy jobs”, Sandra writes.

Aaron shares that “Leaders have a duty to the overall system/organisation, not just their immediate teams, and can help facilitate linkups or meetings with other managers, who might be able to take the person on. I’ve seen instances where a lateral transfer has resulted in total transformation for a person.”

Personal thoughts 

I love their advice. Personally, in trying to balance the need for speed/quality versus the desire to nurture team members, I try to take a structured approach. I map out the mission-critical priorities and may assign high performers to those as a start. Especially as a new manager, it’s best not to fail on mission-critical priorities early on. However, it is easy to get into the cycle of only giving priority work to high performers. One must have a systematic way of reviewing work assignments, and ensuring that  “stretch” projects go to team members who initially demonstrate less potential or motivation. (For sanity, I do this at a time when I have bandwidth to provide coaching).

I also want to speak to those of us who are managers of managers: we need to be particularly mindful of what new managers are going through, and assure them that they have our trust as they strive to gain the trust of their team. That can make all the difference, as new managers often feel torn between their bosses and teams. I personally think it is wise to give a new manager a 30-90 day period where they function as a peer to their team, rather than a boss – learning the ropes of the job before they are asked to supervise it.

Conclusion

If you are working with less-motivated team members, this article provides some exercises that you can undertake. If you do this, and there is no fruit, in good faith move towards the exit option. Make a journal of the steps you took, for personal accountability, and also because some organizations require robust evidence when exiting a person.

I also want to end off by saying that you cannot please everyone – learning to face opposition graciously is a huge part of the leadership journey. You also need to take care of yourself and actively find support: bring in your boss to the process; hire a coach or ask a trusted advisor to walk with you for this season. Acknowledge your shortcomings and forgive yourself for them; it’s a painful part of growing up but it will eventually set you free (of trying to be impossibly invincible).

Reach out and I’d be happy to chat more too: the advice above may be too blunt for your situation; or you may feel overwhelmed by the complex emotions that arise if you are a new manager, and perceive yourself to be failing at it. This is a topic close to my heart as I have been through this phase and am deeply empathetic to those of you going through it!

 

This article, “The Rise of the Thought Leader”, was circulating widely on my social media feeds of late. In short, it argues that:

• The “super-rich” in America are supporting “thought leaders” who push narratives that are favourable to their business interests. In no other sector than technology is this more evident. Technological evangelism spurs investment, which perpetuates the cycle of success for technology companies. Intellectually, are we being captured by vested interests?
• These “thought leaders” are attractive to mass readers because their messages tend to be simple and evangelical – they “develop their own singular lens to explain the world”. This is in comparison to public intellectuals like Noam Chomsky or Martha Nussbaum, as well as independent academic intellectuals, who traffic in “complexity and criticism”.
• One of the key worldviews of these “thought leaders” is that “extreme wealth and the channels by which it was obtained are not only legitimate but heroic.” This supports a ‘Great Man’ theory of events, which traditional public and academic intellectuals tend to reject (I gather they put more weight on culture, institutions, luck).
• The decline in public and philanthropic funding for think-tanks has allowed them to be increasingly captured by political interests. Their new sponsors are “less interested in supporting intellectually prestigious, nonpartisan work than they are in manufacturing political support for their preferred ideas.”

What does this mean for you and I?

This article picks one side of the story and chases it down with scathing arguments. It is deliberately unbalanced. It does not mention any benefits of this new generation of “thought leaders”. For example, there is much for traditional intellectual institutions to learn from new “thought leaders” on how to makes their ideas accessible to the average joe. Sheryl Sandberg is such an effective communicator because she knows how to speak to the heart of her audience, not just to their minds. She knows how to inject the right amount of vulnerability and confidence, while traditional intellectuals seem to speak from high horses.

Nevertheless, I understand the point of this article. When people visit the Valley, they typically want to talk to the “oracles” – successful venture capitalists, serial start-up founders, tech giants – hoping that they will catch an insight that will help them transform their perspective, or business. Even when I was in Singapore, events by technology superstars were oversubscribed. Institutions pay thousands of dollars to engage “thought leaders”.

I am not saying that what these folks have to offer is not valuable – all of us should be seeking to expand our perspectives by reading, listening, and networking. But often we put so much weight on what these successful people have to say that we fail to take our own ideas and perspectives seriously. If we cannot articulate our own perspectives, can we deeply interact with what these people are saying? Can we deliberately choose to reject some and accept others, or are we stuck at the level of repeating their quotes to each other, as if it is accepted wisdom?

The article suggests that the problem is thought leaders themselves (and the institutions that back them), but I think an associated problem lies within our personal control. As institutions and individuals, we need to be “thought leaders” in our own right – articulating clearly what we know, what we believe, our theory of change, our lens by which we view the world. Personally, writing this blog has made me a better learner; it helped me to separate the fluff from the substance and understand that I had a voice in this conversation – I was not a passive absorber of ideas. If more of us can articulate this, we can have better, deeper conversations, and we will not be captured by evangelical ideas that may have little relevance to what we are trying to achieve.

Ultimately, inequality has many shapes and forms. One of the characteristics of inequality is that it is self-perpetuating. The rich fortify their riches, the poor get left behind. Intellectual thought can have a similar dynamic. Those who talk a lot get affirmation and attention, which boosts their confidence. Those who underestimate their value lose confidence and become passive listeners. One of the ways to fight this is a democratization of ideas, where everyone feels their voice matters – because it does. This is why I encourage folks to write guest articles on my blog.

How do I start?

Many people have asked me how I started writing. The first step I took was admitting to myself that I knew something. No one knows everything, but everyone knows something. Think about your experiences at work, in school, in the home. Those are unique, and capture many valuable lessons for others. Those experiences have also shaped you and given you a lens by which you can approach a part of the world you want to understand more about.

For me, one of the lenses I view technology is through the problems I worked on for many years before I started in this field: equality in access to public services, sustainable financing, good governance, building communities. These were a jumping point for me to start learning and writing about technology. I also write about topics like leadership and change management, which I thought deeply about in the course of my work.

An offer

 

You may be thinking of writing your first article or making your first podcast, but you may not know where to start. If this is you, reach out to me via the “Contact” button. I’d love to help you think about how to get started, and walk with you on the way. The commitment you have to make is that within 2 weeks you will write your first article! I promise it is possible.

 

On my trip to Singapore in May, I was invited to host a panel on “The Future of Intelligent Mobility” at Innovfest Unbound. I was particularly excited to host it for two reasons. First, I was interested in contrasting the Asian context on future mobility, after spending 7 months studying the U.S. context; Second, I was given autonomy to curate the panel’s members and direction. The panelists were people I admire deeply, having known or worked with them prior.

We covered topics ranging from the future of the mobility industry, who should run and regulate mobility marketplaces, the impact of autonomous vehicles, and the strategic advantage of working in Singapore. 
An introduction to the panelists from left to right (I’m sad I didn’t get a better pic of the panellists looking at the camera! This one was taken by a friend in the audience).

1. Feng Yuan Liu, Director of Data Science at Govtech. Feng Yuan’s interest in transportation analytics was sparked when he worked in the Land Transport Authority. He has since built out an incredible team that serves the data science needs of the Singapore Government. Feng Yuan is interested in how digital technologies enable transportation systems to become evolutionary and ground-up – essentially an exercise in building community – compared to traditional centrally planned, static, fixed lines. Feng Yuan’s team launched a crowd-sourced mobility service, Beeline, a couple of years ago.
2. Doug Parker, Chief Operating Officer of Nutonomy, a self-driving car company started in Singapore, which is now also testing in Boston. Nutonomy’s mission is to drive the shared cars of tomorrow, and to make transportation as safe and efficient as possible.
3. Nick Jachowski, Chief Data Officer of SWAT, a start-up that offers on-demand, dynamically-routed bus services (think Uberpool/Grabshare, but for high occupancy vehicles). Its mission is to move the most amount of people with the least amount of vehicles for the greatest public good. Its underlying technologies are mobility optimization and dynamic routing.
4. Xinwei Ngiam, Director of Strategy at Grab, Southeast Asia’s premier ride sharing company. Xinwei works on “zero to one” projects in Grab, such as GrabHitch and Grabshuttle, where there were no previous business models. Grab’s goal is to provide many different mobility options so that in dense urban cities like Singapore, people will no longer see the need to own a car.

Sharing the key insights with you here.

Part 1: Future of the Mobility Market

1. The mobility market is in a phase of “a thousand flowers blooming”, as new entrants vie for a piece of the pie, and incumbents seek to transform themselves. Some have estimated that it will be a $5 Trillion market over the next 5 years. What is the future of the market for mobility services? Will there be some sort of saturation and consolidation?

Xin Wei (Grab): The truth is that there are as many business models as there are use cases. We will see many more companies come up. For example, bike sharing is big in China will hit our shores. Some will succeed, many will fail. But overall this is very good for the consumer. We should allow as many different options and use cases to be tested out as possible.

The truth is that there are as many business models as there are use cases.

Doug (Nutonomy): At least for autonomous vehicles, there is lots of room for new players who can work on research and experimentation, as many issues have not been solved.

I would say that the future of the industry lies in partnerships, not consolidation. Nutonomy’s vision is to drive the shared cars of tomorrow. To do this, we are partnering with Peugot (who will supply the cars) and Grab, (which has expertise in car-sharing). There are two other car-sharing partners which Nutonomy has not revealed.

2. If we have lots of new mobility options, what happens to the commuter’s experience? Will it become increasingly fragmented?

Feng Yuan (Govtech): Seamlessness from the commuter’s perspective is key. We must remember that transportation is a “derived demand” – a commuter’s ultimate demand is to get to a place, not to ride a vehicle. So what people want is the seamless transport experience. If we do it well, people will be willing to move away from the notion of personal car ownership.

We must remember that transportation is a “derived demand” – a commuter’s ultimate demand is to get to a place, not to ride a vehicle. So what people want is the seamless transport experience.

The whole idea of integration and seamless transport is not new in Singapore. It has been baked into the psyche of Singapore’s transport planners. You currently use an EZ link card on both the trains and buses. Other cities have different tickets for different modes. 

What is interesting now is the blurring of lines between private and public transport, and the need to integrate the experience between the two. 

Traditionally, the Government has provided public transport infrastructure in the form of new rail lines and bus stops. Now, we have to think about the digital infrastructure that will allow the mobility ecosystem to thrive.

Traditionally, the Government has provided public transport infrastructure in the form of new rail lines and bus stops. Now, we have to think about the digital infrastructure that will allow the mobility ecosystem to thrive.

To achieve seamlessness between different modes, it is important that there is an open platform which allows different players to integrate. We also need to enable data and information sharing between players, to enable seamlessness. When we launched Beeline, we designed it such that all APIs in Beeline are open. This allows a coordination point for systems to integrate around.

Doug (Nutonomy): In the future, there will be many different providers of mobility services plugged into platforms like Grab or Googlemaps. Using a single platform, people can pick their options based on waiting and commute time, for example. Nutonomy’s question is how we can get a fair share of market – we believe that autonomous vehicles will allow us to scale up our services quickly, and that will give us an advantage.

Xinwei (Grab): Some people call this a “Mobility Marketplace”.

Feng Yuan, do you think Google or the Government should build this marketplace? Once you have a marketplace, new liability issues emerge. For example, if someone sells an illegal service on eBay, what are eBay’s liabilities? This surfaces new issues for the Government.

Feng Yuan (Govtech): The Government is happy to allow the private sector to innovate. But from our perspective, what is important is whether it will be a truly open platform, where open competition takes place. The idea of a marketplace is to allow people to plug into it easily. It cannot be closed off.

Issues around marketplaces will evolve. In the early stages of eBay, there were questions about liability too, but those are resolved. We willl tackle the issues as they come. The question is what is the value of marketplace and who will be the one to drive it. We are keen to see how we can encourage a mobility marketplace but are still exploring the options.

What is important is whether it will be a truly open platform, where open competition takes place.

Part 2: The Future and Impact of Autonomous Vehicles

1. Let’s turn our attention to the topic of autonomy. Doug, tell us about Nutonomy’s next steps, now that you are testing in Singapore and Boston.

Doug (Nutonomy): What many autonomous vehicle companies are working on does not look like true urban driving like we see in the One North test circuit, where cars have to queue, bypass a construction site, and deal with jay-walkers. Nutonomy’s technology is uniquely suited to urban driving. We believe the best use case is urban taxis which can drive anywhere in an urban environment.

Singapore is a unique first market because of the strong Government support, geography and people. Boston may have the most complicated driving scenario in America. For one, it has the highest insurance claims. In the future we want to test with more cultures and road conditions, to ensure that our software is global and takes into account cultural information. Then we will scale across the globe with partners such as Peugot and Grab.

2. You mentioned the importance of cultural information. Given different cultural contexts, is self driving technology scalable across borders?

Doug (Nutonomy): That is a great question. In Singapore, drivers are attentive, but margins between cars are slim. In the US, drivers are less precise, but margins are wide. We need to learn market by market. One of the hardest pieces is negotiating with the human. At One-North there is a junction where people jaywalk (cross illegally). Just the other day, a group of teenagers started playing with the car – stepping forward and backwards in front of the car to get it to stop and go. They did not stop until we gestured to them. It is not a scalable solution, but it is part of every day urban driving so it is important for us to tackle it.

3. Nick and Xinwei, your companies work on the commuter-facing portion of mobility services. Tell us how your business model will evolve with the advent of autonomous vehicles?

Nick (SWAT): We designed our company for the autonomous future. We started off by thinking: what is the transport landscape going to look like 10 years from now? What type of tech will support that future, but work right now?

If you think about it, all of our cars today are autonomous. Drivers are in the car independently and autonomously making decisions about where to go, and when. This is a non-optimizable system. The future of autonomous cars is that you can combine all the vehicles into a hive mind, and they can work together to solve the problems your city has. Autonomy at the vehicle level allows us to make transportation efficient for both the individual and the city.

The future of autonomous cars is that you can combine all the vehicles into a hive mind, and they can work together to solve the problems your city has.

While what we are doing now is providing dynamically routed buses, SWAT’s underlying technologies – mobility optimization and dynamic routing, will form the basis of optimizing autonomous vehicles at the city-level.

Xinwei: I would be lying if I said we set up the company with autonomy in mind. A few years ago when Grab was established, the idea of hailing a car with a mobile phone was strange, which shows how quickly technology evolves.

My guess is that in self driving, public acceptance is going to lag behind technology readiness. We are going to start by using it in smaller, more acceptable cases and then transitioning to widespread uses. The first few use cases will be for remote locations where drivers don’t go because they don’t get a return fare, or serving the transportation needs of rehabilitation or old folks’ homes. These niche use cases are not well-served by current business models, but the economics could work with an autonomous vehicle. We will start there, and slowly we can move towards a fully autonomous future where the efficiencies Nick talked about will come to fruition.

The first few use cases will be for remote locations where drivers don’t go because they don’t get a return fare, or serving the transportation needs of rehabilitation or old folks’ homes.

Part 3: Why Singapore? 1

1. We have five minutes left. To close us off, I want to ask everyone: “why Singapore?” – is this a strategic market for you? How does it fit into your international expansion plans?

Doug: Three-quarters of our team is in Singapore and most of our fleet is in Singapore. One of the reasons is great tech talent, for example, coming out of the Singapore-MIT alliance. Many of our robotics experts came from there. Computer science talent is also strong. Second, there is clear government support and no regulatory blocks. Third, it has a great marketplace for ride-hailing because of the high taxi penetration. Fourth, it has great roads to test out autonomous cars.

One of the reasons is great tech talent, for example, coming out of the Singapore-MIT alliance.

Nick: When we were setting up our company we studied many markets, but they all paled in comparison to Singapore. The first reason is that Singapore has the lowest car penetration in any major developed country. Less than 10% of individuals own cars, the vast majority take public transport or taxis. If we want to launch some sort of new mobility technology, there is no better place than Singapore to give it a try.

The first reason is that Singapore has the lowest car penetration in any major developed country. Less than 10% of individuals own cars, the vast majority take public transport or taxis.

Besides the high density of commuters, there is also a high cost differential between taxi and bus ($1.50 for a bus, and $20-$30 for a taxi depending on your journey). It suggests there is a massive gap that people aren’t filling, and a big canvas that’s open for companies to come in and provide more solutions for commuters.

Feng Yuan: Nick makes a great point about the economics of density. In transportation, the economics of density matter more than economics of scale. I would say that Singapore is a great place for two reasons. First, Singaporeans have high expectations and demand for quality. We once asked ourselves what is a reasonable punctuality score for buses? In some cities, 20 mins is acceptable. In Japan, 1 min late is too late. Singapore is more like Japan because of our high stress urban environment.

Second, there is a big commitment from the Government with Smart Nation Initiative. There is a strong call to action to use tech and data to improve mobility. We can move faster as a small city, and there alignment from Government on that.

Xinwei: Singapore is very different from Grab’s other markets, one prime example being cash versus cashless penetration. But it is important to us for several reasons.

First, the standard of public transport is so high that if you want to deliver something people use, you need to exceed that standard. It is an aspirational benchmark which we can then apply to other markets.

Second, there is a lot of regulatory clarity. For example, when I was working on Grabhitch, we had clarity on how many carpool rides each driver could give a day. We also introduced fixed-fare taxis, and without Government support we would not have been able to do that.

Finally, Singapore is probably one of the only cities in the world where the newest technologies can be tested out. The Government has an open stance towards these technologies. Singapore is a lab and incubator for things we can see the rest of the region and the world working towards.

Singapore is a lab and incubator for things we can see the rest of the region and the world working towards.

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End

 

On my last work day of my trip to Singapore, I caught up with a boss and mentor of many years, the Head of Civil Service. One of the questions he asked me was where I thought AI has the greatest potential. With 3 seconds to think, I said: where we have the biggest problems, and where we have data (or the potential to collect it quickly, at scale).

I shared the areas I am passionate about:

1.    Skills and Education. In an era of rapid job displacement, how can we constantly re-skill and place people in emerging jobs, at scale, without additional manpower resources? This is traditionally done through centralized planning, but the speed of change will render this approach ineffective. To achieve scale we must empower individuals, employers and training providers through better information, better matching, customized motivation and pathways – these can all be supported by AI, but there are other essential pieces to the puzzle. For example, we need a common Skills Framework that combines top-down skills trees with bottom up self-reporting of skills. We need to help everyone use the same language in describing skills: educators, students, workers, employers. Linkedin and Google are already working on parts of this story. It is an area ripe for public-private partnerships.

2.    Transportation. How can we optimize the flow of people, goods and services at the country level, while helping individuals feel that they benefit? Autonomous vehicles solve many problems, but one important objective is enabling all our vehicles to be optimized as a system, rather than as individual units. AI will help us optimize, but ultimately we need to deal with a very human issue: individual commuters who feel that they are sacrificing something for system-level optimization. The crux is shifting user preferences – incentives and policy complements will be just as important as the technology.

3.   Healthcare. One of the biggest problems in healthcare is enhancing quality while containing cost. Enabled by AI, how can clinical and policy interventions for a population be more upstream, targeted and outcomes-based? Imagine the benefits if we can prevent the onset of disease, manage disease before it reaches the extremely costly stage, and administer interventions based on personal – rather than general – outcomes.

But the Devil is really in the details

With the proliferation of data and advanced AI techniques, the use cases for prediction, optimization and customization are infinite.

However, if we want AI to truly deliver impact, the devil is in the details of implementation and organizational change. My current job gives me a wide view of all the different technology activities going on in Singapore. On my trip, I touched base with a wide range of folks working in technology domains – health, energy, transport, digital government and ports. I also had in-depth conversations with people who were building capabilities in the technology sector – creating a critical mass of industry capabilities, establishing a data sharing governance framework, enhancing talent development. We talked about the challenges of their work.

I was reminded that lofty goals inspire, but equally important are the small steps that will enable AI (and other technologies, for that matter) to be deployed for the maximum public good. This includes:

• People and processes. Our workforce has to trust and use new technologies. This will not come easy, if technology is perceived to be threatening or complex. I saw first-hand how a pharmacy in one of our hospitals introduced robots to sort and pack medicines. Not a single pharmacist lost their job in the process – they were retrained to invest more time in customer-facing roles.
• Governance and organizational changes. Decisions around technology investments need to be made by domain-area experts in a far more rapid and iterative way, rather than by traditional hierarchies in long sales-cycles – this is not how Governments are typically structured and we must change; There is a natural tension between delivery and experimentation in a Government’s technology agenda, since resources are finite. There is also a chicken-and-egg issue which lies in having ready use cases before collecting data, and collecting data
• Societal changes. Huge behavioral changes are needed to achieve any vision. How can we make the technology-enabled option so attractive that people prefer it over the options they are used to? We often underestimate the power of inertia. Tech companies have shown that clever user design, incentives and achieving a network effect at scale can help. This is a gold standard. Governments have a lot to learn
  

  On the need for strong partnership between the Tech and Gov communities

Back to the three areas where I believe we have the biggest problems (and hence AI can make the biggest impact). Health, education and skills, and transportation are areas where tech and government cannot afford to work without each other:

–      We will get the best outcomes if we make these shifts at scale – if say, an entire city or country is on-board. Companies have the technological expertise, countries (at least some of us) have the mandate to bring different stakeholders together.

–      Without the right policy complements, technology won’t achieve the desired impact: autonomous vehicles may lead to more congestion, better information on personal health may lead to over-consumption and cost inflation. I write more about it here.

My visit home strengthened my conviction that the government and technology communities need to work much closer together to deploy technology for public good: as we introduce new, tech-driven ways to solve big societal problems, tech companies and Governments should co-design the surrounding policy and regulatory environment and put in place incentives, nudges and public education. In addition to clever AI techniques, all these pieces have to be in place to achieve true impact.

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I’m interested: if you were asked the same question (where does AI have the greatest potential), how would you respond?

 

 

This week, I hit my sixth month in the Valley. In October last year, we packed up our lives into suitcases, took our 5-month old on a 20 hour plane ride, and landed at Stanford University, where we both started new gigs: my husband, a PhD in statistics at Stanford, and I, setting up the Smart Nation and Govtech office in the U.S., working on partnerships, strategy & research, engagement & communications of Singapore’s tech agenda.

It’s been exciting but exhausting to be a start-up parent, start-up at work, and start-up socially, leaving all the comforts of knowing and being known back in Singapore. This is a more personal post, but I wanted to share five things I’ve learned about starting life in the Valley, since people often ask. I don’t think I’ve got it right all the time, but I thought I’d pen down some thoughts my six-month checkpoint, and see how it evolves over time.

Regardless of the reason that brings you to the Valley, I hope you find this useful.

1. Be Generous

When I arrived in the Valley, I hardly knew anyone, save for a few college friends (most of them stayed on the East Coast). I was nervous about building up a network for my job. Again and again, I was surprised by the generosity of people I met. I told them about my objectives, and they generously made introductions and shared their insights.

Generosity is the ethos of the Valley. How is this different from other places I’ve lived in? I won’t deny that the natural human instinct is to ask “if I help this person, what’s in it for me?”. Some people are risk averse when it comes to this question, not helping unless they are sure they will get something out of it. In the Valley, people are more willing to take a risk that they will gain nothing in the short-term from that specific interaction, but that their generosity will come around one day.

Always pay forward generosity. As I go about my day, I keep in mind the people I’ve met and the professional and personal interests they’ve shared. I keep a look out not just for my own interests, but theirs as well. Nothing makes me happier than to help people to connect: to see minds meet, interests aligned, new opportunities explored. I’ve been lucky to facilitate many of these in the past six months, both within the Valley, and across the U.S. and Asia. I’ve experienced “what goes around comes around” first-hand.

2. Be Clear and Concrete About What You Bring 

While generosity is pervasive, I urge people not to take this for granted. Silicon Valley is a prime destination for “innovation tourism”. I have had many people approach me to link them up for “learning trips”. In general, people in the Silicon Valley are game to meet new people and share what they know. But people are also very busy. When I make an introduction, I like to be sure that the person on both ends will benefit – whether it is a new insight, a new partnership or investment opportunity, or access to new networks.

Hence, my second learning is to be very concrete about what you bring to the table when you reach out to someone. It need not be a fanciful effort. Share about the idea you are exploring professionally, or personally. Share about your (our your organisation’s) experience, and how it might align with the person’s interests. If you have details about collaborations that the conversation could result in, share that as well. Be upfront about the opportunities and uncertainties.

3. Find your Voice

The third thing I learned was the importance of finding your voice. People in the Valley are often genuinely interested in you as a person – beyond your professional capacity. What was your journey? Why do you do what you do? I boil it down to a natural curiosity; a bent towards learning from others’ experiences.

I’m not one to naturally write, or get in front of an audience. But I started writing (www.techandpublicgood.com) and speaking at conferences, inspired by the many conversations I had with people who asked me deeper questions, after we had finished talking about work. Some pointed out that my eyes lit up when I talked about how technology could be used for public good, and how my experiences working on education, poverty and housing issues shaped my views. When I communicate on public platforms, none of it feels forced because these are issues that resonate with me.

 Finding your voice has a snowball effect for building relationships. As I wrote and spoke, people with common interests contacted me from around world – all over the U.S., Australia, China, Singapore, the UK, Rwanda, Korea, Germany. My blog has had over 10,000 readers over a few months, which surprised me because I the content is not exactly “light”. People who both agreed and disagreed with my views reached out to debate. One of my favourite things: having start-up founders share their passion for working on social issues (such as elderly caregiving, pre-school, workforce development), and, based on my experience in these areas – being able to give good advice on the challenges and opportunities.

By finding my voice, I’ve also been able to play the role of a bridge, facilitating conversations and link-ups between governments, civil society and tech founders on issues at the intersection of tech and public good. It drives contacts towards my work as well.

4. Find Time to Think and Invest Deeply 

My husband recently commented that being back in school for his PhD has been far more mentally tiring than working. Here’s what we concluded: when we work, we exercise many different capabilities, some of which require less intellectual effort. Especially when starting up, there are a million things to do, people to meet, process kinks to iron out. It’s easy to be swept away by the operations.

To make space for deep thinking, I’ve identified several areas where I have no ready answers, but which I think would be super impactful for Singapore if we get right. Every week, I set aside a few hours to work on these issues. I’ve developed hypotheses, and have a small circle of people I meet regularly to exchange ideas with. One such area is the policy, technology and data needed to tackle job displacement at scale.

Setting aside time for these things takes a little faith because you aren’t entirely sure how it will contribute to the bottom-line, or what is expected of you. But I’ve applied this principle in every job since I started my career, and I can assure you it does. In my first job, I felt strongly about equalising opportunities in pre-school education, and worked on a small side project reviewing all academic literature on the outcomes of preschool education. Because it was the right time, it became one of the key impetus for major preschool reforms, which I had the chance to work on subsequently. 

5. Keep Your Perspective 

Finally, find ways to keep a broader perspective of the world. One of my best friends from college left the Valley shortly before I arrived. He expressed relief to be moving out of a place that was so “uniformed” – all about tech, largely upwardly-mobile and highly-educated. Another recently told me she plans to move permanently to Rwanda, because you can’t avoid the realities of human suffering the same way you can in a developed country – even more so the Silicon Valley.

Especially with the 2016 Presidential Election behind us, we all realise we live in a bubble. Even after moments of self-reflection, it’s tough to keep a broader perspective: My news and social media feeds, meetings and calls are overwhelmingly tech-related.

In the next quarter, our family wants to get more involved in community service (though admittedly, with a one-year old, it’s harder to get out!). In the mean time, one of the things I do is to make sure I read a book in a completely different field every few weeks. My two favourites this year: “Hillbilly Elegy” – a compelling narrative on the social issues facing middle America – and  “My Promised Land: The Triumph and Tragedy of Israel”, which helped me reflect on geopolitics, race, and foreign policy.

Back at You 

As I write this, I’ve realised that these need not apply just to starting life in the Valley. They could be applied to starting out in any new place, or even to building a new network in your existing home. Many of you have experiences that far exceed mine. Would love to hear your thoughts!

Also, I am back in Singapore for the month of May and would be happy to catch any of you there.

I loved this article by David Gilford on how we should think about Smart City technology. He captures simply what matters, and why – from the technology perspective. Enjoy!

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The phrase “smart city” conjures up images of gleaming new infrastructure, from intelligent street lights to NASA-style command centers. In reality, however, technology’s biggest impact on urban life is much less flashy.

Rather than betting on VR headsets or other currently popular interfaces, communities that invest in six underlying capabilities are best positioned for the longer term:

1. Recognition

• Allowing personalized recognition between people and systems

In the popular imagination, small towns are where “everybody knows your name,” sharing goods and spaces without a second thought. The urban bike rack may seem like the polar opposite, yet programs like Citi Bike entrust strangers to pick up objects worth hundreds of dollars and drop them off across town. Such systems recognize individuals and extend privileges accordingly, using technology from biometrics to token-based authentication to enable the sharing economy. If sharing one’s home is an expression of faith in fellow citizens, Airbnb is an early example of how technology expands circles of trust, bringing aspects of small communities to even the largest cities.

2. Location

• Providing context-aware, location-based information for efficient and engaged movement

Mobile phones with ubiquitous GPS have nearly rendered the feeling of being lost obsolete, yet the built environment is only beginning to understand where people want to go. While autonomous vehicles dominate headlines, simply understanding people’s locations and desires offers both a big economic and social payoff. Ridesharing services like Via blur the distinction between private and public transportation, effectively creating “on-demand buses.” Similarly, by analyzing millions of data points from Amsterdam to Singapore, the MIT Senseable City Lab estimates that intelligently matching riders could reduce the total number of taxi trips by as much as 40 percent.

3. Sensing

• Observing, understanding and anticipating the world around us, from the movement of people to the quality of our environment

Sensors are hidden but ubiquitous components of the urban landscape. Beyond piecemeal installations, communities are recognizing the benefits of a holistic approach. The Array of Things project is deploying environmental sensors across Chicago, aiming to be a “fitness tracker” that captures and analyzes data impacting quality of life, including air quality, climate and noise pollution. New York City’s recently announced Neighborhood Innovation Labs take this a step further, partnering with communities, government, technologists and educators to solve locally-identified challenges, starting in Brownsville, Brooklyn.

4. Transactions

• Creating secure, convenient methods to pay for goods and services

Blockchain, best known as the technology behind bitcoin, is finding unexpected applications in the built environment. The Brooklyn Microgrid shows how solar power can be shared across a neighborhood, improving sustainability and resilience to disruptions. By facilitating decentralized, low-cost and secure transactions, blockchain empowers citizens to participate in what had previously been the exclusive purview of large utilities. Such peer-to-peer approaches offer the potential to transform other urban markets, from ridesharing to real estate.

5. Connectivity

• Linking people to services, resources, amenities and each other

In a world where internet-connected devices outnumber humans, connectivity is essential to competitiveness. Through LinkNYC, my company, Intersection, is replacing old payphone infrastructure and bringing free gigabit wireless to New York City, where nearly 20 percent of residents lack broadband at home. Though the kiosks themselves are becoming a fixture of the streetscape, LinkNYC’s biggest impact may be invisible, with each unit supporting hundreds of simultaneous users. Since launching last year, over 1.3 million individuals have registered to use the WiFi, with over 5 million sessions occurring each week. As access to high-speed broadband is democratized, more citizens will be able to fully participate in their community’s growth.

6. Integration

• Enabling different systems, information sources and data types to work together

As the examples above demonstrate, no technology operates in isolation. Just as smartphone apps connect with each other, physical systems need interoperability. Unlike consumer applications, however, systems in the built environment are harder to interconnect, from elevators to energy systems. Cities and real estate developers that overcome traditional biases towards closed and proprietary systems can provide a platform for others to build upon and improve.

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To improve people’s lives, technology needs to serve people, not vice versa. Questions of accessibility and equity must remain at the forefront as communities envision responsive neighborhoods. While no one can predict what technologies will dominate next year’s headlines, places that embrace these foundational capabilities will be ready for whatever comes next. Beyond simply being “smart” today, such communities enable all of us to collaborate in building better environments tomorrow.

David Gilford leads Intersection’s Connected Communities practice, helping municipalities, real estate developers and public-private partnerships create connected, responsive communities. Prior to joining Intersection, Gilford held multiple leadership positions with the City of New York, most recently as Vice President for Urban Innovation & Sustainability at the New York City Economic Development Corporation.

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