Talent Development & Management...

I like the blog "Dare to Dream & Dare to fulfil", should be from James? (BTW, as it is a shared blog, please remember to sign off...else don't know who's the author).

Yes, we need a dream and we need to act on it. Else, a dream remains as a dream. So, we potentially have some entrepreneurs among us...James, don't forget give us all a VIP card when you start your cafe..

Having a dream of our own is extremely important. Having coaches around us to help us along would shorten our journey to get there.

Yesterday, I attended my son's Parent-Child day at Dunman High school where the secondary one students organizes the event on their own, putting up their works for parents to view, performance to entertain parents as well as video clips of their life in school. It was amazing to see how these 13 years old can pull together the event on their own and the many talented ones among them. Some play piano beautifully, some played ErHu, some came up to share their e-Portolio in 2 languages etc. Their HOD of Level 1 gave an inspiring speech on how we should always be improving ourselves. A 13 year old you should be better than the 12 years old you. How we need our love ones, friends and teachers around us to guide us, give frank opinion in constructive ways to help us improve. She cited an incident that happened to her at an important event. She was attending an important event where all the who's who are around and she enthusiastically go round networking, shaking everyone's hand only to find out later when she went to the ladies, that she had a vegetable stuck in one side of her teeth and a chilli flake on the other. Can imagine how embarrassed she must have felt! Her morale of the story is that, sometimes, it is better to be frank and upfront to a person to help the person along rather than be "nice" but not contributing to the other person's growth.

I am happy to see my son standing there, in front of the class as the emcee of the event (though again, I have a couple of IDP for him after that..Ahem..) and being there for the event again re-enforces the fact that the environment of our kids today has changed a lot. They are now more articulate, more creative, tech savvy and also, has to be doing a lot more to be deem as "successful". Competition in future for them would not only come from their peers in Singapore but also the Chinese & Indians who are growing leaps and bounds.

I was reading a book written by the CEO of Capitaland "Building for People to build people". He is a very inspiring leader who consistently wrote Emails to his staff almost every other Sunday to share his views for his company or view on life. He wrote a lot of how China has developed and moving ahead in amazing speed. How we had bring our world class ideas into China via our investments and how they had learned what we took 35 years in a mere 5 years! While our fellow Singaporeans can reject job offer due to travelling distance from home to office, he saw Chinese tried all creative ways to earn a living including a young man in a toilet of a restaurant, giving should massages to people who are "doing their business", handing the guest a towel to dry their hands, turning off the tap for him after he washed his hands to earn a couple of dollars. What he saw, often bug him as a Singaporean and he urged his fellow colleagues to be always on their toes in order to stay relevant.

Tonight, as Singaporeans, we would be proud to view our Table tennis players in the Olympic finals. Note that these are all "Imported Talents" from China. Nothing wrong with that and in fact, we needed to do that as it is impossible to grow "organically" within our little red dot. So, to stay relevant, we have to ensure we continuously improve in whatever we are striving towards. Be it as a key player in our organization, to achieve your dreams whatever it maybe.

The important thing is to ensure we keep improving. Worldclass entertainment company like Cirque Du soleil still do their post-morterm after every single performance to review what had they done well, what can they improve and what else can they break through. The keeps them going and stay at the top. It is these kind of deligence and commitement to excellence that maintain a Worldclass organization at the top.

I can never forget an experience that I had 10 years ago in hosting Mr Lee Kuan Yew at our video conferencing studio for his presentation to a group of overseas delegate. Even with his kind of experience and at that level of expertise, he insisted on having a rehersal a day before the real event. He came down on the day before to understand the environment, where the visualiser would be, whether the ambient is comfortable enough to ensure he can deliver his best etc. Every detail was looked into personally, including if the height of the visualiser is right to ensure the audience are engaged properly at eye level. That really taught me a lesson about the effort and commitement one must have to ensure the delivery of a piece of excellent work that one can always be proud of.

So, we should always remind ourselves whereever we are, whatever we are doing, to push for continuously improvement and growth. If we are not improving, working in a place for 10 years would be equavalent to a worker in the job for 1 year but repeating it 10 time over. Scary, isn't it?

So, make sure that you are growing every minute. I would expect every team member to come forth to a discussion with his or her proposal,in overcoming an obstacle, in pushing ourselves crossing the chasm, in solving a headache etc. You can never grow if you come with a problem and expect the bosses to solve. We see a problem, we own it, we solve it with advice and assistance from our bosses, peers and co-workers. It is through such a process that we stretch ourselves and GROW...

Geok Chwee
17 Aug 2008