World Table Tennis Champions – Singapore

    WOW! The Singapore Table Tennis Team won the World Table Tennis Team Championships beating defending champions China 3-1. Congratulations to our players Wang Yuegu, Fang Tienwei and Sun Beibei!!

 

But wait a minute the names don’t sound very Singaporeans, indeed they are China imports, players who were enticed with money to play for Singapore! So unlike other Singaporeans who are rejoicing at this victory, I feel it is a victory of "China B Team". I also feel that winning competitions through the hiring of "mercenaries" is not a notable acheivement, simply because if this is so why just stop at table tennis? With our National wealth we can easily buy the best players in the world and win every major international sports tournament for Singapore – we can simply buy our way to win the World Cup in football, have a world champion in F1, and even buy Usain Bolt and have a Singaporean as the fastest man in the world!!!

 

 I have written about this before when Singapore won the Table Tennis silver medal in the Beijing Olympics and I still share the same thoughts, as follows:

 

The point here is what I always believe – it is not just about winning how you win is just as important, so some lessons applicable to the business world as follows:

– Build and develop people. It is no pride to succeed in business when your team does not include people you have developed.

– No matter how small your base is you can always find and develop talent. One of the arguments for Singapore importing sporting experts to win medal is that the population base is too small and as such it is difficult to find the talent. This is a poor argument, in the Olympics example, Jamaica a country with population less than Singapore won 6 gold, 3 silver and 2 bronze medals!!

– The fact that other people are doing it is not a reason. The argument to use imported talent in the Singapore team is that other countries do the same so it is alright!! In the business world, if all companies buy talent from competitors it is not an excuse for you not to develop people.

-Only developed talent will motivate others to acheive. There is an argument that supports the use of imported talent, which is that using these talents to win the medal will motivate other Singaporeans to strive for sporting excellence. I beg to differ and cannot see this happening especially when the talents speak in a different accent and cannot even speak some English our common language. Contrast the table tennis team with another Singapore China import, swimmer Tao Li who came in 5th in the Butterfly event – even though she was not a medalitst I believe more Singaporeans can be motivated by her as she was here since she was 12 and she speaks like a Singaporean. So to build a winning team development of in-house talent will feed on itself and will "incent" and motivate more people to better themselves as they can believe they have the chance to be a champion.

 

Development of talent is the most important role of the manager, look at your own team if all of them are already "expert" when you hired them then you are failing in a very important aspect of your job.

 

 

So since most of you are by now in upper management jobs, the question is posed to you, have you started developing talent?

Deep Purple

 

 

"Smoke on the Water" performed by the original artists, Deep Purple. I am sure most of you have heard the song, given that the song is covered by the Troublemakers in a few of our parties.

 

The video was from a recent concert by Deep Purple here in Singapore. I went to watch the concert and honestly was disappointed by their performance. Whilst the technical skills of the band is still there, there was a obvious lack of energy and drive associated with rock music, as you can see from this video. In fact they sounded more like a commercial pop band than a rock band with a journalist commenting that "they have morphed into a tribute band". Well, I suppose one cannot expect too much from a band whose members are mostly now in their sixties. Perhaps they should stop performing and leave us with the happy memories of their more aggressive rock like performance in the past.

 

But therein lies the point that I have always been making, when we reach a certain point in our career it comes a point we must leave it all behind. It is pathetic to see people hanging on to their careers and jobs when they are obviously no longer relevant, just like a boxer who is past his prime and continues to box and gets himself all beaten up trying to reclaim past glories. It is sad to see executives hanging on to make that little bit more money that really doesn’t make a difference. Even sadder still to see executives hanging on because they think they are indispensible, by hanging on they are occupying a position and depriving some younger person of an opportunity. The worst are executives hanging on as they enjoy the adulation accorded them by their staff, because they can’t differentiate the adulation is accorded to the "office" and not the person!!

 

For me, I had always realize that one day the curtains will come down and I have to leave the corporate world – so when the time came, I took the bow and rode off into the sunset with great memories and no regrets. Hope you can graciously take the bow too when the time comes!

Mount Everest

   This is Mount Everest. I am sure everyone knows it is highest mountain in the world, way above 8000 metres.

 

I read recently in the newspapers that there are disputes on the height between China and Nepal, given the height of Everest one would assume the dispute must be over at least 100 meters to be meaningful, right? Well read the article, excerpts as follows:

 

"After decades of argument, China and Nepal have finally found a solution to their long running dispute over the height of Mount Everest. The world’s highest mountain lies on the border between the 2 countries and they have disagreed for years over its exact height. Nepal measures the mountain at 8848 metres – insisting it is nearly four metres taller than China’s measurements claim.

 

Officials from the two neighbours have reached a compromise at talks in Kathmandu – agreeing that the two measurements refer to different things – one to the height of Everest’s rock and the other to the height of its snowcap. …."

 

My thoughts on this argument; it appears China and Nepal does not have any other major problems to deal with but to engage in arguing over this miniscule issue. The difference they are arguing over of 4 metres represents less the 0.05% of the height of the Mountain. Instead of engaging in decades of argument, why not split the difference by averaging it and both agree that the height is 8846 metres, so both are wrong by a mere 2 metres. Again, given the height of Everest how does the 2 parties know they got their height right anyway?? Further other than the officials and scientist does anybody care whether Everest is 8848 metre or 8844 meters?

 

The business parallel for this is that I find the finance department in organisations will spend huge amount and time plus long hours to work out to the exact last thousand of dollars the business forecasts. Business forecasts are a prediction of the future and there is no exactly right number, the assumptions are more important than huge spreadsheets that churns out an arithmatecally correct number. Very often a "back of envelope" calculation taking less than half an hour gives a better estimate than those generate after many hours of toiling. Yet from my experience, finance department continue to take great pride in their approach and will come out with forecast profits of, say, $17.345 million – and they will get very upset if I round it to $18 million or the business head of that unit rounds down to $17 million!!! Just like the Everest dispute, this kind of difference is not significant enough particularly in forecasting which is a prediction of the future given a given set of actions and events which may or may not hold true.

 

What’s worse is after toiling long hours and coming with the exact profit forecast which adds up nicely, I found out that the numbers usually doesn’t hold up to some common sense questions on the assumptions!!!

 

Anyway, the point I am trying to make here is in forecasts the assumptions are more important, there are no exactness in the numbers so stop spending long hours churning it. Just like the height of Mount Everest most times it is not worth the effort to get that kind of exactness because it is not that important nor critical.

 

Further, in life we argue over many things and lose our temper in the process – if you look back many times the issue that we fight over is merely the equivalent of the 4 meters difference in the height of Mount Everest!!