Corporate Life, Columns, The Today Paper, Work and Life

How Friendly is too Friendly?

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Newspaper column in Today on March 1, 2008.

We all want to be the boss. At least some of us want to be the big boss at some, hopefully not-too-distant, future. It is good to be the boss. However, it takes quite a bit to get there. It takes credentials, maturity, technical expertise, people skills, communication and articulation, not to mention charisma and connections. Even with all the superior qualities, being a boss is tough. Being a good boss is even tougher; it is a tricky balancing act. One tricky question is, how friendly can you get with your team? […]

Humor, The Today Paper, Columns, French

Sophistication

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10 of 12 in Popular

How to market sophistication, a la francaise! Newspaper column in Today on 5 Jan 2008.
Sophistication is a French invention. The French are masters when it comes to nurturing, and more importantly, selling sophistication.

Columns, The Today Paper, Environment

Human Virus

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A frank, but strange, look at global warming. Are we a virus on the earth? And is the global warming a bout of fever? Published in the Singaporean newspaper, Today, on 1 Dec 2008.

[…] The end result of a viral infection is always gloomy. Either the host succumbs or the virus gets beaten by the host’s immune systems. If we are the virus, both these eventualities are unpalatable. We don’t want to kill the Earth. And we certainly don’t want to be exterminated by the Earth. But those are the only possible outcomes of our viral-like activity here. It is unlikely that we will get exterminated; we are far too sophisticated for that. In all likelihood, we will make our planet uninhabitable. We may, by then, have our technological means of migrating to other planetary systems. In other words, if we are lucky, we may be contagious! […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Corporate Life

Rumour Mills

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On how to handle rumors at the work place. Newspaper column in Today on 27 Oct. 2007

[…] There is a city underground. Parallel to the world of corporate memos and communication meetings, this rumour city trades information, often generating it as needed. […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Corporate Life

Knowledge Silos

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Newspaper column in Today on 29 Sept. 2007.

[…] Isn’t there a danger lurking behind our habit of demanding super specialized silos of knowledge? One obvious danger is the loss of synergy and potential innovation. A case in point — a particle physicist at the European Organization for Nuclear Research (CERN) faces the problem of accessing various files on different computers and networks. Being conversant in computing issues, the physicist devices a nice way of describing the file (or, as it is known now, the resource) and suddenly the first URL (Universal Resource Locator) is born. The rest is history — we have the World Wide Web, the Internet. Fifteen years later, you have e-commerce and YouTube! […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Work and Life, Corporate Life

Stress and a Sense of Proportion

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Newspaper column in Today on 20 Oct. 2007.

How can we manage stress, given that it is unavoidable in our corporate existence? Common tactics against stress include exercise, yoga, meditation, breathing techniques, reprioritizing family etc. To add to this list, I have my own secret weapons to battle stress that I would like to share with you. These weapons may be too potent; so use them with care. […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Work and Life, Corporate Life

Internet Reading

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Newspaper column in Today on 15 Sept. 2007.

[…] In high school, I used logarithm tables to work out results in physics and chemistry experiments. Calculators were not allowed. Though inconvenient, this practice honed my arithmetic skills — skills that calculators and spreadsheets have eroded by now. Similar erosion is taking place in our reading skills as well. We don’t read to retain information or knowledge any more. We search, scan, locate keywords, browse and bookmark. The Internet is doing to our reading habits what the calculator did to our arithmetic abilities. […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Corporate Life

To Know or Not To Know

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Newspaper column in Today on 8 Aug, 2007.

Technical knowledge is not always a good for you in the modern workplace. Unless you are careful, others will take advantage of your expertise and dump their responsibilities on you. You may not mind it as long as they respect your expertise. But, they often hog the credit for your work and present their ability to evade work as people management skills. […]

Columns, The Today Paper, Work and Life, Corporate Life

How Much is Talent Worth?

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Newspaper column in Today on 21 July 2007 on talent shortage in Singapore.

Singapore needs foreign talent. This need is nothing to feel bad about. It is a statistical fact of life. For every top Singaporean in any field — be it science, medicine, finance, sports or whatever — we will find about 500 professionals of equal caliber in China and India. Not because we are 500 times less talented, just that they have 500 times more people. […]

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