This is my office – in an ice-cream place somewhere in Singapore

Posted on March 11, 2016 by sticky rice

Yesterday, I had a business meeting with some folks from an NGO looking for my company to sponsor one of their events. I had offered to meet the person at a mall in the west as it was near where she worked (she was thrilled at the convenience for her) and it would be on my way home anyway.

Nothing unusual with that arrangement , except that for a normal workday, I had pretty much spent most of it working outside of the office. Here’s how my day had gone:

12:30 am to 1:30 am – teleconference (and emails and work for a few hours in the evening before that)

8:30 am to 11:00 am – at my daughters’ school for Sports Day

11:45 am to 2:30 pm – in the office for meeting and work

2:30 pm to 3:30 pm – at a cafe somewhere in Raffles Place and met a counterpart from another company for benchmarking and fact-finding

4:00 pm to 5:30 pm – got to the mall in the west, settled down for an ice-cream treat while working and waiting for folks from NGO

5:30 pm to 6:30 pm – at a mall in the west meeting folks from NGO for sponsorship discussion

TWP_20160311_16_23_07_Prohe arrangement could not have been more perfect. I got a head start travelling in the direction of home during the off-peak hours, beating the crowds that would be packing the trains on a late Friday afternoon. And I got myself a TGIF treat of ice-cream (salted caramel and double chocolate) on waffle (did I tell you it was half-priced!) whilst replying to e-mails and taking a conference call or two. And finally I arrived back home on time for my personal commitments (I teach catechism on Friday evenings) – if I had to take the meeting in the office, I would never have been able to make it back on time.

Being totally untethered from the office desk, I could plan and optimize my work day and work place for both professional and personal objectives – so perhaps, in some cases, you can have your cake (or ice-cream on waffle) and eat it too – wherever it is best to consume it!

If you want to see where else my laptop has been, see also this other blog post.

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What I did on Friday moring during “office hours” v 2.0

Posted on March 11, 2016 by sticky rice

Similar to the last time when I wrote a similarly-titled post, my story starts a day before.

On Thursday evening, Erica came up to me and asked, “Mummy, are you coming to school tomorrow for the IJ Olympics to support me?”, complete with her puss-in-boots (from Shrek) eyes that you can’t say no to (she’s got HUGE eyes). IJ Olympics was essentially her school’s sports day and I know she has been practicing very hard for it the past few weeks.

I quickly checked my phone – okay, it’s there in my schedule which means I have managed to keep my calendar free of work meetings this time (whew!). So I said yes, and after the kids have all gone to bed, did as much as possible to clear my inbox to ensure an e-mail free morning.

So on Friday morning I found myself in Emily’s and Erica’s school field, cheering them on and capturing their victorious moments. Emily came in second (inter-class frisbee) and Erica came in first (Electric Bus Pass). Erica was the last runner in her class group and was neck to neck with the girl running in the next lane (who was also the last runner of that class group) – it was a close finish and when she ran back to her group in first place, she jumped and fist pumped the air and did a victory dance – PRICELESS!

And I really liked how the school handled sports day – every child is a participant in the games, no one was a spectator. So for example, with inter-class Frisbee, over the various round-robin rounds, everyone in the class had to take at least one turn on the court. What a fantastic way to get everyone involved. And everyone cheered everyone on. Emily’s class had made pom-poms and shouts of “5 Peace” echoed continuously every time their class took to the court.

A friend once remarked about the many teleconferences I do in the nights when the kids have gone to bed. For now, I wouldn’t have it any other way. For it means I can take time off flexibly for moments like these. No apologies, no need to ask for permission, and no need to take leave to cover the 2-3 hours off work. The hours had already been banked in at another time. I am thankful for the trust and freedom to do my work when and where and how.

So once the games were over, it was back to work in the office for a review meeting, energized and pumped up by the adrenaline from watching my kids at their best!

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Those we have left behind

Posted on March 8, 2016 by sticky rice

It’s International Women’s Day today and whilst we celebrate and acknowledge the contributions of women at work and at home and the progress we have made in gender equality and reflect on how much more we have to do, I became conscious that a group of women and girls (and children at large) will continue to remain invisible, unacknowledged and at threat.

We had a great All Hands today in Microsoft APAC, opening with a video from Microsoft about women inventors and to inspire young girls to consider a career in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics. It was a funny video and a sobering reminder of how we still have a lot of ways to go.

For the closing session of the All Hands, we had Angeline Martyn from Save the Children join us to share the work that Save the Children is doing in Asia. She was an inspiring speaker and a force for change in Asia.untitled

And the contrast of the situation faced by the girls in the opening video and the girls described in Angeline’s compelling story telling during her session could not be more stark.

Angeline shared some sobering statistics: every 11 minutes, a child under the age of 5 dies. Many of these deaths are from preventable causes. And 46% of these deaths happen in Asia. Girls are often more vulnerable and at risk than boys. She also spoke about children she met from the T’boli tribe in Mindanao, The Philippines, where girls are being married off as early as  at the age of 9 even though they aspire to marry and have kids much later in life. Sadly, their childhood ends prematurely, and their potential to do more and be more and to pursue their dreams has already ended even before it really began. And finally, how so much of the next generations of potential young women in Asia who could be the next inventor or who could have a promising career are dropping out of school for so many different reasons (lack of schools, long distances to travel, lack of finances, and lack of facilities such as toilets to name but a few of the things we in developed areas of the world take so much for granted)

Without taking away from the Microsoft video (which is a great and inspiring video), I felt like we are focusing on the battle and not the war. A bunch of young girls in the developed world who are safe, well-nourished and have the privilege an education do still need to be inspired to join STEM fields because we need the talent, but a larger population of girls in the world remain at risk of being deprived of the opportunity for them to contribute to their world and our world to their full potential.

So, whilst many corporations and much of the developed world today focus on the issue of gender diversity, gender representation in leadership and how to encourage girls considering a STEM career, I am glad and proud that Microsoft and our leaders choose to shine the spotlight on the issue of the many women and girls (and children) who remain marginalized and on the fringe and are at risk of being left behind if nothing is done.

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The CO2 Surcharge on a Tesla Model S is not an Abatement Cost

Posted on March 7, 2016 by sticky rice

I have been following the story of Joe Nguyen and his (mis)adventures trying to bring in Singapore’s first Tesla electric car with some interest.

Poor guy had to jump through so many hoops, got passed around and back and fro between so many departments, had his application sitting around in cold storage because the people who were supposed to look at the matter didn’t know how to deal with it. And finally, after waiting for 7 months, was told he had to pay a CO2 surcharge of $15,000 if he wanted to drive a Tesla Model S on the roads of Singapore. Guy tried to appeal and was denied, paid up and registered his car in February this year (what do you expect him to do after importing the car into the country and waiting 7 months to try and get it approved – re-export it???). You gotta give the guy respect for pure determination and persistence in the face of the ignorance and ambivalence of the tick-boxing, form filling civil servants he was dealing with.

So Singapore has now earned a new “first”: First in the world to tax a tesla electric car (well, an electric car in general for that matter) for CO2 emissions.

But, it’s an electric car….so what emissions are we talking about? As the Tesla Model S does not have tail-pipe emissions, the LTA was considering the carbon emissions that would have been incurred by the power plant in producing the electricity that is used to charge the car. Seems reasonable… except if you are going to start counting carbon emissions at the source of fuel generation, you should be doing that for all cars, meaning you should start to include the carbon emissions incurred by refineries for producing the gasoline and diesel that the cars run on in any consideration of carbon emissions. But the current emissions standards for normal cars only considers tailpipe emissions. And if you are going to consider power plants’ carbon emissions, the efficiency of a power plant is not something in Mr Nguyen’s control and so should there then be a standard norm against which our power plants are measured and the inefficiencies should be borne by the government rather than by Mr Nguyen?

All that engineering mumbo jumbo aside, it was reported today that the Tesla head honcho has gotten in touch with PM Lee about the carbon surcharge and the PM will look into the matter. I am sure now that the PM is looking into it, it is not going to take 7 months to be resolved. And I hope Mr Nguyen gets his tax surcharge reviewed and refunded back to him.

In the meantime though, here is what an MP has to say about the matter: “From the government’s perspective, this is a rare carbon emissions reduction policy where the abatement cost would be voluntarily borne by consumers… rather than being paid for by the government.”

An abatement cost is defined as the cost of reducing environmental negatives such as pollution or emissions. Mr Nguyen has already paid extra to import the car in on his own and has had to wait 7 months for it to be registered. I think that is more than enough “abatement costs” that an individual has to voluntarily bear to bring in an electric car that will reduce environmental negatives. The CO2 surcharge in this case, levied in the name of carbon emissions that has not been correctly applied on a car that is recognized elsewhere as being environmentally greener is not an abatement cost to begin with, and the argument of whether it should therefore be borne by the individual or the government is a moot point.

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Which superhero has a growth mindset?

Posted on March 7, 2016 by sticky rice

Edwin and I are preparing a session to talk about Growth Mindset with some of our MACHs (Microsoft Academy of College Hires) at the end of March. MACHs are Microsoft’s equivalent of fresh graduates from university bachelor or master programs, so you are talking generally about people in their late twenties to early thirties.

So, when I first got hold of and set eyes upon our standard deck on Growth Mindset, which was designed for managers, the first words that came to mind was “boring, predictable and corporate”. They were great slides and already had strong visuals and layouts but I wondered how we could breathe some fresh perspectives into the content in an engaging manner with a younger group of employees.

Enter Batman and Superman to the rescue (Bat signal anyone?).

batman vs supermanAs it turned out, the session we are running is scheduled on the day that “Batman v Superman” opens in cinemas around the world. And as I looked at the trailer clips, I wondered if we could tell a story around growth and fixed mindset based on the story of these two superheroes and in this case, this particular movie.

So, this comic geek decided to see if she could merge Carol Dweck’s research on Growth Mindset with the world of DC comics (I could have done Marvel too, but well, the premier is with DC superheroes).

dweck_mindset.pngSo (a little bit of a spoiler alert if you decide to keep reading down!), measuring Batman and Superman up against Carol Dweck’s framework using the storyline in “Batman vs Superman”, we can see that on “Challenges”, “Obstacles” and “Effort”, Batman and Superman are probably operating in the Growth mindset space. Particularly Batman, I would argue, is a particularly spectacular example of growth mindset in these areas. For in order to go up against Superman (a “man versus God” sized challenge in the world of Superheroes), he would have to have dared to believe that he could take on Superman and live to tell the tale. And in the movie, he is already a middle-aged superhero who is probably getting a little too old to still be  waging a war in general, much less against someone who is almost invincible. Batman would also have had to innovate and use existing and new capabilities to outwit and outplay the man of steel – which he does with an all new Bat-suit that is almost Iron-man like. For Superman, who was born a superhero with all of his superpowers, I would say that there is less of a growth mindset in play in the movie. But if you have always followed the man of steel, you would have seen plenty of growth mindset in “Superman Returns” with Superman having to adjust to a new life as Clark Kent in a world that had moved on in his absence and risking his life to save the world against near impossible odds with the life-threatening presence of kryptonite in the crystallite landmass that Lex Luther had created.

On “Criticism” and “Success of Others”, I would say that both Superheroes were probably initially in the space of Fixed Mindset in the movie. Despite evidence that proves otherwise, both Batman and Superman are convinced the other is a threat to mankind. Their fixed mindset allowed Lex Luther to fan the embers of rivalry (which incidentally is a recurring theme in the DC comics) that would eventually lead to the showdown between the two superheroes and the window of opportunity for Lex to create and unleash Monster on the world.

So there are two important Superhero lessons we can learn from this:

  1. There are multiple aspects of a growth mindset, and so, while we may naturally be strong in some areas, it is likely we are less natural in others
  2. We don’t ‘have’ or ‘have not’ a growth mindset. We approach different situations with different mindsets; or even the same situation on different days

So come March 24, Edwin and I will deliver this interesting session, kitted out in our Superhero tee-shirts, with Edwin making the case for Superman (because he is a big fan of Superman) and I will be making the case for Batman (because I am a big fan of Batman).

Interesting, one last question – Does Lex Luther also demonstrate a growth mindset? Hmm, perhaps Supervillains too demonstrate a growth mindset? Anyone cares to don a supervillain tee-shirt and join us for the debate?

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Thank you Uncle Heikel and Auntie Helen

Posted on March 4, 2016 by sticky rice

The Olio Bites Cafe at Level 21 within the Microsoft offices at One Marina Boulevard closed on Feb 29 to make way for renovations and a new operator moving in in a few weeks’ time.IMG-20160225-WA0001

Occupying pride of place on the wall next to the cashier counter are three pieces of paper from A5 sized notebooks/exercise books. People who have noticed the drawings have asked the staff about them. They seemed odd found in a cafe that was operating within an office and would have appeared to be more at home tapped to the wall of a cubicle of a working parent.

Well, the artists were two of my kids, Emily and Erica, who had once spent an afternoon last June during their school holidays hanging around Level 21 of the Microsoft office under the watchful eye of Uncle Heikel and Auntie Helen.

I normally try and work from home during the school holidays, and on that one occasion, had to come into the office for a few hours. So Emily and Erica tagged along. I gave Heikel and Auntie Helen an advance in cash to pay for whatever food they ordered – the two of them subsequently ordered a ham and cheese omelette and spaghetti for lunch – and left them to their own devices at the cafe and to play with the X-Box and other devices that was at the Microsoft visitor centre.

Whilst I was two floors above trying to change the world, my kids were busy enjoying their food, playing at the visitor centre  and apparently, getting to know Heikel and Auntie Helen very well. In exchange for a cookie and bag of chips, my kids produced those drawings which have been on that wall since that day till the end of February when they would have been taken down to make way for a new coat of paint.

Mine are not the only kids who have had the privilege of care and attention from Heikel and Auntie Helen as “special” visitors to Microsoft’s offices. There have been other children, some of whom Auntie Helen has seen grown up to be young adults now. It is so wonderful that in this day and age, we still get old-school operators like Heikel and Auntie Helen. Every so often, especially when the holidays come around, Emily and Erica would ask me when they would get to go visit Uncle Heikel and Auntie Helen again. Well, the good news is that the new operator of the cafe is re-employing Heikel and Auntie Helen to run the cafe in the office, so I will definitely bring them in to draw up a new set of drawings for the new walls of the new cafe. New operator and new food, okay, but nothing beats having old friends serving it up to you!

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You’d think I would know if it is an emergency even if I have earphones plugged in

Posted on March 4, 2016 by sticky rice

I have taken lots of flights in the past 20 years for work and pleasure and so pretty much know the safety drill inside out for take off and landing. Seat upright, tray table stowed? Check! Bags securely stowed in the overhead compartment or under the seat in front of you? Check! Handphone off? Check! Earphones out of your ears? What???

That has to be the weirdest safety request I have encountered and the first time I am encountering it on a flight from Hyderabad back to Singapore last week.

Now, the flights from India are usually very challenging, even for the most experienced traveler – they generally depart late night around 11 pm to just after midnight local time (which would be Singapore 2 am plus) and arrive at about 6 am in the morning. Do the math and you realise that you either stay up the whole flight or catch barely 2-3 hours sleep with all the disruption of take off and landing procedures, increasing the chance of suffering jet lag even though it is just a 2.5 hour time difference between Singapore and India.

Which is why, given my frequent travels to India, I have become a adept at managing sleep on these flights. With my routine, I have been able to get at time 4 to 5 hour sleep on the plane. How could you possibly squeeze 5 hours sleep out of a flight that is 4 hours long?

Here’s the drill: When you book the flight, get a window seat. Make sure you get yourself watered, hydrated and toileted before you board. Be among the first to get on board the plane (not an issue with frequent flyer gold status). Settle in quickly, tuck yourself under your blanket, prop yourself up nicely against the window with your pillow wedged between you and the window. Put on your noise cancelling earphones and turn the sound to zero if you plug it into the aircraft’s sound system – bliss. And close your eyes. And if you are an accomplished mother of four kids who has mastered the art of sleeping whenever you get a chance to, you will be asleep even before as the plane is still being boarded by the majority of your fellow passengers.

Which brings me back to my original story…

So there I was, already halfway to dreamland when I was shaken awake by the air stewardess. “Miss, you need to take off your earphones.” Huh, okay, being addressed as “Miss” was a nice touch, but what about the earphones? “They aren’t plugged into a mobile phone and my phone is turned off.” I mumbled sleepily thinking that must be the issue. “No Miss, you can’t have your earphones in your ears during take off. In case of an emergency you will not be able to hear the announcements.”

Okay, now that one is downright weird. In case of an emergency, I don’t think any earphones plugged into my ears, noise-cancelling or otherwise, is going to be so effectively blissful to keep me asleep amidst presumably turbulence and perhaps screaming and panicking fellow passengers?

Not wanting to get thrown off the flight on account of being an uncooperative passenger, I complied. I did not even want to visit the possible scenario that a earphone plugged in passenger who refused to take off her earphones might be a safety threat to other passengers and to the flight.Satisfied, the air stewardess moved on to continue the rest of her  pre-take off visual inspection. Then I saw that my fellow passenger seating next to me, a young girl travelling on her own, still busy replying to notifications on her facebook account. So …  it is more dangerous for me to be having earphones plugged into my ears during take off than for a facebook posting teenager to still have her handphone turned on even as we are already taxi-ing towards the runway?!! Fortunately, another air stewardess came along and spotted the offending act and addressed it.

So the flight took off and I plugged my noise-cancelling earphones in as soon as I was sure we were not going to have any announcement-triggering emergencies. And I was asleep through the distribution of toiletries kits and through the meal service (I don’t even know why we would need a meal service between midnight and 4 am India time or 2 am to 6 am Singapore time) … until I got roused again by the same stewardess. “Miss, we are landing soon. Can you please take off your earphones?”

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Nook – sadly living up to its namesake

Posted on February 27, 2016 by sticky rice

Last week Sunday, I decided to take the kids out for brunch and thought it would be nice to chill out somewhere along the strip of restaurants and cafes that have been popping up at Lorong Kilat. The kids wanted to hang out at one of our favourite restaurants where you DIY your own pancakes – Nook. I was happy to oblige given previous great brunch  experiences there and we haven’t been there in a while.

I was surprised that we were able to walk in and snag a table immediately. There were only two tables that were occupied. This place used to be full especially on weekend mornings. That should have been a warning to abandon ship.

Then we realized that the restaurant menu had changed too. Gone were the hearty breakfast platters, replaced by an unremarkable and hodge podge list of Asian, Western and Fusion mains and sides that seemed counter to what a DIY pancake place should be offering. But as they still had the DIY pancakes on the menu, we ordered and stayed.

My mum arrived about 15 mins later as the bottles of pancake mix got to the table and other food items arrived. When her order of a main course and tea arrived, I realised that our pancakes was not cooking on the hot plate at the table and that the café latte that I had ordered before my mum arrived has not been served. Highlighting this to one of the waiters, he went off to make the latte after telling me to give the hot plate time to warm up.

When he returned with the latte a few minutes later, I told him that the hot plate was still not warming up. Eventually, I put my hand onto the sides of the hot plate to prove my point as he was about to protest irritably for the 5th or 6th time that I need to be patient and give it time to warm up. We finally got the chef to come out to check and the hot plate was replaced.

Once the pancakes were cooking, we realized we had another problem – no plates and cutlery! The table had actually been quite bare when we seated down and I had thought nothing of that till now. And I noticed my mum using the large tablespoon that came with her mains to stir her tea – apparently, they had given her a cup of tea without an accompanying teaspoon. By now, even though the service was so bad, we were so invested with our orders, I thought we should just finish eating quickly and get home.

When time came to pay the bill, as I stood at the cashier counter, I was told that I could only pay using NETS or Cash. What??? They used to accept credit cards. I took out my NETS card and the waiter promptly inserted the wrong end into the credit card terminal and (no surprises!) got an error message. However he had rung up the sale on the cashier POS and so asked if I could give him cash instead. I asked him to try the NETS card again, this time inserting it the right way in. I was about to reach over to DIY the NETS transaction myself but the chef stepped in just in time to take over the bill processing.

The bill came up to $73.60 for 2 adults and 4 kids and the final insult? Paying the 10% service charge for non-existent service. Did management change I asked? No, the waiter told me the owners are still the same people. How did things get so bad? This used to be a really fun place to bring the kids for a weekend brunch. Sadly, this looks like another one of those places that has lost its focus and its way and is fast becoming a quiet, secluded and obscure little corner.

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The Dottie Experience – watch out for the CEO that takes you out for a breakfast or lunch interview

Posted on February 27, 2016 by sticky rice

I read this article yesterday about a CEO who takes applicants out for breakfast and lunch. He would arrive early at the appointed restaurant and promise a huge tip to the waiter to mess up his interviewee’s order (i.e. overcooked, undercooked, or just plain wrong item delivered).

The CEO in question is Walt Bettinger of Charles Schwab. He wanted to get an idea of how the person would react to an unexpected, negative experience and how he or she would interact with and treat those who work in the service industry. The latter is an issue close to his heart due to a humbling experience he had in college whilst in business school. He had failed an exam which had just one question – “What’s the name of the lady who cleans this building?”. The answer was “Dottie” and he has tried to get to know every “Dottie” he has worked with ever since.

Reading this article, two things came to mind.

The first was that when I was working in Shell as an operations executive years ago, I had done something similar with a “Dottie” assessment. We were looking to hire a few trainers to develop and deliver on the job training programs to the station managers, shift supervisors, cashiers and pump attendants who ran our retail (petrol) stations. The interviews for prospective trainers took place at the training office which was located above one of the retail stations.

We had applicants fill in forms and submit their CVs to one of our trainers who was dressed to look like a shift supervisor. Unknown to all our interviewees , he was our “Dottie”. After the interviews, we would ask our “Dottie” how did the interviewee interact with and treat him? Not surprisingly, some who were attracted to the brand name  of the company but had little passion for people or for operations pretty much ignored him after giving him their forms and CVs. A few did speak with him to find out more about him and what it was like to work at a petrol station. It’s not a surprise to which group the people we eventually made offers to belonged.

The second was a story that a senior woman in Microsoft shared with me. She makes it a point to meet her interviewees personally at the reception every time as she thought it would be a great way to get to know her interviewees informally as she chats with them down the long corridor to her big corner office. There was one occasion where an interviewee gave her scant notice and responded monosyllabically to her questions as they walked down that corridor. It only dawned on him that she was not the receptionist when she took her seat behind her desk and began the interview proper.

So the moral of the story – be mindful of everyone who interacts with you before (and probably after) the interview. You never know who might actually be the one who is assessing or testing you!

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Being a single parent or having been raised by a single parent IS a stigma in India

Posted on February 27, 2016 by sticky rice

Earlier in February, I posted a blog titled “being a single parent or having been raised by a single parent might be a stigma in India”.

A friend of mine wondered if perhaps in India, a “single parent” would be narrowly defined in society as an “unwed mother” and hence the stigma. A few days after the workshop, I wondered if my energy antenna (all good facilitators come equipped with one!) was maybe broken and I was too sensitive given that this was also my personal truth.

I got a chance to revisit these questions this week. Back again in India to run a D&I workshop for HR colleagues in Gurgaon and Hyderabad, we ran the same exercise (to find out more about the exercise, go read the other blog) with smaller groups. Same outcome (I was the only one), same energy (spike of nervous tension – though it might be a little less given the groups were smaller).

In the evening as I debriefed the workshops with my partner-in-crime (aka my co-facilitator) over a wonderful dinner of dum biryani, I asked her about it. She confirmed my energy antenna was functioning well, and that indeed it is a social stigma to be a single parent and it is also not something that is discussed openly. And even if someone else in the room was also a single parent/raised by one, he or she would not have likely decided to come out into the open.

Although divorce rates have been climbing especially in metropolitan cities in India, it is not in the psyche of the Indian culture to allow people to remain single for too long, whatever the reason. So the moment a man or a woman becomes single again (divorced or widowed), the matchmaking agencies kick back in in full force with mothers and fathers anxiously seeking another match (and a second chance) for their now divorced or widowed children. If the stars are aligned, one could be married again even as the ink from the divorce papers or on the death certificate is still drying – okay, maybe just the divorce papers.

Wow, pity the single parents and their children – even before they have had a chance to grieve, reflect, accept and re-anchor themselves after such a momentous shock to their systems, they are pushed back into the hubbub of the dating circuit, children (if any) in tow.

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