Tan Kin Lian's Blog: String of bad luck

Thursday, July 22, 2010

String of bad luck

There is an article in Today from Conrad Raj about the poor responses to the Singapore Pavilion at Shanghai Expo. The pavilion received 1 million visitors so far, compared to 3 million visitors to the Indonesian pavilion, which was built with a smaller budget.

There is an article in the Straits Times that the organisers have a Plan B to cope with disruption during the Youth Olympic Games in the event of flood.

Singapore seems to be having a string of bad luck and bad planning. Perhaps this has some connection with the practice of replacing old, experienced people by young, inexperienced scholars.

2 comments:

C H Yak said...: Yes, I agree that the loss of older "PMETS" due to cost-cutting measures and wage restraints will manifest in more problems.

Simply, is it better to avoid problems by paying a little more for "experience" or by paying less to let the inexperienced experiment and learn through "trial & error" with little guidance and perhaps just covered-up with an expensive CEO.

It is just like an army losing its delicated "backbone" of officers and NCOs, especially the warrant officers, and just relying on top commanders.

It disguises and accentuates a management gap.

This seems to be the problem with jobs for older PMETs.

There are two sides to the issues-

(a) Firms not wanting to spend to retain them in-house despite a need for their experience.

(b) PMETs finding it not worthwhile to work at lower salary anymore.

And firms may think it is easier to outsource and find a "management consultant" without realising that actually you still need "experienced" in-house staff to implement changes to the business procedures effectively.

I was recently approached by someone I know very well from an international Korean contractor to give some ad-doc advice on some BPR procedures without obligations. But when I pointed out the need to pay a small anchor team to implement changes which will realise great savings from future operations ... then the great silence; despite the earlier great discussions about the need to make CHANGE. And I was just advising him to pay at least equivalent to his competitors, if not a little bit more. Koreans are known to be good in cutting corners ...

If MONEY dictates a certain approach and decision, then its natural outcome will follow...good or bad. Just like you have the casinos, the "bad" will come, just so simple. Even if money is not an issue, say the decision is forced...just like having a conference at an integrated resort when it just opened for business ... it carrries a certain "risk" and must be "factor- in" and not imagined could be "factor-out". This is natural cause and course of events ...

Which is why in some engineering decisions, things failed because it is "doomed from the start" due to bad decisions and in Singapore where apathy culture rules, it is at greater risks,..., you can anticipate the "string of bad luck" ...; July 22, 2010 10:06 AM
C H Yak said...: Yes, I agree that the loss of older "PMETS" due to cost-cutting measures and wage restraints will manifest in more problems.

Simply, is it better to avoid problems by paying a little more for "experience" or by paying less to let the inexperienced experiment and learn through "trial & error" with little guidance and perhaps just covered-up with an expensive CEO.

It is just like an army losing its delicated "backbone" of officers and NCOs, especially the warrant officers, and just relying on top commanders.

It disguises and accentuates a management gap.

This seems to be the problem with jobs for older PMETs.

There are two sides to the issues-

(a) Firms not wanting to spend to retain them in-house despite a need for their experience.

(b) PMETs finding it not worthwhile to work at lower salary anymore.

And firms may think it is easier to outsource and find a "management consultant" without realising that actually you still need "experienced" in-house staff to implement changes to the business procedures effectively.

I was recently approached by someone I know very well from an international Korean contractor to give some ad-doc advice on some BPR procedures without obligations. But when I pointed out the need to pay a small anchor team to implement changes which will realise great savings from future operations ... then the great silence; despite the earlier great discussions about the need to make CHANGE. And I was just advising him to pay at least equivalent to his competitors, if not a little bit more. Koreans are known to be good in cutting corners ...

If MONEY dictates a certain approach and decision, then its natural outcome will follow...good or bad. Just like you have the casinos, the "bad" will come, just so simple. Even if money is not an issue, say the decision is forced...just like having a conference at an integrated resort when it just opened for business ... it carrries a certain "risk" and must be "factor- in" and not imagined could be "factor-out". This is natural cause and course of events ...

Which is why in some engineering decisions, things failed because it is "doomed from the start" due to bad decisions and in Singapore where apathy culture rules, it is at greater risks,..., you can anticipate the "string of bad luck" ...; July 22, 2010 10:11 AM