Ruminations on today

Today was quite an emotionally draining day off the back of what would have been a great meeting. Content and direction-wise, there wasn't any thing major that needed addressing and the work was pretty much 75% the way there. However, sometimes when targeted, the 25% can be the most painful to work on especially when the comments about the work feels somewhat invalidating of the hard work that you've put in so far.

Factually, the discussion went about like so:

My colleague and I were working on a document that highlights the constraints we face in the region when we want to create a better digital experience on the web. My colleague dived into the details while I will provide the wrapper and context around how best to present this data to the leadership. 

What started out as a web constraints document for just the global web team, quickly became a document for senior leadership and we had to quickly pivot the narrative. As I was the most experienced on the team to do that, I took ownership of narrative-crafting while my colleague worked on the evidence. 

The work was done well into the night at the 11th hour (quite literally until 11pm the previous day) and while hardwork doesn't necessarily equate to quality and performance, I was quite chuffed about what was on the report and how I manage to highlight how APAC couldn't align to the global corporate strategy because of the difficulties we face. At the back of my mind, these issues have been raised on a few occasions and there's nothing new that senior leaders didn't already know. 

So when my boss asked what is the aim of this document, who should receive it and what do we hope to achieve at the end of it, I answered with the idea that the senior leadership needs to know the challenges we're facing and how they don't align to the corporate strategy that she has laid out because of the multitude of technical challenges.

I was caught by surprise when the approach that my boss wanted, was to frame "challenges" as "opportunities" and potentially change the narrative on its head and he felt that my language was too strongly worded. 

For example, 

Global shared web strategy	APAC’s challenge
Connects us and our work to build web experiences that align to portfolio and corporate strategies	APAC cannot connect to portfolio and corporate strategies because there is no international web strategy that brings regions to parity in terms of language, depth of content and user experience.
Reverses legacy trends that contribute to sprawl and waste	Our CMS, website system and sprawl of content is making regions harder to catch up and localise, creating dead-ends and tech debt which disrupts the user experience.

While factual, I've been asked to rephrase the narrative to ensure that people won't be put on the defensive and that they're failing (verbatim from my boss). I am perfectly fine to phrase things in a politically sensitive way, and I've tried my best to already par down and not make the document into a "rant". The feedback was basically to not have us potentially land in minefields with other stakeholders that might cut us from working with them in the future.

I don't disagree with my boss and I think a lot of these could have been avoided if he told us from the start how he wanted to position the team in front of leadership from the get-go, rather than tell us post-production and then have us rectify the work.

Musings on leadership #1: What's the difference between ruling and reigning?

I'll just dive right into it and really cut back on the self-help language here. I profess that I'm not a great reader of self-help books, and given how I've devoted 4 years of my graduate life in the post-war social theorists, I've become a great skeptic of them. 

I'm not skeptical of leadership, and neither am I denouncing self-help books as unhelpful. Their sales numbers certain speak for themselves, and modern thought leaders like Simon Sinek have certain created a new projection of leadership that're both brutally frank and inviting at the same time. 

Across my encounters with leadership ideas across my own professional training at work, or simply just talking to my mentors, I've always mused at how similar political science relates to what business leaders espouse in leadership. Many discussions, or indeed even disputes have been had about how should people be lead. Semantically, what's the difference between being to rule, as opposed to reign?

I think the distinction is important because the starting point of "why should this matter, I just want to be a good leader and get promoted" needs to be addressed. 

Why look at the distinction of Rule vs Reign?

I think most people's actions can be boiled down to their inherent assumptions about people. When a terrible boss micromanagers, the assumption is that no one can do the job better than them. Or that they have a deep-seated anxiety about the way the team is heading towards to. People micro-manage when they perceive they are losing control. Similarly, if we start our discussion about leadership styles with a simple question, "do you think humans are smart enough to take care of themselves", very quickly we'd know where you stand on these matters. Many leadership books now lead with the assumption that employees are self-aware and therefore, as effective managers/leaders, we need to empower them. 

However, is it really so simple? Have we thrown the baby out with the bathwater by swinging out too far the other way?

So let's look at the arguments of both sides, that humans should be ruled because they're incapable of taking care of themselves vs humans can be reigned as we're all competent sources of ideas.

To Rule or not to Rule: that's the question

Plato's argument for Rule consists of a simple philosophical question. If we want to sail out to sea and reach our destination reasonably safely, do we want a capable captain or have the ship vote based on who we think is best and potentially end up with a populist vote that have no specialised knowledge about seafaring. The problem and to simplify the discussion here, is that it assumes that a leader is a specialist, who governs others with similar areas of work and decides based on his/her expert opinion, what the best course of action would be. That "job" can be running a country, or leading a sales team. 

However, lessons in business have taught us that specialists who are good at their jobs, may not be good leadership role models and some, if promoted to be people managers, can run the ship to ground. Yet, this idea of a singular authority is still appealing to us, because it allows us to move quickly and in times of crisis, become the clarion call to rally people around a north-star and for better or worse, been able to send people to die in the course of their vision. I am of course referring to the dictators in history, from Alexander the Great, to Hitler and even Stalin. 

Loki's statement from the Avengers' movie have always struck a chord because in modern leadership discourse, it's almost we have this notion that people never want to be ruled and be told what to do. I find myself on some occasion, almost prefer to be told what to do because it means someone else is taking the responsibility for the repercussions of my actions.

Well, that and also I get to snigger when things don't turn out right, but I digress.

I think given the circumstances of today's multi-faceted complex economies, the speed of information have surpassed our ability to retain, absorb and consolidate. The traditional notion of "rulers" where the person has monopoly over the information is over. However it's not that rulers are no longer important. The idea here is that rulers make firm authoritative decisions based on a person's singular perspective. S/he can gather information from the team and still have that collaborative brainstorm process, but to chart out that vision singularly is sometimes a welcomed respite from the white noise that happens today.

If not, what does it mean to reign?

The second flip-side of the coin, therefore is that people should be reigned, not ruled. Reign is traditionally associated with the time period of which a king/queen occupies the throne, and while it usually assumes that the monarch's authority to also rule comes along with his/her occupation of the throne, it's not always the case in the 21st century. There're many monarchs in the world that no longer rule due to many historical reasons but continue to reign over a country. 

This idea, if I must confess, is especially crucial because it implies that while you occupy a position of authority, your choice in the exercise of powers is balanced and in some cases, even counteracted by others. For example, the current monarchy in the UK have veto powers over every law passed but rarely does so as it will upset the populum and lead to UK becoming a republic. It's what wiped the French and Russian monarchy out of existence. The idea that a position based on laws of succession does not always have the best leaders. 

Reigning is like a captain who still needs to bring people to the destination, but instead of steering the ship himself, gets everyone to learn about navigation and then crowd-source ideas to get the best chart for the journey. Arguably, we'd all be 60 by then.

I've had first-hand experience where the leader reigns and becomes a facilitator of the discussion, becoming the referee and ensuring everyone's opinions are noted and heard. It was a circuitous route and eventually the solution to the problem was a weak compromise between the strongest voice in the group and the second strongest voice in the group. While that's an exception and highly anecdotal, I am quite sure that we all have this experience when the leadership simply cannot or will not make a decision unless all the powers are balanced. Great effective leaders who reign through the art of rhetoric and pointed questions, can sometimes invisibly steer the discussion in a certain direction and the group suddenly finds themselves reaching a conclusion they didn't start out with. I've also seen such leaders at work and continue to be flummoxed at how elegantly it was all done to great results.

Yet, the assumptions behind reigning is simple: people want to have a say in everything that they do, and to remain the umpire, we have to balance each moving puzzle piece very carefully without dropping anything. It's important to also add, that it is also assumed that everyone has value to add to the discussion/project. I don't know about you, but if you've ever been in a groupwork in school, you know full well that some people are free riders and burdens to the rest. Watch any parliamentary debates and some MPs will say shit just to make things more spicy without having real contributions to the policy-making process. So while it's certainly a great idea that leaders should reign, we have to also be ready to accept that the group that s/he is reigning over, understand the power they wield and therefore wield it responsibly. It also assumes that people will come together and work only towards that one common goal. However, attend enough quarterly business review meetings or "off-sites" and you'll quickly understand that there's a shadow agenda beneath the official one.

So now what?

This casual examination of the 2 types of leadership is not about weighing the pros and cons of each but to peel back on the onion a bit more on our assumptions about people when we ask someone to lead in a certain manner. Many business books have very useful guidance on how to be a great leader by giving clear direction, being a friendly mentor and all that goodness, all good leaders can either be rulers or reigners. What should the assumption matter? As an employee, I often find team clashes happen when they work for a boss who is a "ruler" when the person might actually be more of a "reigner". The contrary applies for frustrated team mates who just want their bosses to make a snap decision, but end up having to sit through endless meetings to get consensus.

Reality is, we often have to work with the two, and I'd go so far to argue, the shades in between as well. It's probably a reminder to myself as I'm writing this, to also reconsider that while I'm more rule-leaning, there is value in learning from people who reign. I find myself diluting my position a bit more to allow more participation and inviting people and potentially not missing out on valuable insights. 

This is more than a conclusion of adopting the middle ground. I find myself buttressing in the "ruler" camp a bit more, as that's just how I've seen the world and while it can change, my fundamental belief is that a clear direction and firm hand is needed in this increasingly chaotic world. Of course that will invite debate from people who don't necessarily share my views. However, I can see the value of reigning and some might even argue what can you do both depending on the circumstances? 

I think the key is just simply to be flexible. To be firm when you have to, and to be lassez-faire when the situation benefits from a brainstorm in a safe environment. It must be disappointing to reach to this part of the article and have the takeaway be: do both!

However, I hope at least you have come away with a much more acute sensibility of the types of assumptions people hold about what their leaders are, who they want their leaders to be, and then be that character for them even though you may not naturally wear that skin. Like a great director once told me, the only person who is still acting even after the rehearsal has ended, is the director because he has to go above and beyond the story, and manage the creative process of the actors. Nothing can be further of the truth when we're in the position of leadership, that the faces of Janus, if we embrace duality not as opposable thumbs but a beautiful abstract concept, we can become much better followers/leaders ourselves.

To all those that matter in my life

There's a sense of writing that I miss where there's a burning purpose at the bottom of my belly, that intrinsic drive that powers my fingers through the keyboard and words simply just flow. 

I've missed writing and there's been a lot of happenings in the world that I have an opinion on, but haven't found the energy, focus or simply words to put them down. Writing can be so incredibly important because it shapes how we think, and the cloud of thoughts and disparate notions coalesce into tangible expressions which reads back to us even stronger. Notions and thoughts are fleeting but penned down, they become strong reminders of our values, beliefs and morals. 

This Covid pandemic has perhaps changed me in more ways that I care to admit. I've gone through isolation, and consider myself lucky to still retain my job and do well at work. I've lost my mother, due to complications of pneumonia due to being a vegetative patient as a result of a stroke. I intend to write and express my feelings about the whole episode, to once again, retreat into the confines of my journal so that I can pour my thoughts - the good, bad and the ugly - into a safe space where only I know.

I promise to start writing again, regardless on how insignificant the episodes of my life may be, and how life - the very gift of existence - deserves to be contemplated upon and this is my moment of solitude for reflection. 

There's been quite a few things I want to admit to myself, and this feels like another period of change in my life. I'm grappling how to deal with difficult conversations at work, on balancing my own needs with those of my partner. I tread with trepidation, whether my life has taken a turn where getting married and having children may not be something I want right now. With the world now opened up to me, I feel that my life has just started and the possibilities around what I can do, and the places I can go, now lay before me. It's the same feeling of fear and fascination where I now simultaneously worry about the path least taken, and falling into the road well trodden. Settling down with someone feels comfortable and "nice" - the simple things they say, where you get to enjoy the life of being with someone who understands you. While opening up the world of possibilities seem to be something I've always wanted, to travel and work in different places where culture is the very material for my study. I'm therefore torn into two, with one option seductively overtaking the other.  

Yet some part of me knows that the life of "working overseas" is something I would not always welcome. The loneliness generated by the void of twilight due to time zones, coupled with the superficiality of acquaintances cannot replace the deep connections back home with people whom you've known for a decade. If anything I've learn, digital communications cannot replace face to face companionship. Simply being in the same space means you can spontaneously plan events and those become unwitting routines that weave into our lives. It forms a certain rhythm to the composition of our lives that we don't immediately acknowledge but painfully feel when it's ripped out of our life.

We take locality for granted, that moving away simple means a shift in location - but it means so much more. With Covid and air travel being more difficult that it used to be, I shudder to imagine what would have happened if I'm needed back home but could not be there in person due to airport shut downs and the like. The emotional regret I'll face, is something I may not be able to rest easily. I think about being there for my mother in her last moments of her life, and immediately notions of the world-weary traveller went away. 

Life is ultimately the people you affect and touch in your life, and family is the people who are there at your last moments holding your hand while you leave this world. Ambition and opportunity will always be present, but the people whom I care about, may not always be here forever. It's those moments that I cherish and the connections in life that made me who I am. I hold on to them dearly.

Are we living in a toxic environment?

Recently, I find myself scrolling endlessly at Instagram, and every other format of social media there is to binge on my friend's lives. Their travel stories, funny occurrences and baby pictures (yeah, I'm around that demographic), made me feel like my story was lame. I'm naturally competitive and suddenly I find the urge to really want to make people react to my stories and photos.

Back then when we had static photo albums and texts were 140 characters long, the need to express our subjectivities manifested only once a year during family gatherings to compare and contrast.

"Oh wow, your son has gotten a scholarship?"

"Look at my granddaughter, isn't she adorable!"

"What are you up to in your career these days?"

The speed of information made me sick, and yet compelling. I feel ever so distant from my best friend, whom while I met on a weekly basis, felt ever further in our communication because you "can always check on my instagram". I put my hands up and say, I sometimes say the same too.

This growing resentment and competitiveness makes me feel like I need to be the best or I'm not good enough for the rest. When they say, no one really compares, do they mean what they say, or are they only saying it to put you off.

We've been obsessed with keeping up with the myth behind the meaning that I find myself deeply entrenched in this negative cycle of jealousy, resentment, bitterness and resignation/victory,

It's gotten to a point where it affects my personal relationships. I always have to be better than others, I must have the last say. If my friends don't take my advice, they're probably ignorant and are bound to fail. I think my sense of humility have degraded to such a degree, that I'm really suffocating on this lonely mountain of pride where only I reside. This superiority complex, fuelled by social media, is what's making me write this reflection.

So what do I believe? What is the meaning behind the myth of the self that I project?

1. I really believe that there's one Truth, one Way of doing things that are right.

This belief, inculcated by my education in finding the right answers, where I find myself turning back to the answer key at the back of assessment books, haven't really left me.

While I intellectually know that there is no one way of doing things, in my heart, I've wished that people followed or heeded my advice. It's good to be perceptive so much that people kind of take your advice and things turn out well. Similarly, do I want to be responsible for when they take my advice and then things turn out disastrously? Do I want to be responsible for big decision they make in their lives and have them come to haunt me later when it didn't turn out as expected?

Perhaps not, so while there might be a probable way of doing things, that has a higher percentage of success, it's not healthy to insist unless I want the responsibility that comes along with it.

God knows I've had too many of those already.

I've missed improvisation and having fun. I used to do a lot of that playing piano growing up and I still have records and memories of those times when my friends and I just had fun at the instrument,

I need to recover some of that joy and letting go of the fixation of doing things the right way is the first step.


2. I feel guilty when I get treated well (although less so today than before). I feel bitter when others are treated better than me.

This boils down to self-love, and I recognised this fact thanks to my best friend a while ago. I'm grateful that this has been WIP and after a year, I've started to at least notice the signs when my insecurities and self-love depletes, catching myself before I start to wallow in self-pity.

Nevertheless, I do have a few hoops to jump and part of that learning is to give and receive without feeling self-entitled, while also not feeling extremely guilty about it.

I think tilting the balance too far to one side will make people think I'm just being a bitch, while apologise constantly or thanking people constantly, will make others feel that I have low self-worth.

Regardless of the end-state, which in this case may be none, I do need to ensure that I have sufficient self-awareness to catch myself when I'm in such a state. I'm worthy of the love that people show me, and simultaneously, feeling eternally grateful for their company and good nature fun. In this regard, I'll make a promise to myself that I'll thank people more, and show my appreciation for those who have made me who I am today.

The privilege of having words

Terry Border: Bent Objects 

You'd imagine that the word is something we all have, in this day and age of widespread literacy.


Our curriculum expects it from us. It is a foundation we have to master before we can build our castles of knowledge on top of it. I suppose I've always surrounded myself with people who have splendid handling of the written and spoken word - in all languages that they are proficient in.

I've pursued art and music like a new language. The grammar become brushstrokes and mediums, the vocabulary in motifs and keys. However, like any new language, it doesn't just change the way you sound and write on paper, it restructures your thinking. Anthropologists and social linguistics have spilled ink extensively on the subject. However, we don't understand the practical implications for someone who doesn't think in the written word. We are tourists in the minds of those who do not hold ideas and thoughts the same way we do.

We look at a painting or listen to a piece of impenetrable music and ask what is the artist/musician trying to tell us? They might as well come from another planet and speak to us in Martian.

Side note, do watch The Arrival if you haven't caught it, about how language changes how we conceive time and space.

What is the point of writing all of this?

I believe we need to expand our appreciation of other individuals who think differently from us. Like linguists, we should embrace the system of other formats of "languages" that may not immediately be immediately apparent to us.

As someone who has taken the written word for granted, I've recently met someone who have taught me to be patient that the written word may not always be immediately available to them. It's like asking me to run 46km, when I've barely ran 4.6km in my life. Compassion for those who think differently from me. To learn to express myself in more ways than just text, or to understand someone's intention from a hug or through their doodles.

I've gained a new found appreciation for ways of expression - the spaces in between words. The pauses in between phrases. Communication is beyond just what we say, but how we say it. It is sculptural and spatial, it is the foreshortening in a painting to give the illusion of depth in a two dimensional painting. Words draw images in our mind, but our minds have always imagined before we had the words to express them. Previously in my work as a teacher, I've always thought that students who did not have the words to express their ideas, was a product of the lack in our education system. However, recently I'm considering that perhaps the real lack in our education system is the deficiency in our imagination to conceive beyond the written word.

As a result, for those who do not think the same way, face profound difficulties in how they interact with others. If we do not insist that someone from Japan speaks fluent English, then we similarly cannot insist that someone communicates with us on our terms. I believe communication can happen in more than one dimension and we must embrace all of them to have a more understanding and sympathetic society. It's like watching the world in black and white transfer into a field of high-definition virtual reality. It becomes much more interesting and much more exciting to live in.

Lest our understanding be stunted, I'm re-imagining how we approach the ways we communicate with someone.

Sometimes, a big hug echoes in the heart louder than any word.

The kanchiong spider speaks: Learning to be patient

People who know me, know that I'm quite an antsy spider - I get things done, and I want it done now. It is partly what makes me a results-producing person who is loved by bosses and sometimes hated by co-workers (spoil market).

I have this tick within me that I need to scratch and if I don't scratch it, it needs to be externalised in sometimes very unhealthy ways. I will either be passive aggressive, or be slow burning, or just have a bad attitude. I will scoff and brush away things and make judgement that it is a waste of my time and write off the person/project forever.

My ex-bosses have told me that I run at a million miles and while I can cope with many things on my plate, I need to slow down for others to catch up.

So let them catch up they say.

Yet, this incredibly feeling of being a pariah, of being absolutely lonely in my pedestal of being hyper-efficient and effective, is not a way to live. It alienates when I should be collaborating. As someone who really communicates well - I lack the patience to spend more time with myself to reflect.

I guess it's a level of intellectual superiority - that because I can, I should. However true power is the ability to withhold the very same power. In Javanese/Balinese shadow puppetry - or what is called "Wayang" - the monsters are often portrayed in a wild and uncontrollable manner while the hero is someone who is almost refined and unassuming but in complete control of the situation.

I think I need to learn how to be patient with others. My anxiety to fix things - people, problems and situations - drives unnecessary pressure in both my persona life and the workplace. I'm not talking about being stressed, but rather giving undue stress to others. I don't give others the benefit of the doubt enough, I don't find out what the hold-up might be, and I am not forgiving of weakness.

There are self-defined signs of a person's weakness and I judge too quickly because of it. Just because I can understand many things easily, doesn't mean that I understand everything that life has thrown at me. I need to give others a chance to be allowed their point of view - they may not necessarily tell me - but they'll demonstrate it in their actions in due time.

I think this stems from a deep-seated fear of failure. That somehow, if things don't get fixed, or completed, I have therefore showed that I'm a fraud, and someone who is not as cool or smart as I am said to be. Impatience of this nature - to get everything right the first time - is going to be the ruin of many things. It has cost me both time and money as well as relationships in the past and friends who are brave enough who have called me out on it reigned me back temporarily.

There is no well-defined timetable or project Gantt chart of when things must happen in life. Everything happens in its own time and place - and sometimes it's the marrying up of the perfect circumstances often than not, that makes things happen.

As much as I accuse control-freaks of being disruptive, being impatient is also equally destructive. I think these recent months have really taught me many things both in my personal and professional life. In a big organisation - things happen in their own time. In my personal relationships - things have to be allowed to happen/breathe so that both parties respect each others' standards for themselves. It's a small step but I have to calm the fuck down starting today.

Ohmmmm....

Flirting: an apology to all men

I've been back to the dating scene recently with a clean mind. Now at 29, I think dating holds a very different meaning, and the dynamics have humbled me.

It prompted this self-reflection, and while they say admission is the first step to self-improvement, I also want to capsulate this as a reminder-to-future-self.

After being in a largely unhappy relationship for 2 years - with little intimacy and emotional/intellectual engagement - I felt starved. Attention was empty and kisses were hollow throughout my previous relationship. My mistake, that I needed to be more honest with myself in the past. As much as I encourage my friends to leave unhappy relationships, I did not hold such courage myself until fate intervened on my behalf because I was too afraid. Strangely it took for someone to cheat to gain back my self-confidence. That, and champagne with a very-exceptional Macallan shot offered by a good friend.

I think that emotional and physical deficiency pushed me to almost flirt outrageously, it's a cry for help, a sign that I didn't recognise until very recently. It wasn't that I needed the guys to flirt back with me, what I needed was a wake up call. It doesn't help that YouTube videos on "50 ways to flirt with a guy" catalysed and almost made it permissible. I forgot, being a cultural geographer, local traditions apply to what were US-centric discourses. In any case, it could have been a disaster if not for a very strong wake up call yesterday.

I am human and I failed. But like any other, we need to move on from our failures and learn how to fail better.

Essentially it got me thinking about flirting - so much discourse on flirting is around "getting the guy". I am starting to toy with the idea that perhaps flirting - being the definition,

"behave as though sexually attracted to someone, but playfully rather than with serious intentions." -

I can come across as being disingenious - especially in the early stages of getting to know someone because I make promises I may not be able keep. What does it say about my character, as a person? I think being able to show your sexual side is okay - in fact I almost encourage it within women because we are brought up to fear our bodies (whole thesis on this somewhere in my dropbox). So taking a step back, looking at my throw-away comments, is antithesis to my values and beliefs and does not reflect the person I truly am. Perhaps those that respond to my flirts, are also equally disingenious and superficial and I fear that history repeats itself. We reap what we sow.

We should not abandon flirting altogether - I still find that extremely endearing and fun - but to use it at the opportune time when a sexy playful comment can be followed up with actual promises of things to come. It is this complex layering of being in a serious committment coupled with keeping things light to make life slightly more interesting.

At 29, the dating experience has changed. Perhaps it's time to cast aside my old skin and be more mature. After all, the very act of insanity is doing something over and over again but expecting a different outcome isn't it? So ultimately, if I want a partner in life with a certain character, I should therefore exhibit those myself.

For reservations: my witty double-entendres and puns for that special someone ;)