If we cannot produce competitive world-class products with names
like Toyota, Hyundai, Samsung, Tatong, or Nokia but keep insisting
we have world-class this or that we will get the end feel very
empty.
It is very clear that to build a really world-class country we
cannot just make claims about leadership or talents or about our
world-class this or that, we should be entrepreneurs offering many
alternative solutions that presumptuous leadership or all kinds of
look-good forms. We need to build our substance. However now our
political culture is very lopsided in favor of those who are called
elites. Any ones who are not elites will be deemed a threat and
sidelined.
For example, we have a non-elite Sim Wong Hoo who has made it but
he will be frown on as a kind of smart alec not in the class of
academic elites as our leaders.
No matter how entrepreneurial and how successfully he has created
world products with practical applications and consistent
management philosophy like "Creating Huge Excessive Advantages
Tactics", he and his types will not be regarded as equals to the
elites.
The hugely competitive Taiwanese Computer entrepreneurs have done
the same with CHEAT by creating compatible industrial standards for
the Taiwanese PCs which finally broke the stranglehold of the
invincible IBM standards. Singapore lacks practical technology
applicators and entrepreneurs who can think out of the box like
these Taiwanese PC Entrepreneurs. The present leaders are too
concerned with image and self-importance and we are left behind
technologically because of such pride or face and we are not paying
attention in applying technologies from schools being overly
concerned with paper chase or look-good examination results.
I believe that in order to be worth being called leaders and
talents or elites we must change our current political philosophy
to include all with practical abilities and cut out all the
rhetorics emphasising more on practical abilities and
results.
The immediate task should be to build a new team to take Singapore
higher to meet the next challenges ahead in the real world we need
to cut out all the pretentious look-good approaches in managing the
economy and get more action types of people to start up new
technology.
There is a very sorry negative political culture here deeply
ingrained in looking good while avoiding accountability and
liability for mistakes. Sim's "No U-Turn Sydrome" will help the
present leaders to be more accountable and transparent and be
willing to accept responsibility for mistakes without all the
U-turns.
