BEYOND SG

What you can learn from Hollywood and Bollywood?

1. If you are old enough, you will vaguely remember the old Hollywood musical movies featuring hundreds of extras and dancers, doing some fantastic military precise choreography. The person responsible for this was a producer and dance choreographer named Busby Berkeley. He was in the military in World War One so getting a hundred showgirls to dance in line was a walk in the park or should I say a dance in the park for him. In the mid 1930s to 1950s, almost every movie is a musical. It is not unlike the Bollywood musical movies we love to mock.

2. Busby was an obsessive producer and he wanted to top each musical with bigger and larger budget and a larger troop of dancers. But in the late 50s, audience taste has changed. They wanted non-singing movies. They wanted to see violence, gangster and damsels in distress. But Busby refused to evolve and change. He kept on making those movies until the American studios killed off his projects. Today, nobody knows who is Busby. He became a note in the history of cinema trivial. (Accoding to Wikipedia, he had a bit of a career revival in his older age as directors sought him out to film complex sections of the movies.)

Military precision Berkeley's classic

3.Interestingly, even a traditional society like India is evolving. For the last decade, Indian directors have tried to make larger and more expensive musicals but each one of them was a box office disaster. The larger the movie, the bigger the losses. Now they have their own non-singing movie classics like the rest of the world.

4. When you run a business, what works in the past may not be a success in the future. A businessman must accept the Darwinian nature of commerce. If the business parameter changes, one has to change with the times. Your one hit wonder may be an accidental hit in the past but to use the same strategy and tactic in every scenario is courting disaster. My Zen-centric dad always reminded me that one has to be introspective. It is like possessing a pair of eyes that grow outside your socket and look at yourself from an “outside” perspective. If you do not possess this reflective ability, to question oneself, to willing to learn new tricks, skills and technologies, to unlearn and discard what is obsolete, then you will end up like Busby.

5. The best businessmen and fund managers are often introspective people. Sure, they often make mistake and get burnt but they are fast to adapt. Hardly I see them making the same mistake twice. There is a famous saying, “Fool me once, shame on him. Fool me twice, shame on me.” For those who think they are always right and see the world with a happy cookie cutter, they often end up in the museum. The best businessmen sees themselves as cookie cutter mould maker. They make and perfect a mould. Make a thousand copies and milk everything they could out of that mould and they exit (or better still, sell it to the next wannabe sucker). And then make another new mould and repeat extraction process.

6. How do you fight this Busby Disease? I won’t use the oft-quoted “The only constant in life is change.” This is a consultant wannabe’ favourite quote. I had one male ex-colleague, who has Snoopy pictures all over his cubicle, who quotes this line all the time. I want to say this to him, “So your mother is a man.” There are some things in this universe I do not want to change. For example, my parents’ sex. But I can think of a few ways to fight this disease.

7. Be humble. Do not take one’s age (“I eat salt more than you eat rice”), title and position for granted. You have not arrived. In fact, we never really “arrived” in life until we depart from this life. Nope, buying a few luxurious watches and collecting a few vintage wives, I mean wine, is not the end point of life’s amazing journey. We can learn and unlearn. We continue to be curious of the world and look for megatrends. We read and scan for data. We can say “sorry I am wrong.” We can admire Tiger Woods’ feats but we must not forget a young staff’s “surprise” contribution. I am often amazed that bosses pay homage to Tiger or Federer as if they were born in the same village but not a word of appreciation to his own team mates who keep him alive or/and keep him fed. We must surround ourselves with people with backbone and not weathervanes. Our best friends are not those who ape “Wang Shang Ying Ming” (Oh, Great Emperor, You are so brilliant!) and not always those who share the same buddy-buddy hobbies with us. We must surround ourselves with diversity and independent minds so that at the crucial juncture, they can save our sorry asses and tell us where we have gone wrong and then we promise never to make the same mistake.. ever. Don’t be a Busby.

8. I am forever paranoid. This is worse than the “naked” nightmare in which you find yourself walking into the exam hall wearing nothing. This is my ultimate nightmare. You walk on stage wearing the Elvis unbuttoned shirt gyrating to your own Bollywood hit. And your opponent walks purposefully towards you in a red-gold Iron Man suit and the audience is shouting “Tony Stark! Tony Stark! Tony Stark!” and you have no idea what is that all about. That, to me, would be a blockbuster tragedy.

 

Harold Fock

Best Investment Advice in 2008

One of the common themes around the world is that people get bad investment advice. You can be in London, Singapore, New York or Hong Kong, and the same bad advice on how to lose more money (while enriching the financial consultants and fund managers) is dished out the same way. They will ask you to invest in sure-win "black box" derivative instruments (the current complicated subprime crisis is just an example), hot exciting developing countries like China, India and Vietnam and some high commission fees financial products that increase your risks and lower your returns. The exact opposite of what they promise to achieve.

I have decided to fight this global stupidity while enriching my friends and myself.  I am starting a series of YouTube video talks explaining how you can be comfortably rich by taking less risk. It is written for the layman and I hope it will be fun and enriching for you.

Here is episode One. The video looks amateurish and shakey but hey, it can only get better! Enjoy and have a good year in 2008!

Harold Fock

The Price of Content and Why you are in trouble if you are in the Content Business

Last weekend, I was at the International Book Fair at Sun Tec City.

This is what I saw:

Those piles and piles of S$1 and S$2 are softwares comprising mainly education titles. These are not pirated softwares. They are just yesterday's content.

Conclusion: Information wants to be cheap.

I am in the education content creation business. Stripped to its core, my company produces only two things - a set of computer algorithms that can identify which part of the lesson you don't understand (this is called Diagnostic Technology) and Content (the lessons, the Ministry of Education approved syllabus, the animation, the video clips, the multiple choice questions and answers). Analogy wise, it is like selling Coffee Machines (The E-learning technologies) and Coffee Beans (Content). The fun and lucrative part of my business is that you need a cutting edge E-learning technology to house and access your content. The not so fun part of my business is that content is hard to build, expensive to build and is consumed within seconds. And yet, without the content, I cant sell the technologies. Similarly, it is difficult to sell coffee machines without showing the client how it works with the coffee beans. Quite some time ago, Bill Gates said Content was everything. That was when the CD-ROM just became popular and reached tipping point status. Yes, there was a time when PC did not come with CD-ROM players, let alone CD-writer and DVD-writer.

But content is cheap these days.  In fact, I think if you are in the Content-centric business, you are in trouble. I cant put it more eloquently than Stewart Brand who said at the first Hacker's Conference in 1984, that

"On the one hand information wants to be expensive, because it's so valuable. The right information in the right place just changes your life. On the other hand, information wants to be free, because the cost of getting it out is getting lower and lower all the time. So you have these two fighting against each other.^"

So if you are an E-learning content-centric company, your days are numbered. If you produce computer games (which used to be the darlings of the content and experiential media business), you are still dead if they are not megahits. It will be as worthless as a blank DVD-ROM or what the industry boys called it Coaster Ware (i.e. your software is good enough to be Coasters only - the stuff you put your glasses on to prevent leaving a watermark on your expensive table.) There is just too much information chasing too few bandwidth.

Let's get back to the analogy. When the coffee bean becomes dirt cheap (it is amazingly cheap - Read the Underground Economist - coffee beans constitutes only a few percent of the total price of a cup of coffee sold at Star bucks), it is increasingly hard to sell your coffee machines at a premium. UNLIKE coffee consumption which is a fun and rewarding social experience at the same time, studying is no fun. And it is close to impossible fighting against the best transmission of knowledge - the book. Dr. Issac Asimov is fond of saying this - a book needs no battery, no  internal lighting source to read it, you can even bring it to the throne, sleep on it, store it, add notes to it, highlight it and pass it down to the next generation with the information very much intact.

The mistake to make in my business is to build a better and more complex "coffee machines". It is like adding more and more features to the electronic typewriter. The world does not need it. Or try to buy cheap content and play the aggregator role. Cheap plus cheap is still cheap. So what else can you do?

Instead of building coffee machines. Think about building bigger machines that not only provide coffee but they can feed say an army or an institution. Instead of building content, offer to deliver and broadcast content for the content providers. They will be so grateful. Be an integral part of the toll gate ecosystem. New Oriental, a very successful Education company based in China, provides TOEFL testings for the Chinese market. Enough said

Also think about the consumption of the coffee beans as an experience. Can you make the consumption of content a pleasurable experience? I know study is no fun but I believe entrepreneurs will figure a way out. In Hong Kong and Macau, high end tuition centres have hired ex-models to teach classes. Celebrities have joined exclusive childcare centres in Singapore as branding ambassadors.

The NEW new way of doing content business has begun. Are you game?

Harold Fock

The New Rich Club of 2020 or How to price real estate in 10 seconds?

It is scary to watch people queuing to buy prime area condominiums in Singapore recently. They are not buying properties. They are speculating and hoping to make a quick buck. There are so many lessons GLOBALLY on people being hurt by real estate speculation, that you really wonder why humans never learn from history.

Watching people queue to speculate on properties is as scary as watching people watch WWF or wrestling matches. There is nothing wrong watching our favorite WWF heroes choking each other to "death" at the arena. That is not the really scariest bit. The scariest bit is when they think it is real.

There are enough cautionary articles in the newspapers (thanks goodness) to explain why a valuation of S$3,000 per square feet (psf) is almost suicidal in terms of risk and return. Rather, a good friend of mine, Cheong Hian, has come up with an Idiot proof 10-second valuation rule. It goes like this:

Since a condominium unit is really a space in the air and you have 99 years to occupy that space, imagine a 3-D space in the air, ignore all the glitzy computer graphics and the pretty sales consultants, ignore the Feng Shui "face north" is good (or whatever mumbo jumbo), ignore the Spa-like swimming pool and the Club-Med facilities (you won't use it anyway because you are too busy working hard to repay the loan; it is only useful in the first "house warming" party, the bragfest event before you are enslaved to your property), ignore the news of how someone made a killing speculating the Sentosa Cove (those guys have first thinkers' advantage, not you), put that all aside and focus on the suspended virtual space in the air and ask yourself this:

Is it worth paying this space at S$XXXX for an option to use it for 99 years and will someone looking at it with the same perspective as I do pay MORE?

You may walk out empty-handed but it may be the cleverest thing you ever think about. Come to think of it, the above may be the BEST ADVICE Beyond SG can offer to our gentle readers!

I have another good friend cum mentor, Heng C.M. who was my former colleague back in MAS. He is very interested in financial planning and he shared this scary story to me once. He said that out of curiosity, he started evaluating the financial situations of many Singapore yuppie couples and many of them are suffering from financial terminal cancer and they still dont know it.

I think this is a maths problem. I think the financial maths (the way we compute, not the method) we use still harks back to the good old days when you will have a nice retirement ceremony at 55. It makes assumptions of a world when you will be given a Rolex watch for loyal 25 years service. The new world cannot make such assumptions. You have to assume the evil cost-cutting CFO (by the way, that is my daytime job) is targeting you at 42 years old when you have a condominium (my impolite friends called them the Condom. Heroes), a branded car (Alpha Romeo, ok, no more puns), two children preparing for JC/University, a maid and a huge salary the CFO wishes to reduce. He knows you will beg for mercy when he strikes and you probably can't find a better job. CFOs, by default, love to see people beg. Those who dont just dont become CFOs.

Hence, if you rework the financial maths and assume your earning capability ends at 45 or more conservatively, at 40, and make preparations for such a scenario, your life will be much happier, more fulfilling and less stressful. I think the schools are teaching our kids (Gen Z, Z1, Z2?) to lower our expectations these days that but for us, the Gen X and Y, we are taught the wrong things. Many wrong things.

So the second most important question you should ask yourself is this:

When I am forty-five, will my employer still pay me equivalent money to stick around?

Ask these two questions at the condominium sales office/the mock up units and one thing for sure, you will be the New Rich Class in 2020. Oh, and ignore the babe with the Oxley sunglasses at the top of her head snobbing around in the showroom and pretending to be the New Rich. Once she signs on the dotted line, statistically speaking, you win :-) See you at the Singapore New Rich Club in 2020!

Harold Fock

4 'C's in a Diamond and 3 'R's in a Singaporean

I am always fascinated by diamonds. It is not a rare commodity. It is not really precious because it is compressed carbon, after all. In fact, it is easier to find/mine/process diamonds than many other precious metals. Diamonds are the most incorrectly valued commodity in the world and they defy economic forces known as supply and demand. You can almost throw away your Economics 101 textbook when dealing with diamonds - ever wonder why economists teach economics using "widgets" (not the internet term but the old meaning to mean a hypothetical trade-able object) instead of real stuff? The idea is to prevent smart asses from asking too many questions.

This is one of my favorite questions at parties and functions especially when there are lots of women. What is the price of an unpolished diamond, say, 1 carat? A few learned ones (especially the rich tai tai) will say "It depends. You told me only the first "C" but there are 4 "C"s in a diamond. Carat, Cut, Color and Certification. Give me more information about the colour, any visible defect, the cut etc." My reply is average color, average cut and normal certification. In any case, it is your average unpolished, raw diamond.

And the answer is, "About US fifty-five dollars ONLY." If you read the Fortune magazine (article titled "Diamonds aren't forever"), it gave the answer in a round-about way. Deep down, it makes sense. Think about all the middlemen costs - the polishing and cutting (cant be too much because you KNOW craftsmanship cant be too expensive these days), the shop rentals, the advertisements, the ever-polite sales staff, the transport cost, insurance cost, the "wholesaler" and "distributor" costs and so on. And of course the fantastic profits made by the jewelry shops. Work backwards and you realise that Diamonds are not the Girl's best friends but the Middleman's and Marketer's

Another trick to impress the female crowd is that you, the nerdy PC-loving, gadget man can actually price any diamond-based jewelry, down to 15% price variation. Just take any diamond bracelet, ring or ear stud and the pricing rules work like this (in SINGAPORE DOLLARS). This works best when it is not a single BIG diamond (and not from Tiffany) but say, a diamond studded bracelet:

1. If the diamond is so small and you have trouble seeing it, add S$20.

2. If the diamond is big enough to be seen but not the "rock" level, add S$50

3. Add up all the small and big diamond and that is the retail price of that piece of jewelry. You don’t even need to compute the workmanship and other costs.

You will be amazed at how close you reach the retail price and the lady guests will see you in new light. A SNAG nerd that can price jewelry? Wow! Like the movie "Borat", you need not drive a Hummer to be a babe magnet, you are the Babe Magnet! (If you really need to be nice, price it incorrectly on the high side and you look smart and gentlemanly at the same time :-)

For more information about the diamond trade, please see http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/198202/diamond

Why talk about diamonds in Beyond SG? Because in the new, new economy in which “any manufactured product is a commodity”, perception may be everything. A China and India-based manufacturer can compete on pricing in terms of craftsmanship and logistics cost, but they really have no weapons against something like De Beers "A Diamond is Forever" marketing campaign that elevates diamonds to a luxury status symbol. You can easily cut a company’s operating cost by outsourcing to China and India but you can’t easily change the perception of your products.

Another quintessential example is Tiffany & Co. - the magical turquoise branded luxury goods company. Do you think they are selling jewelry? Nope. They are selling turquoise boxes because whatever you put inside the boxes will illicit a joyful reaction from the recipient. Sorry, Tiffany & Co and to all the girls who wear Tiffany proudly but that is branding at its best.

George Yeo wrote an article in Ephraim's site (emphraim.blogspot.com) about global competition in light of China, India and Vietnam's participation and how to stay alive in this new landscape. My 2 cents is this – for Singaporeans (or citizens of any small country), you need the 3 Rs – Reputation, Reliability and Resolution. Reputation is like De Beers or Tiffany branding. It is a perception that you can complete a project and do good job without any scam or cooking the books. Reliability is beyond pricing. I know my Swiss watch will outlast any cheap China-made watch and although quartz technology means a China watch is no different from a Swiss watch in terms of accuracy, somehow I feel it is more accurate and reliable. Again, perception comes in. Last but not least, I need to know you will stay and fight and won’t run off at the slightest difficulty or smallest improvement in monetary rewards. I need to know you are determined to win. My colleagues who behave like this in my company get the fastest promotions.

I think in the New, New Economy, people or countries that possess the 3 Rs will thrive despite the china and India “pricing bomb”. We are rare, we are precious and we last forever. That is the new thinkspace we need to occupy. This should be our global branding as a people and a workforce. Think Tiffany and De Beers. If you don't possess the 3 Rs, at least learn to fake it. (Think of all the Ivy League-schooled consultants and all the quick-talking Wall Street Market Strategists:-)

Diamonds may be the girl’s best friends but to entrepreneurs, the diamond trade can be our best tutors.

Harold Fock

"Diamonds are precious...... Not"

 

Narrowcasting Content and the Rise of Media DJ

1. As I am in the E-media business, I deal with content creation everyday. In my non-working hours, I deal with it too. When I turn on the television, I see a broadcast machine called the TV (or more likely LCD or plasma screen these days) and the television programmes as content. The distribution mechanism is of course the cable. When I jog with my uber-cool IPOD Nano, I am aware that Steve Jobs (Apple) is enabling me to access the digital music files (content) via a MP3 player (broadcast). I-Tunes would be the content distribution mechanism had it been available in

Singapore

, hence for now, it has to be the music CDs that I possess. So in my simplistic world, the media business really comes in three parts - the content, the broadcasting machine (PC, TV, MP3 player, newsprint, radio etc) and the distribution mechanism (cable, internet, airwave, cellular network). As early as 1996, Bill Gates made the speech “Content is King” and predicted people will pay for quality content or more accurately, “narrowcasted” content in the Internet age.

2. However, quality content is hard to find. There sees to be some form of 1^st Law of Conservation of Energy in content production and consumption. "Everything being equal, you need extraordinary effort to consume or access extraordinary content". Think about it. How many times have you seen Van Damn (pun deliberate) bashing someone's nose in the mindless reruns of his low budget “kungfu” films on TV? Even on paid channels like HBO and STAR, you get more junk than quality programming. And just when you think Discovery Channel is quality food for the brain, flip to that channel and most likely you will see an episode of "American Chopper" in which the father-son team will swear and curse while building some awesome bike for their rich clients. It is painful to watch and there is hardly any enlightenment or educational value in the programme and yet, the series seems to last forever... When I was at Discovery Channel HQ last year in

Washington

, I posed this question to an executive, "Why is this anomaly allowed to continue?" and he was puzzled too. He told me that people have written to Discovery that they should axe these two morons (again relative to the rest of the Discovery content) but somehow it has a life of its own.

3. Yet the classics like Carl Sagan's "Cosmos" or Tom Hanks 1998 "From the Earth to the Moon" or 12 Angry Men are hardly repeated on TV or even cable channel. I bet everyone has seen Sex in the City on HBO but miss the Tom Hank's classic which was a HBO production (if it was ever shown in

Asia

). Those are just some of my favorites and admittedly, one man's meat/vegetable is another man's poison. The same thing happens to me where the radio is concerned. How often do you hear your favorite song being played and it ended abruptly because it turned out to be a sampler of what types of songs the Radio DJ will play NEXT week.

4. Here is the good news. There are entrepreneurs who figure out how to make money out of narrowcasting content (but not necessarily, good content). With Satellite Radio like Sirius, you can listen to Howard Stern (bad example), Martha Steward and Deepak Chopra selectively. With IPOD, your playlist is your narrowcasting universe. You can delete any song you dislike; you don’t even need to skip a song on the CD. In

Singapore

, there are three discotheques which figure out how to narrowcast. On Wednesday, Zouk and Ministry of Sound play 80s and 90s “classic” pop hits and the Gen X audience dance happily away to the tune of Pet Shop Boys and Wham. Dragonfly or St James Station realizes that the disco crowd loves the same songs and the same act and they have a 1 hour Canto pop session, 1 hour classic 80s and guess what, they don’t even change the songs much because they know the audience loves the same hits. As the Teletubbies are fond of saying, “Again, again, again”.

5. I predict in a few years time, it will give rise to a Media DJ. Look around you, your IKEA cabinet is probably filled to the brim with DVDs and CDs. It is too much content chasing too few bandwidths. The Media DJ will be like a MTV personality. He will decide what you will experience that day. Say, you are a Science Fiction fan. The MDJ will play all the favorite Star Wars special moments or movies on TV, intersect with clips of other classic SF movies. On your web-enabled MP3 player, you will listen to “Also Sprach Zarathustra (Thus Spake Zarathustra)” – the soundtrack from Space Odyssey 2001. Your huge interactive digital wall painting will download screensavers from Battlestar Galaticca. The MDJ will totally immerse you in the content you want. They might call it your Content Bubble for the Day (CBD). The MDJ will hunt for quality content as he scans the Amazon, the Rotten Tomatoes (movie rating website) and other sources to find your stuff. MDJ will be the new media stars.

6. Maybe in that “choose your own content” world, we finally get rid of Van Damn’s cheap flicks and the horrors of WWF wrestling matches. Then again, if your wife or girlfriend subscribes to a “Korean Show “Content Bubble for the Day, well, you will have pretty actresses dying of cancer slowly on your LCD panel every half an hour. I have no solution to that. Go read a book.

Harold Fock

Failure to Imagine

I am currently watching Tom Hanks’ emmy award winning docudrama “From The Earth to The Moon”. It chronicles the historic moon landing Apollo missions. From the unforgettable President Kennedy speech “We go to the moon .. not because it is easy, but because it is hard”, to the early Mercury and Gemini space capsule missions, to the Apollo 1 fire tragedy and finally to the moon landing on the 20^th July 1969 by Neil Armstrong “One small step for man, one giant leap for mankind”. Although the moon landing was motivated by the Cold War to beat Red Russia, it was a technical and human achievement of the highest order. And Tom Hanks, as executive producer and a space mission “fanboy” (he was reported to watch the Space Odyssey 2001 every few months to get his space fix), is just awesome here. The docudrama respects the audience intelligence, focuses on the human heroic elements and drools on the space technology (and at some point, almost worshipful as the camera traces the astronaut spacesuit or the rocket like objects of desire…)

In one memorable episode, three astronauts were killed on a routine test (on the ground) when a fire broke out in the Apollo 1 capsule. Because they were pumping pure oxygen into the capsule, a spark was all it took to start a firestorm inside the pressurized spaceship. Within 15 seconds, the astronauts were ephsyiated and moments later, burnt to death. It was the first NASA space mission tragedy, way before Challenger and Columbia disasters. As expected, there was the usual board of inquiry and witch-hunting so prevalent in public organizations. One of the key witnesses, an astronaut was asked, “What do you think really went wrong?”. The astronaut said, “Failure of imagination. Failure to imagine that a fire can break out on the ground. (on planet earth).We always prepare for a fire in space. So the manufacturers are at fault. So is NASA. So is myself who takes care of the crew safety. So is everyone involved in the Apollo program. So stop the witch hunt and let us go to the moon!” And the “courtroom” applauded.

Think about it. So many of our failures are due to an inability to imagine. So many businesses and projects fail because we refuse to imagine the possibilities. We fail to imagine a world where some very fast cars running round the track like a large-sized plastic Race Car set can attract millions of fans. It is called F-1 racing. But at least, we dare to imagine a future where adults need to be entertained and bet on building two world class resorts. Seth Godin in his book “The New Big is Small” pointed out that the film-maker Kodak refused to imagine a future where people will switch to digital cameras and do away with film development DESPITE the fact that they manufacture digital cameras too! It took them a long, long time to abandon the old business model before evolving to a new one (“digital media management kiosk”).

I retrospected a bit. I helped run a listed E-learning company in Asia. It started as a sports education business in Singapore and the founders had the vision and imagination to see a future where kids will be tested diagnostically on the PCs. Putting every spare dollar in the new E-learning division, the company managed to secure a few large projects and got itself listed. And now it is flexing its wings and testing new waters in Asia. But is it enough? Maybe the new future is not about Computer-based learning. Maybe it is about developing learning software and gameware with Xbox 360 and PSP3. Maybe it is like V-Tech, a producer of educational TV games with licenses from Winnie the Pooh, Elmo and Spiderman. Maybe it is about learning via Apple I-Pod Video PDA, we know Steve Jobs won’t stop there. Maybe it is back to good old fashioned books and educators go back to basics as the kids are more interested in the bells and whistles of the technology and not learning. Issac Asimov is very fond of saying that the best invention is the book It stores information. It requires no battery. And you can access information while sitting on the throne! Am I imagining enough? Are you?

Harold Fock

Good Service

I just got back from Hong Kong and spent 8 hours on the plane in total within the last 48 hours. Both legs of the flight was full and we had to take the 1st Class as it was an emergency business meeting. The Singapore Airlines is, as usual, world class in terms of pampering the passengers - be it 1st, business or economy class. So my mind was really on service when I touched down at Hong Kong airport yesterday afternoon.

When we reached the immigration queue, they served sweets, specially packed Polo mints at the immigration counter. That is not the cool bit. The cool bit is that the container of the mints is a metal box with two small round holes that serve as a disposable chutes for the mint wrapping and below them, a smiling face. The mint container smiles at you while you consume the sweet and the immigration officer is checking your passport. The heaven is in the details. I wish I could take a picture of the box but taking out your cellphone to film at the immigration counter is really pushing it, so dear gentle readers, you just have to accept my description.

Singapore immigration counter is probably one of the first few immigration counters that serve sweets and the officers there are so courteous that they remind you to take one. The good news is that our service level (government) is good but the bad news is the rest of the world figures that out too.

We walked to the taxi queue and the taxi driver greeted us "good afternoon" in the cab. This is  Hong Kong and our unfair perception is that the people there work a step faster to compete. Yet their cab drivers are courteous. We thought it was a fluke and we were just lucky to be picked up by a cab driver in good mood. I was wrong. On our way back, the cab driver who picked us up was equally polite and greeted us "good morning" in Cantonese. Maybe we were lucky. Maybe not. Maybe they realised that the cab drivers are often the "first contact" embassadors of their country and fixed the problem of rude cabbies thru education, campaign and encouragement. But it worked. It was as if Giordano (famous HK clothes retailer) got into cab service -"Service with a smile". Scary.

My investors from  Malaysia recently made a trip to Singapore and he commented that  Singapore "fixes things very fast". I asked him how he jumped to that conclusion. He said that just a few months ago, service in Singapore's retail and F&B sectors were terrible. He felt a sea of change in his recent trip as if the waiter/waitresses and salespersons are aware of a greater purpose- "I am not here to just make a living, I am here to make the customers' experience meaningful". It is a great improvement but like the poet says, "It is miles to go before we sleep..." And if the world figures out that good service is an integral part of global competition and business strategy, just like low cost leadership, high end technologies, well-educated and skilled workforce etc, then we may never get to sleep.

Imagine how scary is the shopping experience when every shop is professional, polite and pleasing to the senses. Those that are not are no longer around.

Harold

Blackberry, Slaveberry and Dumbberry

One of the business icons in the 21st Century is the businessman flicking out his Blackberry and doing his "Road Warrior" routine. He can email his staff, look at the Powerpoint, scream at the latest quarterly results and order his next Amazon book - all this convenience at the comfort of.. wherever he happens to be. The Blackberry trend is so prevalent among the business class that they fondly called it the Slaveberry. You can't leave home without it and can't do business without it. When there was a lawsuit against Blackberry's company Research In Motion (RIM) on its wrongful usage of intellectual property, an American partner from Discovery told me this, "Don't worry. RIM wont be in trouble. Congressmen cant function without it as their aides use the Blackberry to advise them what to vote." I don't know how true is this urban techno myth but it illustrates how powerful is this push mail on the go device.

I think Slaveberry is not the only thing we have to worry about. My company uses the Blackberry extensively among the senior managers, like any regional corporation. But I am worried.

1. The Blackberry promotes speed of decisions but not quality of decisions. It gives the managers the illusion that what is typed into the Blackberry, someone back in the office will execute it. It gives the false illustion of work being done and decisions being made. But they are often not well-thought out and pondered. Back in those printed papers days, you get to read a report, mull it over, weigh the consequences before you act. With the Blackberry, it is too easy and tempting to type "Go ahead. Good plan." and somehow hope someone in the office somewhere will do the something. It replaces meetings, discussion, feedback sessions and sometimes, good old fashion thinking.

2. Employees, contrary to the perception of a 24/7 boss, love it. Why? Because most managers are fuzzy and not precise about their decisions and implementation instructions. The Blackberry is the perfect tool for "decision audit" or more rudely, cover my a**. You see, with the Blackberry, the staff has the perfect written proof that the boss approved their decisions, not their fault when something screws up. The trick is to write a long email to the boss and he will be reading it at the airport, Starbucks or on the road. He will miss out the salient details and all the whitewash potential failure points. Better still, he replies, "Ok". A few months later when the employee is questioned for the bad decision, hey, I have an email written by you to go ahead, really not my fault.

3. On a small screen, you cant really see the total spreadsheet and the fine print of, say a legal document. So somone can attach the Blackberry email with documents, spreadsheets and powerpoint but the manager will want bize-sized summaries (pure text). Again, an important dimension in decision making is removed. I also notice this trend among Blackberry users - the shorter the email received from the Backberry, the higher chances of it being answered by the bosses. It is almost like MTV for the businessmen 2.0 and we all know how much intelligence there is, in the MTV multimedia content.

In short, we not only carry the Blackberry and "Slaveberry" but we carry the "Dumbberry". Not the technology's faut. It is us managers who have mistaken speedy decisions for quality ones. Think about it.

Harold Fock

Henry Ford and Harold Fock - Our Love for the Color Black

In Management 101, our lecturers love to tell us Henry Ford's Model T story. In his search for industrial productivity, he insisted that all Model T cars had to be painted black. "You can paint it any color as long as it is black." This has always been held up as a quintessential example of not listening to customers' needs for variations. There must be some historic car lovers who wanted their Ford Model T in pink or polka-dots yellow. In those days, you don't argue with the boss.

Personal Disclosure here - I love the color black. I drive a black car. Use a black Macbook and a black Fujitsu notebook. All my bags are black. All my office wear (except for the occasional white shirt to see institutional or private investors) are black. I live in a suitcase and having one color save me a tremendous amount of packing time. Black shoes goes with black socks, goes with black pants, goes with black T-shirt or black long-sleeves which ultimately, goes with a black suit. You look comfortable, fashionable and efficient. And black adds an air of mystery to your personality and personal branding . Guess why Batman does not wear bright blue and red? TO be fair, he is smart enough not to wear his underwear outside as the juvenile joke goes, so his fashion sense should be better than the other superhero.

But seriously, does consumer really want the entire spectrum of colors in their product? We don't need to look far. Apple IPOD versus Creative Zen players. Apple IPOD (mostly) comes in two colors- black or white. Creative has an endless range of colors. Technologically, one could even rank Creative players as more advanced than Apple's. And yet, simplicity (or rather lack of choice) beats variety hands down. There is something irresistable about the two color schemes adopted by Apple. They look retro, classy and timeless as opposed to all the fancy names like Ultra Neon and Shocking Pink (note: I made the names up; Creative does not call them that). Apart from looks, there is a functional reason to keep it black or white. If you produce accessories (as a third party) for IPOD, your production line only needs to deal with two colors. In fact, it became a high margin business opportunity for third parties selling all kinds of colored IPOD skins, pouches and speakers. Humans need to find ways to differentiate or stand out among themselves but too many choices confuse them.

I shared this story with a friend and her not-so-serious reply was that Henry Ford was a just a man of his times. It was black and white movie then. It is a multi-colored digital world now. Maybe. However, I still suspect Henry Ford is right. Had he been born today and launched his black Model T in the 21st Century, he might just say, "Paint it any color you want as long as it is black BUT do visit the iFORD store to customise your Model T". Perhaps, he understood consumers' needs more than we do. Simplicity wins again.

 

Harold Fock