Building People: Sunday Emails from a Chairman

By Mun Leong Liew

Eavesdrop on a top business leader to learn the secrets of great leadership

Building People provides a glimpse into the mind of one of Asia’s keenest and most effective business leaders. Before becoming Chairman of Changi Airport Group and Surbana Jurong, author Mun Leong Liew was named Best CEO in Singapore, Best CEO in Asia, CEO of the Year, Outstanding CEO of the Year, and more—but his successes are not based strictly upon the numbers. This book reveals the personal and professional philosophy behind this extraordinarily effective leader, in the context of frank and insightful emails to his staff. Touching on everything from honour and potential to training and mentorship, these messages paint a clear picture of the difference between good and great leadership. Effective leaders build companies, but legendary leaders build people—by strengthening the heart of your organisation, you enable robust growth and dynamic stability from the inside out.

These emails go beyond mere public relations to lay open the true nature of a man who is honestly, deeply committed to his job, his responsibility, his organisation, and most of all, his people.

• Learn why work-life balance is not a zero-sum game
• Discover what pragmatism and commitment truly mean in business
• Realise the importance of good partnerships and unsung heroes

• Manage change effectively and employ it wisely for sustainable success

By eavesdropping on a leader’s communications with the people he serves, you get a real sense of the man behind the success. Great leadership is rooted in a philosophy of “building up” instead of tearing down, and motivated by the sincere belief that we bring our own purpose into everything we do. Building People brings great leadership to life, and inspires action over theory through the insights of Mun Leong Liew.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 20, 2016
• ISBN: 9781119288060

Book preview

Table of Contents

Title Page

Copyright

Preface

Chapter 1: Pragmatism in Business and Leadership

Work-life Balance – Is It a Zero Sum Game?

New Year Message – Building the New Changi Airport

New Year Message – Transformation of Surbana

Pragmatism – A Key to Successful Leadership in Singapore and China

Pragmatism in Business

Pragmatism in Business 2

Contractors are Our Partners!

New Year Message – Waste Not, Want Not

Chapter 2: Engineering and Infrastructure Business

Conscience of Safety

When the Stars are Aligned ( 1 )

Commencement Speech – My Story Can be Yours Too

Engineers – Our Unsung Heroes

Time to Make the Engineering Profession Shine Again!

Speech at PFI Best Asia Infrastructure Citation Awards

If You are Not Committed, Don't Do It!

Drama at the Last Farewell to a Close Friend and Colleague, Mr Somkiat

Eulogy for Somkiat Lertpanyavit, a Most Distinguished Professional Engineer

Chapter 3: World Outlook

A Journey of Encountering Evil

Survival – The Mother of Innovation!

Turning Sand into Gold!

Will Prime Minister Abe Launch His Bazookas Soon?

World Outlook – A Marine and His Beloved Dog

Will the Year of the Fire Monkey Have More Tricks For Us All?

Chapter 4: Talent Development and Core Values

Changi Airport – The Learning University!

Corporatisation vs Commercialisation – Are They Really the Same Thing?

Building CVs

Choose Our Troops!

The Top Chinese Talent that I Missed

Churchill and the Cleaning Lady

Corruption Management in Business – Some Practical Points

It Takes Leadership and Courage to Fight Corruption

TICS – The Way Forward!

Chapter 5: In Remembrance of Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew

How Changi Airport Has Transformed Singapore (and Me!)

The Big, Bold and Innovative Air Hub of Changi Airport by Lee Kuan Yew

Lee Kuan Yew, Truly the Father of Changi Airport

Some Qingming Thoughts

The Launch of Up Close with Lee Kuan Yew

Chapter 6: Personal Reflections

Have You Climbed Mount Fuji?

A State of High Anxiety

Building Our Own Health Bank for Old Age

Building Lasting Partnerships

Of Music, Cranes and Friends

When Bosses Become Mentors

Some Thoughts on the World of Jack Ma

Young Birdie vs Old Bird

Appendix What are you going to do after you retire?

Mr Lee's continuous involvement with Changi Airport

Mr Lee's interest in people and talent

The pragmatism of Mr Lee

Mr Lee's concern for Singapore's commercial successes

Mr Lee's interest in retirement and the older workforce

Mr Lee's inexhaustible curiosity

The loving couple, Mr and Mrs Lee

Mr Lee in his later years

Index

End User License Agreement

BUILDING

PEOPLE

VOLUME

4

Sunday Emails from a Chairman

Title Page

Cover images: © Surbana Jurong Private Limited

Copyright © 2016 by Surbana Jurong Private Limited

Published by John Wiley & Sons Singapore Pte. Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-119-28807-7 (ePDF)

ISBN 978-1-119-28806-0 (ePub)

PREFACE

Why do I still spend Sundays writing emails to my colleagues and friends?

During my tenure as CEO of CapitaLand (from 2000 to 2012), I compiled all my emails which I wrote to my colleagues on Sundays and published them in three separate books with Wiley. After I stepped down as CEO of CapitaLand, I remain active in corporations as Chairman of Changi Airport Group and Surbana Jurong Group. Changi Airport Group has two roles—operations and development of Changi Airport; Surbana Jurong Group is a global consultancy group focusing on urbanization and infrastructure development in Singapore and over 30 countries. My active chairmanship of both organisations renders me ample opportunities to continue my Sunday emails but this time I penned them as Chairman and not CEO. Let me explain what inspires me to continue writing these Sunday emails.

Will you continue to write your Sunday emails? Will you please include me in your circulation list? These were the questions my ex-colleagues frequently asked when I stepped down as president and CEO of CapitaLand. I assured them that I would. I started the habit (which became more like a hobby actually!) of writing and sending Sunday emails to my colleagues in Pidemco Land (the forerunner of CapitaLand) in 1998. I don't write every Sunday, but if I do, it is only on a Sunday. Why do I write only on Sundays? Because it is only on Sundays that I have the luxury of three to four hours of uninterrupted and peaceful time to write, and it avoids giving the wrong impression that CapitaLand's CEO has nothing else better to do on busy weekdays! I usually try to make sure that the email is sent out before midnight on Sundays so that my colleagues can read it first thing on Monday mornings. That is, if they do read it!

HOW DID IT GET STARTED?

It all began in September 1998 when I wrote an email to my colleagues in Pidemco Land about my visit to Hanoi, Vietnam. I was in Hanoi to prepare for the official opening of our 5-star Meritus Westlake Hotel and I sent an email titled, Opportunities in Lean Times. I wanted to share with them what I had curiously observed in the city, which had then just opened her doors to foreign investment. Hanoi then looked like Singapore in the 50s and the city was going through difficult economic times. But the people were hard working, keen to learn, eager to improve their skills, resilient and very entrepreneurial. For instance, I observed a tall, lean woman with a weighing scale, who was providing a service to locals to weigh themselves for a fee of 500 dong (then 4 Singapore cents). I was puzzled by this trade. Unlike Singaporeans, who generally want to lose weight, the Vietnamese then were noticeably thin, so I didn't understand why they would bother about their weight. I was told, though, that rather than wanting to be thin, the Vietnamese actually wanted to be heavier in order to look prosperous. And they wished to keep track of their progress in gaining weight. I drafted that first email to my colleagues to stress that even in lean times there are opportunities to make money!

During my 16-year tenure as CEO of the CapitaLand Group, I wrote, in total, about 151 Sunday emails, plus another 11 reports of various interviews with local and overseas media, including the Chinese papers, Wall Street Journal Asia, CNA, CNBC and Bloomberg. I wrote and spoke about a wide range of business and social topics, including building people, talent management and leadership, business strategies, competition, overseas business experiences (especially in China, India and Vietnam), global crisis management, Chinese culture, ethics, core values, corruption management and lessons from some memorable successful and failed business projects. I touched on personal development issues, such as keeping fit and healthy, ageing and the Silver Hair programme, and even social topics like making sushi and writing calligraphy.

I wrote about how impressed I was by Han Cheng, then vice mayor of Shanghai, who personally visited our serviced apartment operation incognito on a Saturday night to find out more about us before he officially met with us the following Monday (He is now the party secretary of Shanghai). I wrote praiseworthily about the total unconditional commitment of the Japanese fighter pilots during the Second World War in their suicide kamikaze missions to destroy the US enemy fleet in the Pacific Ocean. Later, I realised that this was the forerunner of the tactics employed by the terrorists in the 9/11 suicide attacks in New York and other US cities. I painfully wrote about why we lost the two Integrated Resort projects in Singapore and the lessons learnt. I also wrote an email titled Bird Porn to encourage us as leaders to read more and to open our eyes to what is happening in the world. In another Sunday email, I condemned temple raiders and thieves who amputated the heads and arms of ancient figurines at Angkor Wat, Cambodia to sell to art collectors, for perpetuating the black market for these antique treasures. In urging people to be filial to their parents, I ended a Sunday email with a reminder, Have you called your mother? A senior Chinese manager in Beijing subsequently told me that he read the email whilst waiting for his flight, and called his mother whom he had never called before at the gate of the airport, saying that his boss reminded him about it. His mother praised the culture of his company. Nice compliments from the mother!

Re-reading these Sunday emails for me is still a pleasure. They have been published in three volumes titled Building People, Sunday Emails from a CEO. I wish to acknowledge Madam Ho Ching for writing the Foreword of Volume 1, and Mr S R Nathan, former president of Singapore for launching Volume 2. All royalties from the sales of these three books have been donated to CapitaLand Hope Foundation, a charity foundation I initiated in 2004 to assist poor and needy children in the areas of education, health and shelter, in the countries we did business in.

DON'T I HAVE BETTER THINGS TO DO ON SUNDAYS?

Although I have since moved on from the role and responsibilities of chief executive in 2013 (at age 67), l have continued with what has now become my hobby – to write my Sunday emails. I now address them to my colleagues in Changi Airport and Surbana Jurong Group, as their chairman. You may ask, why do I persist with this? Don't I have better things to do after my retirement? Golf, travelling, hobbies, grandchildren, smelling roses in the garden (I don't have a garden!), whatever luxurious entertainment that I deserve after working for more than 40 years?

THE IMPORTANCE OF COMMUNICATING WITH THE TROOPS

I strongly believe that a leader, whether he is a senior manager, CEO or chairman, must be prepared and able to pass on his knowledge, experiences and wisdom to his organisation. He must not keep these experiences and learning solely to himself, but must be willing to pass these on to the next generation of people. I believe that to lead, you must teach. And communication is key in this. With a click of my computer mouse I can reach every colleague, and there are literally thousands of them in our offices around the world, through my Sunday emails. This is proving to be even more useful in my role as chairman, since I am no longer involved in daily operations and do not interact as much with the troops as before. I see the current phase of my career as providing stewardship and guidance to the organisations under my charge to help them develop and grow.

It is important that everyone gets to understand the management's thinking. It is also useful to receive feedback from staff and to understand where they are coming from. I do receive responses from colleagues, but surprisingly, they are almost always from relatively junior staff. Maybe the senior folks are too busy with their work, or they find little in my writing with which to disagree! Some seek clarification and advice, and many express their appreciation. I will always reply to them personally and with priority, but I do not circulate our communication because I respect their confidentiality. It is definitely useful to have some form of informal and individual communications between staff and the leaders of the organisation, and my Sunday emails provide this channel for me. Some former staff who left CapitaLand still communicate with me and I am happy to stay in touch with them.

WRITING AS A REVIEW OF MY EXPERIENCES AND MY PRESENT THINKING

Another interesting finding is that as I continue to write, I am continuously refining my perspectives and thoughts. At times it even stimulates some new perspective or courses of action, and even policies. Putting my thoughts into words, especially on what we have been doing in the past, forces me to critically review and re-analyse my past thinking and perspective. For example, in the first Sunday email in my first book, I wrote about the three Ps – paranoia, perseverance and perfectionism – as the keys to success. I held on to these three Ps for many years until, more than 13 years later in 2011, I added another important key success factor as the fourth P – passion. And finally, in 2013, I incorporated another equally important P – pragmatism. I learned this last P, pragmatism, from Minister Mentor Lee Kuan Yew, when he quoted it as one of the four critical success factors (governance, meritocracy, anti-corruption, pragmatism) for Singapore. Actually, it took me some time to figure out what pragmatism really meant. In 2014, I wrote another Sunday email to explain pragmatism as a very important ideology for all leaders – political or business alike. Pragmatism is now one of my favourite lecture subjects at the NUS School of Business.

I am drafting this email to explain why I continue to write my Sunday emails. Someone told me recently that he noticed that my latest emails have shifted slightly in emphasis. Yes, it is getting longer – probably because I have learnt more and have become more philosophical and more long-winded with age! I am aware that some staff may not have the patience to read long emails, and strangely the junior ones seem to have more interest in them. A couple of them told me that they had to read it several times to understand my message!

So what really drives me to write Sunday emails still? Writing, I finally found out, has evolved into a cherished hobby, a self actualisation of what I really love to do.

Chapter 1

PRAGMATISM IN BUSINESS AND LEADERSHIP

Corporate leaders should always remain pragmatic in their approaches for business dealings but at the same time not compromise their core values. They should not be constrained by dogmas, past practices, precedence or bureaucracies. However, corporate leaders will need courage to make some of their pragmatic solutions.

Work-life Balance – Is It a Zero Sum Game?

Liew Mun Leong/Chairman CAG/SJ

SENT: Sunday, 8 December 2013 11:06 AM

TO: CAG Group; Surbana Jurong Group

Dear Colleagues,

Last month I gave a talk to several high-potential students from the engineering faculty at National University of Singapore (NUS). One student politely asked me, Sir, you have great career achievements and you still shoulder many responsibilities. How have you achieved work-life balance all these years? Wow, I thought, this young man hasn't even graduated or worked a single day and he is asking about work-life balance!

I jokingly replied that such a delicate question was previously only asked by people who did not wish to exert themselves in work and who only sought pleasure in life. But this is now a frequently asked question, posed not only by my working colleagues but also by many Singaporeans, especially the younger ones. As someone who has worked for 43 years, and who still wishes to work, let me give you my personal and frank take on this matter. I repeat, personal.

Remember, there are two components in the work-life balance equation. Let's first analyse the work side.

WORK IS A COMMON MEANS FOR LIVING

Let's face reality. Unless we are born rich with a silver spoon in our mouths, most of us have to work to make a living for ourselves, our families and the loved ones we are responsible for. For those with extended family, they may even need to take care of other family members besides their immediate family. No one owes it to us, as Singapore is not a welfare state. And remember, we have to work for several decades in our lifetime! If we start working in our early 20s and retire at, say, our mid-60s there will be some 40 to 45 years of work ahead of us before we can put our legs up and smell roses in our garden, that is provided we have even managed to earn one. Or, we may become so successful so fast that we can retire early, but to me that is not necessarily a good thing. That is another controversial subject.

If we sleep for an average of, say eight hours, and work eight hours a day (not including travelling time), we will be spending 50% of those waking hours at our jobs. It is therefore pragmatic that we make our working lives more sustainable, more comfortable and if possible, more enjoyable for the next 40 to 45 years. After all, these years constitute the bulk of our active lives. But how do we make our work sustainable, comfortable and enjoyable? I will just simply say this: find the right job (and company) that fits your training, aptitude and background; adopt the right positive attitude towards your job; then persevere, be engaged and enjoy the friendship and comradeship of your colleagues and associates. Also, try to find the extra meaning and purpose in your job, whatever that may be.

I once watched an interview with an American lady whose job was, for 40 years, to inspect the cleanliness of soft drink bottles continuously rolling out on an automatic conveyor belt. Nothing could be more monotonous. She said her mission was to make sure that children would be safe drinking from the bottles she inspected. Even after 40 years, she was not bored because she found meaning and passion in her job.

It is also about our personal attitude and work ethics. I was appalled to learn from a recent Gallup survey that the ratio of disengaged workers in Singapore is one of the highest in the world, at 76% (vs 52% in the US, and 57% in Great Britain). Three in four workers are unmotivated and are sleepwalking throughout the day. My suspicion is that many youngsters have not found any meaning in their jobs. They are easily bored. Strangely, the word boring did not exist in our vocabulary during our younger working days. We had to be self-motivated to keep our hard-earned jobs. The good (or bad, depending how you view it) news now is that we have full employment in Singapore and there is no sense of insecurity in our workforce. We seem trigger-happy to fire our bosses if we are not motivated by them. Motivation, to me, is a personal responsibility and we should not blame our lack of it on our bosses.

Clayton Christensen, one of Harvard Business School's most prominent professors, was suffering badly from chronic diabetes when I first met him a few years ago. Later, he was stricken with cancer and recently a stroke, which sadly disabled his vocal chords. However, he loves his job so much as a professor—he was a prolific international speaker before—that he relearned how to speak, one word at a time. He now speaks perfectly normal again. I met him when he was in Singapore recently to deliver several brilliant lectures. When interviewed by Channel NewsAsia, he inspirationally said, If we love our work so much we don't need a holiday! Someone also similarly said to me before, Work isn't work if you like it. I happen to agree.

I have now worked for more than 43 years since graduation. Frankly, I have never felt bored with my work, though there have been times where I've felt frustrated and challenged. During these moments, I would keep humming an old song, Even the bad times are good!, or remind myself of the saying, When the going gets tough, the tough get tougher. So, in the work-life balance equation we can make work a positive side of the equation if we adopt the right work ethics and persevere through the initial difficulties. It is not about being a work maniac but making our work more meaningful and interesting. For some of us, work can be our hobby. For me, writing an email to you, which can take a few good hours on a Sunday, is not work but my hobby. I have enjoyed writing every piece since 1998.

THE LIFE SIDE OF THE EQUATION

At any time, I will classify our lives into multiple parts. There is (a) our individual personal lives, (b) our lives with family and loved ones and (c) our social lives with friends, colleagues, community, etc. To me, we should balance all these buckets of our lives on an almost daily basis so that we can become more balanced people. People have different emphases and priorities at different stages of their lives. A young couple raising a family will rightly have to spend much more time with their children (but don't forget their ageing parents too), whilst a matured family with grown up children can probably spend more time with friends and the community, or on their hobbies. We need to adjust the balance as we, and the people around us, progress in life and when interpersonal dynamics change, albeit, sometimes even unnoticed by us.

There is a possibility, though, that some of us may mismanage the balance. Many of us may be so selfless that we rarely consider our personal individual lifestyles. In our zest to give top priority to care for our loved ones, we may even carelessly forget to live our own lives in the way we should. We should ensure that we are living