78. Six Issues

19 Aug 2019

Ms Sun Xueling
Blk 308B Punggol Walk
#01-364
Waterway Terraces 1
Singapore 822308

Dear Ms Sun,

Bringing Up The Six Issues In Parliament

The letter Documents Provide The Explanation dated 14 Jun 19 was addressed to Mr Teo but handed to you at Meet-the-People Session (MPS). There was no reply to me on each of the five issues in the letter after you wrote to CPF, HDB and CEA. They may have replied to you. I learned from CPF Tampines when they asked me whether I had received a reply on 19 Jun 19 to the letter after I visited them on a new issue.

The next letter Being Accountable To Parliament dated 22 Jul 19 was addressed and handed to you at MPS. The letter was in six pages and the petition writers did not know where to begin although I asked only that they read the first and seventh item. They had not written and when you spoke to me you said CPF had replied many times. Not much more was said because you had to attend to the others. I continued to talk to the person who was listening in to our conversation by referring him to the example of the refund to CPF Account, which officers disallowed. It is common knowledge that refund is required and it is indicated in 2012 CPF Act. The senior assistant director reference to Section 15(15)(e) for disallowing refund was incorrect because it required an application to be made on the occurrence of events as listed in 2012 CPF Act. No such application was made. 

I therefore wrote No Full Reply Or No Reply Was Given dated 5 Aug 19 addressed to you and handed in at MPS because there was no MP in session. I got to talk with a petition writer by going through all six issues, including the new issue, specifically on items not addressed by officers in their letters. As I wrote in Documents Provide The Explanation, these were by reference only to documents possessed or provided by the agencies.

The issues are supposedly with the neighbour, the property agents or my lack of understanding, but it   has more to do with the officers in HDB, CEA and CPF. I showed where the mistakes were made. I noted in Being Accountable To Parliament why the problem could not be resolved.

You have not given a reply to No Full Reply Or No Reply Was Given whether to bring up the problem in parliament.

Yours Sincerely,
hh

Observation

Bringing Up The Six Issues In Parliament

"I therefore wrote No Full Reply Or No Reply Was Given dated 5 Aug 19 addressed to you and handed in at MPS because there was no MP in session. I got to talk with a petition writer by going through all six issues, including the new issue, specifically on items not addressed by officers in their letters. As I wrote in Documents Provide The Explanation, these were by reference only to documents possessed or provided by the agencies.

The issues are supposedly with the neighbour, the property agents or my lack of understanding, but it   has more to do with the officers in HDB, CEA and CPF. I showed where the mistakes were made. I noted in Being Accountable To Parliament why the problem could not be resolved.

You have not given a reply to No Full Reply Or No Reply Was Given whether to bring up the problem in parliament."

76. Leadership

The End of Leadership  Barbara Kellerman

In times past, the contract between leaders and followers was based on traditional sources of power and authority. They included, for example, might, as in might makes right; and heredity, which entitled the son of king one day himself to be king; and charisma, which depended on the leader’s personal capacity to attract, even enthrall, groups of followers. More recently, the contract evolved into something more equitable. Might no longer makes right, certainly not in theory and certainly not in countries or companies considered exemplars of good governance. Nepotism, while hardly obsolete, is a much less legitimate claim to power and authority than it used to be. And in this day and age, again for reasons of culture and technology, charisma is difficult to sustain. Moreover, for their part, ordinary people--followers--have at least since the Enlightenment increasingly insisted on a measure of equity, a trend that in the last half century has only accelerated.

So the assumptions on which the contract is based have changed, first, because the old justifications for having power, authority, and influence are no longer so persuasive, and second, because people in the present think of themselves as more important, more entitled, than did people in the past. What, then, is the basis of the contract in the second decade of the twenty-first century? What reasons do followers now have for going along with leaders? There are only two: either we go along because we have to (or think we do), or we go along because we want to. In general, the first applies to the workplace. Subordinates go along with their superiors because they think they must to avoid the risk of losing their jobs. And in general, the second applies to the community at large. Good governance, including good corporate governance, implies that the contract between leaders (governors) and followers (governed) is based on merit: merit is the basis of the exchange between the presumably estimable leader on the one hand, and the presumably pliable followers on the other.

In theory, at least, we presume that people get elected president or prime minister, or for that matter mayor, because they deserve to, because their capacities attest to the legitimacy of their claims to power, authority, and influence. And, similarly, we presume that people are selected to be chief executive officer based on their excellence, a professional history that testifies to their superiority as leaders and managers. Further, we believe that political leaders hold to their end of the bargain when government is functional--when it protects against threats foreign and domestic. And we believe that corporate leaders hold to their end of the bargain when business is functional--when it makes money and provides jobs.

This, then, has been the arrangement for at least the last one hundred years. Among other reasons, as governments grew in size, and as corporations became organizations, arranging the collective in accordance with merit simply made good sense. More work needed to be done and more people were required to do it. So it was obvious that the best way to arrange the groups was hierarchically, and the best people to slot at the top were those who were both honest and competent. In short, for a century or more, democratic leadership particularly has been, or was presumed by the majority to be, a meritocracy, which is why we came to conclude that anyone can be a leader--so long as he or she has the right stuff.

So what exactly is “the right stuff”? What, more precisely, does meritorious leadership consist of? The answer is deceptively simple, for matter how gussied up the language, no matter how many leadership traits, skills, characteristics, and capacities you can think to name, leadership is judged on only two criteria: ethics and effectiveness. A good leader is presumed to be ethical. And a good leader is presumed to be effective. Conversely, a bad leader is unethical, ineffective, or both. It’s as simple as that--which is precisely the problem.

For as the culture has changed and technology along with it, followers are familiar with the flaws of leaders, with the foibles of leaders, as they never were before. What this familiarity has bred is contempt. Put directly, when the contract between leaders and followers is based on merit, as opposed to self-interest, the game changes. That is, if merit is perceived to be lacking, either because the leader is seen as being in some serious way corrupt, or because the leader is seen as being in some serious way inept, the contract is weakened or even abrogated altogether. Again, we go along with our leaders and managers, particularly in the workplace, for any number of self-interested reasons, including the benefits of material reward and the fear of personal or professional punishment. But the best reason, certainly the ideal reason, to follow, is that we want to follow--because we genuinely believe in the integrity and competence of those with power, authority, and influence. Small wonder, then, that when merit matters most, and when merit is viewed as meagre or even absent altogether, disappointment and disillusionment set in.

Thinking About Leadership  Nannerl O. Keohane

What Is to Be Done?

We cannot resolve the conundrum by doing away with leadership. As we have seen, that would be impossible; all collective action requires leadership. And good leadership brings significant benefits to a democracy. Nor does it make sense to resolve it by doing away with democracy. Broad participation in political activity and ultimate popular responsibility for the exercise of power are fundamentally valuable for many reasons, including protecting the rights and liberties of citizens and the development of political capacities in individuals who would otherwise be inert and apathetic. Democracy also makes possible the engagement of many different perspectives in solving problems, attention to multiple interests and concerns in a community, and the creation of institutional barriers to the abuse of power. As Churchill famously put it, democracy is “the worst form of government except all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.”

Rather than jettisoning either leadership or democracy, citizens can take a number of steps to alleviate if not resolve the democratic conundrum. The classical Athenian democracy devised several ways to prevent abuses of power, including ostracism for those who displayed arrogance, overreached their power, or threatened to dominate other citizens through deploying their expertise. Athens also instituted writs and punishments for those who brought frivolous or dangerous proposals to the Assembly. A criminal action could be brought by any citizen against another who had proposed a measure to the Assembly that the plaintiff regarded as illegal.

Other less radical methods have been developed in modern democracies. Those who care about sustaining democracy should look for ways to prevent the perpetuation of the same people in positions of leadership, emphasize the accountability of leaders to other citizens, ensure that citizens have free access to multiple sources of information, enlarge the extent of popular participation in government, and limit the accumulation of privilege. Various measures have been used to accomplish each of these goals, some of which we will consider briefly in concluding this discussion.

How Leaders Should Keep Faith and Honor Their Word

One of Machiavelli’s most “Machiavellian” counsels is his dictum about not keeping your promises when you gain no advantage from doing so. Although we give lip service to truthfulness, he says, “in our times the rulers who have done great things are those who have set little store by keeping their word, being skilful rather in cunningly deceiving men; they have got the better of those who have relied on being trustworthy.” Given the requirements of effective political action, “a prudent ruler cannot keep his word, nor should he, when such fidelity would damage him, and when the reasons that made him promise are no longer relevant. This advice would not be sound if all men were upright; but because they are treacherous and would not keep their promises to you, you should not consider yourself bound to keep your promises to them.” A ruler should feign honesty and truthfulness but not actually possess those virtues. “Having and always cultivating them is harmful, whereas seeming to have them is useful.”

The cycle of wretchedness Machiavelli describes here, as any student of game theory can attest, is self-fulfilling. If leaders deceive their followers it should be no surprise that they react in kind. The outrage followers feel when they discover they have been lied to and the corrosive cynicism that undermines trust are heavy prices to pay for a short-term success. When a leader behaves with integrity there is at least a chance that others will respond similarly.

A leader is well advised in most instances to tell the truth and keep her promise. When she judges that the consequences of such behavior would be dangerous for the organization, she should keep silent if she can, or avoid serious misrepresentation designed narrowly to advance her goals. Deception may sometimes be unavoidable, but this should be the last resort for a leader, not the first. This opinion may seem quixotic; some of the most successful leaders in history have been notable dissimulators, skillful at telling one thing to one listener and another thing entirely to someone else. But in the long run, it is a significant asset for a leader if people can count on her to do what she says and play fair with them. If followers do not trust you, they will be disinclined to follow and suspicious of the motivations behind your strategies. They may be intimidated, misled, or deceived; but the energies that allow leaders and followers to accomplish great things together can never be mobilized without trust.

Successful leaders are consummate actors in certain circumstances. They may avoid showing anger or distress when this would interfere with accomplishing their goals; at other times they may feign these emotions to convince others to fall into line. In this same vein, Machiavelli asserted that a prince should appear to have certain virtues even if he does not possess them. “He should contrive that his actions should display grandeur, courage, seriousness and strength….A ruler who succeeds in creating such an image of himself will enjoy a fine reputation.” Machiavelli confidently assumed that ordinary folks are sufficiently unperceptive and ready to be deceived that such hypocrisy can succeed indefinitely. But in an age of intense media attention, transparency, and rapid communications, behavior and reputation are more closely linked than Machiavelli allows. The chances that a leader can sustain the appearance of integrity or courage while completely lacking in these qualities are slim indeed. Leaders known to possess these virtues will be more likely to convince others to follow the course of action they have chosen and win support in times of difficulty.

Abraham Lincoln provides a stellar example here. He took longer to reach conclusions on contentious issues such as slavery than some might have wished. But once he gave his word he would not retreat from it. This was a crucial element in the complex movement toward the abolition of slavery. Even though he had not yet met Lincoln, Frederick Douglass was confident that the Emancipation Proclamation would stand against heavy opposition because he understood that “Abraham Lincoln may be slow … but Abraham Lincoln is not the man to reconsider, retract and contradict words and purposes solemnly proclaimed over his official signature…. If he has taught us to confide in nothing else, he has taught us to confide in his word.”

Observation ‘One of the most influential, vilified, and thought-provoking books ever written about leadership is a small volume by Niccolo Machiavelli published almost five hundred years ago, called Il principe (The Prince). In a presentation letter to Lorenzo de Medici, Machiavelli said: “Just as men who are sketching the landscape put themselves down in the plain to study the the nature of mountains and highlands, and to study the low-lying land they put themselves high on the mountains, so, to comprehend fully the nature of the people, one must be a prince, and to comprehend fully the nature of princes one must be an ordinary citizen.” He was asserting that one can best understand leadership from the “outside” perspective of the followers, rather than the perspective of the leader.’

75. Q & A of 2

15 Aug 2020

Ms Sun Xueling
Blk 308B Punggol Walk
#01-364
Waterway Terraces 1
Singapore 822308

Dear Ms Sun,

Has The Situation Changed After GE 2020?

1. The total number of votes casted during the General Election of 10 Jul 2020 showed a swing against the incumbent although a supermajority of seats (83 out of 93) were retained, what do you make of it? The First Assistant Secretary-General of the PAP (People’s Action Party) said “What would investors and other countries think?" if 4 GRC (Group Representation Constituency) and 2 SMC (Single Member Constituency) that the WP (Workers’ Party) was contesting were lost. In contrast, the WP said the risk of an opposition wipeout was real and they needed physical presence on the ground to grow the party.

The atmosphere created by the various opposition parties were conducive for the swing of votes and
I felt a sense of relief when it was announced that the WP won a new GRC.

The WP retained their old constituencies of 1 GRC and 1 SMC for a total of 10 seats won. The losing candidates from the PSP (Progress Singapore Party) who secured the highest percentage votes in the constituency of West Coast GRC accepted 2 NCMP (Non-Constituency Member of Parliament) seats.

The law provides NCMP seats in Parliament if the number of elected opposition candidates falls short of the minimum number of 12 seats. NCMPs have the same voting rights as elected MPs.

2. Why do you think the citizenry continues to give the incumbent a big share of the votes? Are Singaporeans weaned? Most citizens have benefited from the government one way or another, but airing issues as the opposition did give citizens a chance to think about how they wanted to vote. The results showed the more credible a party from the opposition is, the more a person from the party is able to gather votes.

I think there is an undercurrent that the government allows people who are narrow-minded and blind by privilege. Where they give favour to family members, relatives and friends out of self interest, we have the beginning of corruption. Selflessness is the opposite of self interest.

The threat of Covid-19 did not cause a flight to safety as feared. No physical rally, face masks, safe-distancing and other precautions were taken during the election.

The political broadcasts, online rallies and social media were carried out under POFMA (Protection from Online Falsehoods and Manipulation Act). The new legislation empowered ministers to order amendment of online posts that could harm public interest. However, during the election the power was handed over to civil servants who issued a number of correction notices.

The subject of fake news, which is the new legislation, has been in the news frequently. I have written to the Select Committee during the feedback phase as it relates to my case in Select Committee (27).

3. How bad is the Covid-19 crisis? What will it take? The first cluster was reported in Wuhan, China, on Dec 2019 and has since spread across the world.

A number of vaccines are undergoing trials and countries are in stages of containment.

The Singapore government has begun further easing of restrictions on Aug 2020. A total of $93 billion of which $52 billion is from the country's reserves has been allocated to revive the economy as of Feb 2020.

We begin to appreciate the people who provide essential services, frontline workers and jobs provided by small and medium enterprises.

Governments will have to provide for those affected.

4. When all the election results were out and the PAP announced that the leader of WP will be named Leader of the Opposition, what does it mean? In countries with similar systems of government, the Leader of Opposition draws a salary on top of an MP allowance. The party is provided with staff support and resources and it forms a shadow government to track and take over should the government resign.

It also means citizens may choose between parties instead of second-guessing between candidates. Quality new candidates fielded will be as good as established candidates in contesting constituencies.

5. Has anything changed since your last post Civic Responsibility (72) on 19 Mar 2020? Are you biased against the government? My case is based on evidence. There may be a change in attitude, but the wrongdoings committed were not corrected. It is not for want of trying.

6. Why bring up your problem time and again when it is being ignored? It is a matter of principle. The facts of the case as published in my blog and sent to MPs are sufficient for one to argue for or against. That such a discussion has not taken place showed that the problem has been kept covered. For example, Q & A (75) and Rules, Character and Morals (72) were letters handed to MPs. The two posts amongst others should have a reply.

7. You mentioned in Q & A (75) that officers caused you all sorts of trouble, did they stop? A number of examples this year and I pursued it through emails. One acknowledged trouble caused, one caused delay through several rounds of emails, one returned deductions from my bank account after many rounds of emails and one was on rebate not given after many rounds of emails even when it was substantiated with documents. These were from a bank, a trade union organisation, a transport company and an electricity retailer respectively. All were attempts to make trouble.

Of the electricity retailer, I submitted a complaint to EMA (Energy Market Authority). Although the rebate was set out in two documents and I pointed out the mistake made, the EMA officer did not address the issue.

8. Of an indirect reference, are you being treated as a second class citizen? Sometimes we may accept inequality because of some benefit. At other times, we accept inequality out of need. Sometimes there is unfairness because of group or self interest. At other times, the law or policy is stacked against the weak. My situation is unfair because of the self interest of a group of people in government.

9. What do you wish to achieve this time around? The responsibility is with the MPs. The MP in my constituency could count on state apparatus to hold the case down or she could resolve it once and for all. It could be that she is unable to resolve the problem that an opposition MP would not be constrained to do so. It could also be that the opposition do not have sufficient numbers or power to bring it up for resolution. It could be that officials are powerful and could not be held accountable at this time.

10. Will there come a time? It could happen suddenly because of another similar incident. It could be after a by-election or another general election when there is a change of candidate or party. It could be long after one is dead. It could be never.

11. The PM said at the online Fullerton Rally that Singaporeans should not undermine a system that has served them well, is all well? It did in the past, but for those who knew about my case the system cannot now be trusted unless the case is seen to have been resolved.

12. Rules of prudence and National Day Speeches, what are they and what is the relevance? The PM issues rules of prudence to MPs after a general election and he gives a speech to the nation each year after the national day parade.

Aristotle shows that prudence is the ability to find the truth in practical matters about things that are good and bad for human beings. They must figure out what to do by the strength of their reason. This is a vast area than the guidance provided by the law.

The national day speech is a rally, outlines issues of the years past and the years ahead and shows what the people are capable of. This year’s speech will be held in Parliament instead of an auditorium because of Covid-19. The opening of the 14th Parliament with the traditional President’s speech will be followed at a later date by a debate and the PM’s speech.

PM said that it will be a major speech and there are legislations to be passed urgently. Will the PM make changes to encourage diverse views and flow of ideas?

Freedom of speech is part of being a nation because it allows the government to know how its policies affect the people so that problems may be redressed. The very restricted freedom of speech and the circumstances of my case led the government to suppress the problem over three cycles of general election. Isn’t this how the case has been left unresolved?

Jurisprudence is both law and prudence. Shouldn’t the rule of law and the rule of prudence be applied to the case?

13. What do you hope for? The MP should brief and consult the PM of the problem and give a reply.

This letter is Q & A of 2 (75). In the letter I refer to Q & A (75), Rules, Character & Morals (72), Civic Responsibility (72) and Select Committee (27). All are in my blog.
Could you give a reply?

Yours Sincerely,
hh

cc
Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Mr Heng Swee Keat
Mr Teo Chee Hean

Observation

Has The Situation Changed After GE 2020?

1. The total number of votes casted during the General Election of 10 Jul 2020 showed a swing against the incumbent although a supermajority of seats (83 out of 93) were retained, what do you make of it?

2. Why do you think the citizenry continues to give the incumbent a big share of the votes? Are Singaporeans weaned?

3. How bad is the Covid-19 crisis? What will it take?

4. When all the election results were out and the PAP announced that the leader of WP will be named Leader of the Opposition, what does it mean?

5. Has anything changed since your last post Civic Responsibility (72) on 19 Mar 2020? Are you biased against the government?

6. Why bring up your problem time and again when it is being ignored?

7. You mentioned in Q & A (75) that officers caused you all sorts of trouble, did they stop?

8. Of an indirect reference, are you being treated as a second class citizen?

9. What do you wish to achieve this time around?

10. Will there come a time?

11. The PM said at the online Fullerton Rally that Singaporeans should not undermine a system that has served them well, is all well?

12. Rules of prudence and National Day Speeches, what are they and what is the relevance?

13. What do you hope for?

75. Q & A

24 Aug 18

Mr Teo Chee Hean
Blk 738 Pasir Ris Drive 10
#01-21
Singapore 510738

Dear Sir,

Is There Going To Be A Resolution?

1. What do you want done? Prevent the neighbour from continuing to work in HDB flat, allow the refund to CPF Ordinary Account from date of sale of flat, correct the mistakes made in CPF Life and remind people who are aware of the problem that all rectification is made where possible.

2. Is there a problem? Where is the proof? The neighbour should be investigated, they caused noise through the working of a trade in HDB flat. There are documents that refund to CPF Accounts are required and documents that show mistakes were made in CPF Life. These were the reasons why officers would not address the various issues raised.

3. You said the problem began in 1998, did you bring it up? I wrote to HDB Branch Office and the occupier was evicted, but the problem was only part resolved. I met MPs from 2008 onwards when the noise restarted in 2007, started a blog in 2009 and later wrote to various government departments.

4. How did noise from the neighbour to do with your CPF Accounts and CPF Life? The neighbour was able to continue with their work in HDB flat because of an arrangement with officers. It was my continuing complaint that let officers with connection to cause all sorts of trouble.

5. What’s with the officers? A relationship with the neighbour over a long period of time caused the officers to protect themselves at a cost of protecting the neighbour. I was sure of a forced-entry at the neighbour’s flat but they managed to turn against me by preventing further investigation of the neighbour’s flat and my flat through the stationing of people in the flat across the neighbour.

6. Couldn’t MPs help? There isn’t always a clear line between what is administration and what is execution between government departments and MPs. MPs in Parliament make laws, which are executory in nature. But government departments also give advice, which are political in nature, that they then execute. It is a gray area that government departments sometimes do not carry out or delay instruction from MP.

For example, the Minister in charge of Civil Service and Head of Civil Service were reported to have said about “complex issues no longer fell within neat domain” and “issues that do not fall neatly into any one agency's work” respectively. It is likely they were referring to my problem because the police did not carry out a full investigation when informed of the people in the flat across the neighbour.

7. What do you think is the underlying problem? Power dominates and represses when not used in the public interest.

8. Is there nothing you could do? I did what I can. I don’t think it is practical to make the case an issue in an election or win the case against the government in court.

9. What did you do? Because mainstream and social media did not report the complaint, I informed people, civil societies and news agencies of my blog through emails.

10. Who and which civil societies and news agencies? There were some, but if you were to give me the address of credible persons and entities I would email them.

11. Was it to any effect? Except for indirect references, it has not affected the case in any way.

12. Your case is neither complex nor difficult to understand, isn’t it a simple case of noise from the neighbour? Why do you think the case remains unresolved over a long period of time? I agree, but because it involves officers the problem is made inaccessible. We are back to the underlying problem of power or the struggle for power.

13. What could be done? Openness, accountability, taking unpopular measure. Doing, not just saying. Leading change.

14. What do you think is important? Fair mindedness.

15. I may be in a salaried position, fair mindedness may not be to my advantage? Generally a situation is made better when it is for the common good or you serve the public interest. You are not selfish. A note: a sortition system minimises corruption.

16. What is sortition? Random and stratified sampling techniques to choose persons who deliberate and evaluate the measure in question. The system is practised in places around the world.

17. What is common good or public interest? What in your case is in the public interest? Causing damage to thing or causing harm to person, whether physically or psychologically, is against common good or public interest. In my case allowing a trade in housing flat and deliberately causing trouble just before and after I sold my flat were clearly against rules and regulations. These were crimes and there was a victim. If nothing is done, these will affect others in similar circumstances. It is therefore in the public interest to stop and prevent such from happening.

18. Do you think your problem is going to be resolved? I think if I insist on an investigation by Parliament, the case may be held in suspension because of the negative publicity it will generate. If government departments are asked to resolve it, they may not address the various issues just as they had not addressed the issues before unless there is a complete change of personnel.

19. Will you continue to attend Meet-the-People Session conducted by MP? Yes, if there is a chance the complaint will be addressed. There is no other course of action. It is the job of MP to resolve the issue.

20. Why did you not attend Meet-the-People Session conducted by opposition party? I could bring them trouble because they do not have strength in numbers. Any MP could bring up the issue in Parliament because it can be generalised. The issue is quite clear.

21. You are referring to the representation of MPs? Yes, MPs have a certain degree of responsibility to speak and act in our names.

22. Is there something lacking? In the case, there are two. The rule of law and the meaning of being human.

The Q & A are the various issues of the case.

How is the case going to be resolved?

Yours Sincerely,
hh

Observation

Before handing over the letter Q & A (75) at Meet-the-People Session, I gave Mr Teo two reasons why there should be an investigation by Parliament:

1) How many cases of working a trade in HDB flat that officers know of where no action is taken? Unless there is a thorough investigation of the case, which is possible with the 7 sets of documents in Salient Points (40) that was submitted, we will never know the full extent of the problem. Most of us live in HDB flats and there were frequent complaints of noise.

An officer, who visited me, asked what I thought the neighbour upstairs was doing and I said fashion accessories or jewellery. He agreed. Also refer to the first two paragraphs of Discovery (9), Singapore Mint was reported to say the jewellery market was lucrative and was considering local distributors to represent it and the experience of noise from a participant on BlogTV.

2) Is there any legal procedure that prevents heads of department from taking action when their officers commit wrongdoing? If so, why is it so? There are many such examples in Salient Points (40). For an example, the police did not conduct a full investigation of the neighbour and the people in the flat across the neighbour when informed. Also, there was no reply to the letter Mr Teo wrote to the police after Inquiry (27). Similarly Bedok Police Division did not reply when the case was referred to them a second time in Standpoint (34) Item 16.

75. Change Problems

Leading Change  John P. Kotter

Error #1: Allowing Too Much Complacency

When Adrien was named head of the specialty chemicals division of a large corporation, he saw lurking on the horizon many problems and opportunities, most of which were the product of the globalization of his industry. As a seasoned and self-confident executive, he worked day and night to launch a dozen new initiatives to build business and margins in an increasing competitive marketplace. He realized that few others in his organization saw the dangers and possibilities as clearly as he did, but he felt this was not an insurmountable problem. They could be induced, pushed, or replaced.

Two years after his promotion, Adrien watched initiative after initiative sink in a sea of complacency. Regardless of hie inducements and threats, the first phase of his new product strategy required so much time to implement that competitor countermoves offset any important benefit. He couldn’t secure sufficient corporate funding for his big reengineering project. A reorganization was talked to death by skilled filibusterers on his staff. In frustration, Adrien gave up on his own people and acquired a much smaller firm that was already successfully implementing many of his ideas. Then, in a subtle battle played out over another two years, he watched with amazement and horror as people in his division with little sense of urgency not only ignored all the powerful lessons in the acquisition’s recent history but actually stifled the new unit’s ability to continue to do what it had been doing so well.

Smart individuals like Adrien fail to create sufficient urgency at the beginning of a business transformation for many different but interrelated reasons. They overestimate how much they can force big changes on an organization. They underestimate how hard it is to drive people out of their comfort zones. They don’t recognize how their own actions can inadvertently reinforce the status quo. They lack patience: ¨Enough with the preliminaries, let’s get on with it.¨ They become paralyzed by the downside possibilities associated with reducing complacency: people becoming defensive, morale and short-term results slipping. Or, even worse, they confuse urgency with anxiety, and by driving up the latter they push people even deeper into their foxholes and create even more resistance to change.

Error #2: Failing to Create a Sufficiently Powerful Guiding Coalition

As director of human resources for a large U.S.-based bank, Claire was well aware that her authority was limited and that she was not in a good position to head initiatives outside the personnel function. Nevertheless, with growing frustration at her firm’s inability to respond to new competitive pressures except through layoffs, she accepted an assignment to chair a ¨quality improvement¨ task force. The next two years would be the least satisfying in her entire career.

The task force did not include even one of the three key line managers in the firm. After having a hard time scheduling the first meeting--a few committee members complained of being exceptionally busy--she knew she was in trouble. And nothing improved much after that. The task force became a caricature of all bad committees: slow, political, aggravating. Most of the work was done by a small and dedicated subgroup. But other committee members and key line managers developed little interest in or understanding of this group’s efforts, and next to none of the recommendations was implemented. The task force limped along for eighteen months and then faded into oblivion.

Error #3: Underestimating the Power of Vision

In many failed transformations, you find plans and programs trying to play the role of vision. As the so-called quality czar for a communications company, Conrad spent much time and money producing four-inch-thick notebooks that described his change effort in mind-numbing detail. The books spelled out procedures, goals, methods, and deadlines. But nowhere was there a clear and compelling statement of where all this was leading. Not surprisingly, his employees reacted with either confusion or alienation. The big thick books neither rallied them together nor inspired change. In fact, they may have had just the opposite effect.

In unsuccessful transformation efforts, management sometimes does have a sense of direction, but it is too complicated or blurry to be useful. Recently I asked an executive in a midsize British manufacturing firm to describe his vision and received in return a barely comprehensible thirty-minute lecture. He talked about the acquisitions he was hoping to make, a new marketing strategy for one of the products, his definition of ¨customer first,¨ plans to bring in a new senior-level executive from the outside, reasons for shutting down the office in Dallas, and much more. Buried in all this were the basic elements of a sound direction for the future, But they were buried, deeply.

Error #4: Undercommunicating the Vision by a Factor of 10 (or 100 or Even 1,000)

Three patterns of ineffective communication are common, all driven by habits developed in more stable times. In the first, a group actually develops a pretty good transformation vision and then proceeds to sell it by holding only a few meetings or sending out only a few memos. Its members, thus having used only the smallest fraction of the yearly intracompany communication, react with astonishment when people don’t seem to understand the new approach. In the second pattern, the head of the organization spends a considerable amount of time making speeches to employee groups, but most of her managers are virtually silent. Here vision captures more of the total yearly communication than in the first case, but the volume is still woefully inadequate. In the third pattern, much more effort goes into newsletters and speeches, but some highly visible individuals still behave in ways that are antithetical to the vision, and the net result is that cynicism among the troops goes up while belief in the new message goes down.

One of the finest CEOs I know admits to failing here in the early 1980s. ¨At the time,¨ he tells me, ¨it seemed like we were spending a great deal of effort trying to communicate our ideas. But a few years later, we could see that the distance we went fell short by miles. Worse yet, we would occasionally make decisions that others saw as inconsistent with our communication. I’m sure that some employees thought we were a bunch of hypocritical jerks.¨

Error #5: Permitting Obstacles to Block the New Vision

One well-placed blocker can stop an entire change effort. Ralph did. His employees at a major financial services company called him ¨The Rock,¨ a nickname he chose to interpret in a favorable light. Ralph paid lip service to his firm’s major change efforts but failed to alter his behavior or to encourage his managers to change. He didn’t reward the ideas called for in the change vision. He allowed human resource systems to remain intact even when they were clearly inconsistent with the new ideals. With these actions, Ralph would have been disruptive in any management job. But he wasn’t in just any management job. He was the number three executive at his firm.

Ralph acted as he did because he didn’t believe his organization needed major change and because he was concerned that he couldn’t produce both change and the expected operating results. He got away with this behavior because the company had no history of confronting personnel problems among executives, because some people were afraid of him, and because his CEO was concerned about losing a talented contributor. The net result was disastrous. Lower-level managers concluded that senior management had misled them about their commitment to transformation, cynicism grew, and the whole effort slowed to a crawl.

Error #6: Failing to Create Short-Term Wins

Nelson was by nature a ¨a big ideas¨ person. With assistance from two colleagues, he developed a conception for how his inventory control (IC) group could use new technology to radically reduce inventory costs without risking increased stock outages. The three managers plugged away at implementing their vision for a year, then two. By their own standards, they accomplished a great deal: new IC models were developed, new hardware was purchased, new software was written. By the standards of skeptics, especially the divisional controller, who wanted to see a big dip in inventories or some other financial benefit to offset the costs, the managers had produced nothing. When questioned, they explained that big changes require time. The controller accepted that argument for two years and then pulled the plug on the project.

In Nelson’s case, that pressure could have forced a few money-saving course corrections and speeded up partial implementation of the new inventory control methods. And with a couple of short-term wins, that very useful project would probably have survived and helped the company.

Error #7: Declaring Victory Too Soon

In recent past, I have watched a dozen change efforts operate under the reengineering theme. In all but two cases, victory was declared and the expensive consultants were paid and thanked when the first major project was completed, despite little, if any, evidence that the original goals were accomplished or that the new approaches were being accepted by employees. Within a few years, the useful changes that had been introduced began to disappear. In two of the ten cases, it’s hard to find any trace of the reengineering work today.

I recently asked the head of a reengineering-based consulting firm if these instances were unusual. She said: ¨Not at all, unfortunately. For us, it is enormously frustrating to work for a few years, accomplish something, and then have the effort cut off prematurely. Yet it happens far too often. The time frame in many corporations is too short to finish this kind of work and make it stick.¨

Declaring victory too soon is like stumbling into a sinkhole on the road to meaningful change. And for a variety of reasons, even smart people don’t just stumble into that hole. Sometimes they jump in with both feet.

Error #8: Neglecting to Anchor Changes Firmly in the Corporate Culture

Two factors are particularly important in anchoring new approaches in an organization’s culture. The first is a conscious attempt to show people how specific behaviors and attitudes have helped improve performance. When people are left on their own to make the connections, as is often the case, they can easily create inaccurate links. Because change occurred during charismatic Coleen’s time as department head, many employees linked performance improvements with her flamboyant style instead of the new ¨customer first¨ strategy that had in fact made the difference. As a result, the lesson imbedded in the culture was ¨Value Extroverted Managers¨ instead of ¨Love Thy Customer.¨

Anchoring change also requires that sufficient time be taken to ensure that the next generation of management really does personify the new approach. If promotion criteria are not reshaped, another common error, transformations rarely last. One bad succession decision at the top of an organization can undermine a decade of hard work.

Poor succession decisions at the top of companies are likely when boards of directors are not an integral part of the effort. In three instances I have recently seen, the champions of change were retiring CEOs. Although their successors were not resisters, they were not change leaders either. Because the boards simply did not understand the transformations in any detail, they could not see the problem with their choice of successors. The retiring executive in one case tried unsuccessfully to talk his board into a less seasoned candidate who better personified the company’s new ways of working. In the other instances, the executives did not resist the board choices because they felt their transformations could not be undone. But they were wrong. Within just a few years, signs of new and stronger organizations begun to disappear at all three companies.

Smart people miss the mark here when they are insensitive to cultural issues. Economically oriented finance people and analytically oriented engineers can find the topic of social norms and values too soft for their tastes. So they ignore culture--at their peril.

The Creation of an Overmanaged, Underled Corporate Culture

1. Some combination of visionary entrepreneurship and/or luck creates and implements a successful business strategy.

2. A fairly dominant position (and thus lack of strong competition) is established in some market or markets--usually a product or service market, perhaps also financial, labour, or supply markets.

3. The firm experiences much success in terms of growth and profits.

4. The pressures on managers come from inside the firm. Building and staffing a bureaucracy that can cope with growth is the biggest challenge. External constituencies are neglected.

5. The firm needs, hires, and promotes managers, not leaders, to cope with the growing bureaucracy. Top managers allow these people, not leaders, to become executives. Sometimes top management actively prevents leaders from becoming senior executives.

6. Managers begin to believe that they are the best and that their idiosyncratic traditions are superior. They become more and more arrogant. Top management does nothing to stop this trend and often exacerbates it.

7. A strong and arrogant culture develops.

8. Managers fail to acknowledge the value of customers and stockholders. They behave in an insular, sometimes political fashion.

9. Managers fail to acknowledge the value of leadership and employees at all levels who can provide it. They tend to stifle initiative and innovation. They behave in centralized/bureaucratic ways.

Observation

Leading Change  John P.Kotter

1. ’Leading Change’ was published in March-April 1995 issue of HBR [Harvard Business Review]. Almost immediately the article jumped to first place among the thousands of reprints sold by the review, an astonishing event in light of the quality of its large reprint base and of the lengthy time normally required to build reprint volume. Improbable events like this are always difficult to explain, but conversations and correspondence with HBR readers suggest that the paper rang two bells loudly. First, managers read the list of mistakes organizations often make when trying to effect real change and said Yes! This is why we have achieved less than we had hoped. Second, readers found the eight-stage change framework compelling. It made sense as a roadmap and helped people talk about transformation, change problems, and change strategies.

2. The simple insight that management is not leadership is better understand today, but not nearly as well as is needed. Management makes a system work. It helps you do what you know how to do. Leadership builds systems or transforms old ones. It takes you into territory that is new and less well known, or even completely unknown to you. This point has huge implications in an ever-faster-moving world.

72. Civic Responsibility

19 Mar 2020
Ms Sun Xueling
Blk 308B Punggol Walk
#01-364
Waterway Terraces 1
Singapore 822308

Dear Ms Sun,

Civic Responsibility

1. Extracts from an article at aeon.co:

What kind of citizen was he?
There is no dispute about the basic facts of the trial of Socrates. It is less obvious why Athenians found Socrates guilty, and what it might mean today. People who believe in both democracy and the rule of law ought to be very interested in this trial. If the takeaway is either that democracy, as direct self-government by the people, is fatally prone to repress dissent, or that those who dissent against democracy must be regarded as oligarchic traitors, then we are left with a grim choice between democracy and intellectual freedom.

But that is the wrong way to view Socrates’ trial. Rather, the question it answers concerns civic obligation and commitment. The People’s Court convicted Socrates because he refused to accept that a norm of personal responsibility for the effects of public speech applied to his philosophical project. Socrates accepted the guilty verdict as binding, and drank the hemlock, because he acknowledged the authority of the court and the laws under which he was tried. And he did so even though he believed that the jury had made a fundamental mistake in interpreting the law.

In his influential interpretation The Trial of Socrates (1988), the US journalist-turned-classicist I F Stone saw this trial as an embattled democracy defending itself. In Stone’s view, Socrates had helped to justify the junta’s savage programme of oligarchic misrule and was a traitor. More commonly, Socrates is seen as a victim of an opportunistic prosecutor and a wilfully ignorant citizenry. In truth, politics is indispensable to understanding the trial of Socrates, but in a slightly more sophisticated way. Seeing Socrates as the paradigm of the autonomous individual, as a simple martyr to free speech, is wrong. Athenian political culture and, specifically, the civic commitments required of Athenian citizens are essential to understanding the trial. Socrates’ own commitments to his city influenced the trial’s course, and those commitments were core parts of Athenian political culture, shaping the relationship between public speech and responsibility. Indeed, the actions of Socrates, Meletus and the jury must be understood in the context of the Athenians’ emphasis on the role of the responsible citizen in the democratic state, on their ideal of civic responsibility. Thus it is a story, in many ways, of civic engagement, in some respects far removed from the politics of recognition that characterise contemporary US debates.

Plato’s many dialogues establish the commitments of Socrates the citizen, and paint a vivid portrait of Athenian political culture. In the dialogue Crito, Socrates explains that despite his conviction, it was not ethically permissible for him to escape from the prison. In Crito, Plato gives readers a ‘dialogue within a dialogue’, in which the personified Laws of Athens speak to another, counterfactual Socrates. This counterfactual Socrates intends to avoid punishment by escaping from prison and fleeing to some distant land.

The Laws of Athens in Plato’s dialogue are not only the formal, written rules of the Athenian state, but also its civic norms. They ask the counterfactually disobedient Socrates what he found lacking in them, and when he had discovered that lack. The Laws point out to Socrates that it was through them (the laws concerning marriage) that he came into the world. The Laws point out that, through the norms concerning parents’ responsibility for their children, they nurtured him. Finally, through them he received his education. Socrates acknowledges all of this. He willingly accepted those goods, and he acknowledged them as good. Having thus accepted the Laws’ fruits, on what grounds could Socrates now turn around and deny their legitimacy?

The Laws of Athens further point out that Socrates could have left Athens for some other place within the wide Greek world. He would have been free to go. But since he had chosen to stay, he had, the Laws point out, again recognised their rightness. The trial itself, the Laws reminded Socrates, had been conducted in a procedurally correct manner – according to the very rules that Socrates had affirmed by this continued presence.

The Laws concede that the jurors might have erred in their verdict – Socrates’ argument for his innocence might have been better than Meletus’ for his guilt. But that was a human error. It was not the fault of the Laws. The possibility of error on the part of the citizen-jurors who would be his judges was part of the package deal that Socrates had taken up in the course of his upbringing and education, and that he had affirmed by his continued presence in the civic community of Athens. He should know that the Athenian citizens, when gathered as legislators or as judges, were fallible mortals. They could not always get it right.

How did Socrates both scorn the idea of collective wisdom and yet maintain obedience to Athens’ laws, even when he disagreed with how they were interpreted? The rudimentary answer lay in the foundation that Athens (as opposed to, for example, Sparta) provided in its laws and political culture. Athens mandated liberty of public speech and tolerance for a wide range of private behaviour. Moreover, Athenian laws on morally fraught matters, including piety, tended to be more procedure than substance. Thus, the law forbidding impiety did not define piety. It left it open to the jury to decide whether a given action or course of behaviour fell outside the bounds of the community’s standard. It rather provided a specific process for the community to make that decision. This substantive ambiguity benefitted Socrates as it allowed him to pursue his distinctive way of life without violating the letter of the law.

Socrates knew that urging others to abandon ordinary pursuits in favour of philosophy made him unpopular. According to Plato, in his defence speech, Socrates likens his dialogical testing of the opinions of others to the agonising sting of a gadfly: the value of the sting is that it shocks its victim out of the slumberous condition of quotidian existence into a moment of moral clarity. In the best individual case, on Socrates’ terms, that moment initiated a lifetime’s pursuit of genuine human goods. But, as Socrates’ extended gadfly metaphor shows, individual conversion to philosophy was not all that he hoped for. Socrates pairs his analogy of himself as a gadfly to one in which the people of Athens are a beautiful, lazy horse that might be jolted awake by the gadfly’s sting. By his defence speech, as well as by explicit statements from other sources, including other of Plato’s dialogues, Socrates reveals that he understood his life of philosophy as political as well as moral. He aimed at nothing less than converting Athens as a civic community into a just society.

Socrates probably recognised that full-scale civic conversion was an improbable goal. He thought that pursuing the most direct form of political engagement ­– proposing specific legislation or advocating a general direction for public policy in the citizen assembly ­– was impossible for him. Nevertheless, he understood his commitment to philosophy as a mission of civic betterment. Athenian political culture expected that a good citizen would exercise any special talents or resources for the good of the community, not merely for himself or his friends and family. Poets would compose publicly performed tragedies or comedies. Skilled singers and dancers would perform in state-sponsored choruses. The courageous would fight on the front lines. The rich would contribute generously to public works. In the words of Pericles (in the Funeral Oration attributed to him in Thucydides’ History of the Peloponnesian War): ‘We regard the citizen who takes no part in these public duties not as unambitious but as useless.’ Contributing to public life was part, maybe the highest part, of what it meant to fully be a man.

Socrates’ defence speech was an act of profound civic courage, the same sort of courage that led Athenian soldiers to die in defence of their country. It was an act of civic respect that recognised the jurors as adults who might benefit from a logical argument. And, for all its seeming intellectual arrogance, it was an act of civic solidarity – an assertion that Socrates the philosopher was also Socrates the Athenian citizen who owed an account of his actions to his fellow citizens. Far from a simple drama pitting democracy against intellectual freedom, the trial of Socrates is a deep drama of civic engagement, tragic in its outcome, but at the same time revealing that democracy makes space for acts of profound heroism.

Today, in the 21st century, free speech is deeply entangled with issues of personal and group identity. In our moment, there is real value in reflecting on the centrality of civic duty in the trial of Socrates, a foundational moment in the history of free thought and democratic action. What will we have lost when the idea of civic duty, as exemplified by the relationship between Socrates and his democratic city, no longer gains purchase on our own thought and actions?

2.  Extracts from another article at aeon.co:

Is virtue signalling a perversion of morality?
People engage in moral talk all the time. When they make moral claims in public, one common response is to dismiss them as virtue signallers. Twitter is full of these accusations: the actress Jameela Jamil is a ‘pathetic virtue-signalling twerp’, according to the journalist Piers Morgan; climate activists are virtue signallers, according to the conservative Manhattan Institute for Policy Research; vegetarianism is virtue signalling, according to the author Bjorn Lomborg (as these examples illustrate, the accusation seems more common from the Right than the Left).

The accusation that virtue signalling is hypocritical might be cashed out in two different ways. We might mean that virtue signallers are really concerned with displaying themselves in the best light – and not with climate change, animal welfare or what have you. That is, we might question their motives. In their recent paper, the management scholars Jillian Jordan and David Rand asked if people would virtue signal when no one was watching. They found that their participants’ responses were sensitive to opportunities for signalling: after a moral violation was committed, the reported degree of moral outrage was reduced when the participants had better opportunities to signal virtue. But the entire experiment was anonymous, so no one could link moral outrage to specific individuals. This suggests that, while virtue signalling is part (but only part) of the explanation for why we feel certain emotions, we nevertheless genuinely feel them, and we don’t express them just because we’re virtue signalling.

The second way of cashing out the hypocrisy accusation is the thought that virtue signallers might actually lack the virtue that they try to display. Dishonest signalling is also widespread in evolution. For instance, some animals mimic the honest signal that others give of being poisonous or venomous – hoverflies that imitate wasps, for example. It’s likely that some human virtue signallers are engaged in dishonest mimicry too. But dishonest signalling is worth engaging in only when there are sufficiently many honest signallers for it make sense to take such signals into account. While some virtue signallers might be hypocritical, the majority probably are not. So on the whole, virtue signalling has its place in moral discourse, and we shouldn’t be so ready to denigrate it.

3. Of the two articles above, the last three paragraphs of Item 1 define civic responsibility and the three paragraphs in Item 2 answer the question whether virtue signalling is hypocrisy.

I submitted documents at MPS Ang Mo Kio in 2018 and 2019 with a view to an investigation by parliament. MP’s Responsibilities (72) quoted the duties of MP. My letters and emails listed the issues including evidence to show that officers did not reply to the mistakes made.

The problem has to do with misconduct and transgression of rules.

It will require parliament to ask how loopholes allowed officers to operate the way they did, about the distribution of power and the role of leadership.

4. At the MPS of 10 Feb, I requested that the petition writer write to the MP whether she could bring up the problem in parliament. I amended the two sentences he wrote in the petition form and he asked me to countersign the amendment. The text served as input for an electronic record to be transmitted to the MP. The text was:

"[My name] seek your assistance in raising the problem in parliament.
He has written 10 times to you about bringing up the problem in parliament."

Real Accountability (72) handed over at the MPS had the same effect and was emailed to the PM, DPM and MP the next day.

5. Since my letter MP’s Responsibilities (72) of 7 Oct, the case has not been brought up in parliament sitting of 4 Nov to 5 Nov, 6 Jan, 3 Feb to 4 Feb, 18 Feb, 26 Feb to 28 Feb and 2 Mar to 6 Mar. I showed in Debunking (72) of 29 Nov the reason you gave for not bringing up the problem in parliament cannot be true. After attending your MPS with Infallibility (72) of 23 Dec and Real Accountability (72) of 10 Feb, I have not received your reply.

Yours Sincerely,
hh

cc
Mr Lee Hsien Loong
Mr Heng Swee Keat
Mr Teo Chee Hean

Observation

Letter handed over at MPS for the problem to be brought up in Parliament:

Civic Responsibility

Extracts from two articles at aeon.co:

1. “Today, in the 21st century, free speech is deeply entangled with issues of personal and group identity. In our moment, there is real value in reflecting on the centrality of civic duty in the trial of Socrates, a foundational moment in the history of free thought and democratic action. What will we have lost when the idea of civic duty, as exemplified by the relationship between Socrates and his democratic city, no longer gains purchase on our own thought and actions?”

2. “The second way of cashing out the hypocrisy accusation is the thought that virtue signallers might actually lack the virtue that they try to display. Dishonest signalling is also widespread in evolution. For instance, some animals mimic the honest signal that others give of being poisonous or venomous – hoverflies that imitate wasps, for example. It’s likely that some human virtue signallers are engaged in dishonest mimicry too. But dishonest signalling is worth engaging in only when there are sufficiently many honest signallers for it make sense to take such signals into account. While some virtue signallers might be hypocritical, the majority probably are not. So on the whole, virtue signalling has its place in moral discourse, and we shouldn’t be so ready to denigrate it.”

3. Of the two articles above, the last three paragraphs of Item 1 define civic responsibility and the three paragraphs in Item 2 answer the question whether virtue signalling is hypocrisy.
I submitted documents at MPS Ang Mo Kio in 2018 and 2019 with a view to an investigation by parliament. MP’s Responsibilities (72) quoted the duties of MP. My letters and emails listed the issues including evidence to show that officers did not reply to the mistakes made.

The problem has to do with misconduct and transgression of rules.

It will require parliament to ask how loopholes allowed officers to operate the way they did, about the distribution of power and the role of leadership.

4. At the MPS of 10 Feb, I requested that the petition writer write to the MP whether she could bring up the problem in parliament. I amended the two sentences he wrote in the petition form and he asked me to countersign the amendment. The text served as input for an electronic record to be transmitted to the MP. The text was:

"[My name] seek your assistance in raising the problem in parliament.
He has written 10 times to you about bringing up the problem in parliament."

Real Accountability (72) handed over at the MPS had the same effect and was emailed to the PM, DPM and MP the next day.


5. Since my letter MP’s Responsibilities (72) of 7 Oct, the case has not been brought up in parliament sitting of 4 Nov to 5 Nov, 6 Jan, 3 Feb to 4 Feb, 18 Feb, 26 Feb to 28 Feb and 2 Mar to 6 Mar. I showed in Debunking (72) of 29 Nov the reason you gave for not bringing up the problem in parliament cannot be true. After attending your MPS with Infallibility (72) of 23 Dec and Real Accountability (72) of 10 Feb, I have not received your reply.