Things I have learnt by moving to Singapore

You know, moving countries is a good thing. It's good to be out of your comfort zone. It challenges your view of the world and your preconceptions and prejudices. It forces you to evaluate who you are and who you want to be. Arran, Aiden, Charlie and I have been in Singapore for about eight months now and while we have settled in, we also still feel new here.  It seemed like a good time to take stock and evaluate.

1. I'm not as tolerant as I thought I was.....
So it's one thing to spend a couple of weeks in a country on a holiday or business trip. It's another to immerse yourself for a longer period and try to create a life like what you knew at home (or not).  I think it's easy to be patient and easy to get along with, when you are in another place for a set time. I noticed that the first month here was great and then after that my patience stated to wear thin. Mainly with things that are easy when you are at home. Things that you take for granted, like knowing where the fuel station is and where the atm's are and being able to order a good takeaway coffee on the way to work. I was frustrated with lots of little things for, oh...about 5 months. I have definitely been snappy with staff at starbucks who bore the brunt of a whole lot of little annoyances. Ditto for Arran.

I still don't get a good coffee on the way to work. I have given up.

2. You can forget stuff and revert to old ways.....
One of the things I have learnt over my career is that relationships are at the core of being successful. To  build relationships one Senior Leader I work with has a hierarchy of communication. If you can talk face to face, do that. If not, phone is next best. Last resort is email. So I know this and generally try to follow this but after landing in Singapore I too often reverted to just sending emails. Not great when I'm trying to build relationships with our Senior Leaders. This problem was pointed out to me and I was grateful.

3. Things that are easy in one country become hard in another.....
When I moved to Sydney, driving and parking was a nightmare. I never knew the best lane to be in and parking was either stupid expensive or non existent. Driving in Singapore is relatively straightforward and parking is usually plentiful and easy. I have lots and lots of examples like this. Some things are harder in Singapore and some things are harder in Australia. I guess stuff works itself out.

4. Networks take a long time to build.....
When I moved to Sydney from Brisbane in 2001 I learnt this lesson. I wrote about networking here. It's still hard. Ugh! But on the positive side I have met some great people who become fast friends and work contacts.

5. It's hard to make friends as an adult.....
Making new friends in a new place seems a bit like dating. You meet someone at a networking event or a dinner or something and you want to invite the person to coffee or a cocktail. But what if they don't like you? What if they turn you down? The REJECTION!! What if they do accept, multiple times (like they actually like you) but never reciprocate? It's a bit like being 16 again except you are fatter with more wrinkles but better confidence.

6. Common sense is contextual.....
So things that make sense and seem sensible in your home are done differently in another country. So we all know this. We do. Until something happens that makes. no. sense. For example Singapore has sophisticated payment systems and finance technologies. And cheques are still common. What? Yes we have a cheque book. I have never had a cheque book. This is just a Singapore example but differences exist from country to country.  Who's to say what's right in one country is wrong in another? It's all right, I guess.

7. You get to learn new words.....
My favourite words in Singapore are "can" and "welcome". Can is the word for yes and it's said with quite a definite emphasis. I love it! When you get a can it's all good. "Welcome" is like "you're welcome" but with a lovely inflection. High and then low. Sassy and sweet. Least favourite word is "cannot". This is a very definite no. It's a no with absolutely no negotiation room. I don't know why I still argue with a cannot but I do with no good result.

So lots of good stuff to learn. What have you learnt over the past 8 months?

Lisa xx

Goals

Every year HR people like me torture employees and managers alike with what is called the “Performance Management Process”. That’s where we insist that employees and managers together set goals for the coming year, record them somewhere (usually in a complicated online tool which no one can remember how to use) and then forget about then until we again torture employees and managers alike to actually sit together and talk about the progress towards their goals, you know give some feedback, before forgetting about them for a another six months before HR people like me ask employees and managers to again talk to each over and close out the goals and again give feedback and then make decisions about pay. The CIA or FBI could use this process to torture spies and terrorists with a lot of success.

In other news I have entered myself into the Conquer the Wall Marathon. This is some nutty event where people get to run or walk on the Great Wall of China for fun, on the first of May. I'm doing  the 10km challenge. I manoeuvred my way into going along to this event with some other women in Singapore after overhearing a discussion about it at a dinner. I really want to see the Great Wall of China and visit Bejing and get fit and make some friends. All good goals.

The fear of not completing the 10km has me getting out of bed and running either on a treadmill or in the dark on Singapore streets. The fear of not completing has me cutting out wine on most nights of the week. Eeek! And the fear of not completing has me running/walking around a reserve in Singapore for 11km on a Saturday morning with the rest of Singapore.

This is what a good goal can achieve. It directs energy and provides focus.

So what happens when we try to put goals into an organisation? Why is it so hard?

In my view setting goals that mean something to employees is hard. Employees need to buy into what the organisation is trying to achieve and leaders need to be good at communicating a vision that connects with employees and helps them understand how what they do, connects with the overall picture.  In additional humans find it hard to give feedback, both good and bad. It's  a skill that can be taught and needs to be practiced. Having good conversations is tricky but when you have one with another person it's satisfying and heartening. There is nothing I love more than hearing about a great conversation a leader has had with one of their team members.

So goals are great and getting feedback about how you are going against goals is the ticket to success. When I started training for the Conquer the Wall event I could barely run for 30 seconds. I can now run for 2 minutes and 30 seconds without stopping and can do this over and over with small breaks walking in between. I'm certainly not going to win any races in the near future but seeing the progress I have made in 4-5 weeks is pretty cool.

The way to get this kind of power into organisations is to train and support our leaders and managers. To give then the skills to give good feedback and have great conversations. That's what I want to do.

Confidence

Where to start?

A couple of weeks ago I had the opportunity to have a really good conversation with one of my colleagues. It was during a work trip over too many lemon drop martinis. Alcohol can loosen in the lips in both good and bad ways. This was a good example. I asked my colleague what she thought about attending a recent leadership meeting. She said it was frustrating. This was not the response I had anticipated. Of course I asked her why. She told me that there was a big detail the leaders were missing and that she wanted to speak up but didn't feel like she could. She thought it was obvious and that surely I was going to speak up about it. I didn't because I was in the detail of the meeting and not sitting outside what was happening and therefore not in a space to challenge.
 
What was the detail and why couldn't she speak up? The detail was something the rest of the group had missed (and needed to be said) but more concerning to me was that she felt like she couldn't speak up. How often have you felt this way? How often have you known the answer or had a good suggestion? How often have you silenced the voice in your head to the detriment of your job or career?

I was flabbergasted with my colleague (but shouldn't have been). I have invited her because she is strong and confident and I want to continue to develop her by exposing her to different situations. I hadn't expected the lack of confidence, the lack of faith in her own ability. From where I was sitting she was and is, amazing.

I shared with her my view of why I have been successful and while of course I have worked hard, I think it's because I'm willing to speak up. Sometimes too much. Sometimes not enough. It's definitely a learnt skill, working out the right balance and I don't always get it right. I have had to show confidence when inside I didn't feel that way. It's important to me though, that what I say will move the conversation in a different direction. If it doesn't the world doesn't end. At least I have tried and learnt something. I don't always feel confident doing it, but.

When I started reflecting on "confidence" I think for the most part it's an issue for women. I have become friends with an amazing woman in Singapore and found myself telling her that recently, when she was struggling with the confidence for a bigger more senior role. Another friend (who is seriously incredible at her job and a thought leader in her space) was starting a new role also shared her feelings about being scared and feeling like she had no idea what she was doing. Another colleague and friend who I have spent time with over the past few weeks is so clever and so hard-working and it rubs off on me every time I'm with her, is putting up with a completely rubbish situation. Confidence, or lack of, seems to be a universal feeling.

The nice thing about female friends is that we generally feel safe to share this stuff. I don't think men feel this way very often and even if they do I don't think they share. Sharing is great and helps us work through issues but man we gotta lean in!

We gotta be confident on the outside even if we are shaking on the inside. We have to support each other and point out to other women why they are doing a great job and why they are so amazing. We have to reflect on our successes and use them to build our confidence. We have to point out the value of the skills and experience we all have. We have to mentor and coach each other and we have to be confident and sexy.

That is all.

Succession Planning - one for the HR nerds!

Whenever I hear these words I think drudgery. I think of processes that don't work and I think of lots of work with no outcome for the organisation or employees. I think of spread sheets and 9 box matrices. I think of changing career! And next week I'm leading a session on succession planning at our global HR meeting. The word karma comes to mind.


Last October I went to this great HR conference and lets face it, there aren't many of those. Usually the content is boring and often the other attendees are just there to whinge about how they aren't respected and how they don't have enough budget.


This one is a bit different. I have been two years running now and there are usually some great thought provoking speakers. Last October Professor David Clutterbuck spoke on "To find, refine and bind tomorrow's multinational talent today". That's fancy speak for succession planning and talent management. It was a great presentation. He really challenged all the senior HR people in the room and you could physically see people squirm. He started with a question:


"If talent management and succession planning work, how do the wrong people so often get to the top? And how come the diversity at the bottom of the organisation isn't reflected higher up?"



Well?


I have worked for one organisation that had a well established system and process for talent review and succession planning. And when I say well established I mean that the organisational went through the painful and lengthy process of identifying talent and successors for key roles and then nothing happened. It's like we, HR, did the work by giving the organisation the process and the fancy boxes but then didn't give the Leaders the tools and knowledge to have the right conversations with employees about their career. The bit that matters! The bit that makes the difference!


The other thing that bothered me about the process is that I'm not sure that the people that were identified in the "talent boxes" were the actual talent and the people that were in the "they are OK" boxes weren't. At the time I was put in the middle of the 9 boxes by my manager. Moderate performance and moderate potential. Fine. I asked my manager "What do I need to do to be considered a high performer?" He couldn't tell me. Ummm..."What does high potential look like?" Again, nothing.


I was headhunted to another company and have gone on to do bigger and better things. Is this what happens when leaders don't know how to have the right conversations? I think so. Others in my team were identified as "talent" so an expectation was created. Nothing happened to develop them and they also left the organisation. Others I worked with stayed long after I left and two colleagues asked to have career discussions with me, as they had stayed but felt their career was going nowhere, when mine seemed to be going somewhere. Professor Clutterbuck talked about the problems of narrowly defining talent and presented a simple way to describe it:

People who continue to significantly invest in their own development. This is the premise of this blog! You have to look after your own development. You can't wait for others to do this for you. Organisations will be willing to invest in you if you also invest in yourself.

A track record of assisting the development of others - Yes! Coaching and mentoring others is not just great for your soul but it supports your own career development and improves organisational life.

Ambition to achieve greater responsibilities (well, derr), and

High motivation and the ability to learn

I think this sums it up for me.


We are failing as HR practitioners if the practice of succession planning as a process only continues. We have delivered process and tools and competencies and definitions but failed in helping people with conversations that matter. We have created complexity and linear models that don't help deliver the right people at the right time in a complex and constantly changing world.


I don't have all the answers but I'm going to acknowledge that this stuff is hard. The charts and tables that HR people like me create don't address the complexity of today's organisations. So what next? A different model and a different way of looking at talent and working out how to support the organisation to have the right people at the right time.