Dancing on the Edge of Greatness

The following sections are included:

• Dedication
• Contents
• Dear Rockstar, with Love

It’s 7 p.m. on a Monday. Andrew has just sent off his last email for the day. He shuts his computer and leaves the headquarters office of OCBC Bank (the second-largest banking group in Singapore). But Andrew doesn’t head home. Instead, he walks down the block and turns right onto New Bridge Road. Making sure no one is following him, Andrew slips into one of the shophouses. He spends another three hours here creating modifications to the bank’s system…

It was 11 a.m. on 4 January 2010, the first working day of 2010. Also, the first day for me as a first-time entrepreneur. After working two years for recruitment agency Aquent, and receiving a rather unpleasant letter from the boss two months earlier, I decided to strike out on my own. Together with another colleague, we started our own headhunting business. We were in our new “office,” Starbucks at Plaza Singapura…

I grew up with a stoic, no-frills lifestyle. Ballet was out of the question: “It makes you vain.” Barbie dolls were frowned upon. Instead, I played with Lego. And took part in a lot of sports. Not quite made of sugar and spice, and everything nice. Well, if I can’t be nice, then at least I shall be smart and successful. Study hard. Get a good job. Work your way to the top…

I see myself as a leader. I could say that I like to lead. But it is more accurate to say that I like to be followed — a lot.

For too long, my fragile ego has depended on the loyalty of others. I have tried in vain to please bosses, shareholders, employees, clients and business partners, and win them over. I worked hard to meet their incredibly high standards and exceed their expectations. This has plagued me for years. And made my life rather unpleasant. It’s exhausting trying to make everyone happy…

Richard is a senior and respected business executive in one of the largest technology companies globally. Over the last 20 years, he has taken on various regional and global roles across the world from Asia to Europe. Today, he manages a team of 110 people. Richard earns a generous salary, bringing home in a month what some make in a year…

Sean is grinning like a Cheshire cat. He has just landed the job of his dreams: Business Director for a technology services company. He has to pinch himself. Even as he was going through the advanced stages of interviews, he didn’t think he would get the job. He went along with the fantasy. Why the heck not? For the fun of it. See how far it goes. What can go wrong?…

Joanne is the head of IT service delivery for a tech company. Her boss has just closed the largest sale in the history of the organization. And while he is still basking in the glory, he asks Joanne to manage the account. Joanne is all fired up and ready for the challenge. She leads the tedious onboarding process to set up the new service and get into operational mode. But within two months, she realizes that her boss failed to bid for the project properly, and she is now personally accountable for a project that will be lucky to break even. This is a complex project requiring special expertise, but Joanne can’t afford to hire the external resources she needs to deliver the services properly. Mistakes happen regularly. It’s like a bomb goes off somewhere in the project every other day. The implementation drags on and the project becomes drastically behind schedule…

Virtual meetings pound Jacob wave upon wave non-stop from early morning to late at night. That’s how you talk to forty people in a day. Jacob is the CEO of an Asian media tech startup with operations across six countries. The company’s two-year digital transformation strategy became three insane weeks of pressure and slog. Every day it’s like a bomb has gone off somewhere in the business. In this craziness, Jacob needs to make sure that everyone stays focused and on point…

May is attending a reunion with her ex-colleagues whom she has not seen for more than a decade. Back then, May was the R&D (research & development) Director leading engineering teams across Europe and Asia Pacific. May tells her ex-colleagues that she’s now working in Sales for a systems integrator. May’s ex-colleagues give her a withering look of pity. Out loud, they say, “Good for you!” But their faces say it all. Poor you. How far the mighty angel has fallen…

Thomas is a Sales and Marketing professional, and he has been switching roles quite often. Seven roles in 10 years, to be exact. A two-year stint here, another two-year stint there. And then there was that dead cat bounce of 10 months he prefers not to talk about. He has tried many different things. However, he hasn’t quite found his groove yet.

Robert is a fund manager with a large real estate development company. It’s Thursday, Robert is already looking forward to the weekend; it has been a hell of a week. He sees an email from his boss titled: URGENT. His boss wants to see him at 5.30 p.m. He doesn’t mention why…

Richard started his career as a one-man IT (Information Technology) department for the New Zealand office of a multinational organization, responsible for making sure everyone’s laptops and emails work 24/7. He would write long emails to the Asia Pacific regional boss based in Singapore, articulating potential problems and proposing new service improvements. Some of them must have been half-decent because they were actually implemented, like the helpdesk ticketing system. One of Richard’s email tirades must have titillated his boss’s curiosity. Richard’s boss offers him a job in his regional team and relocate to Singapore to roll out his idea on a much larger scale across Asia Pacific. This is a huge jump in responsibility. Richard is going from an independent contributor role to a manager role leading 30 people with three direct reports.

Sam leads the e-commerce business for a global computer manufacturer. His management team has seen the explosive growth of e-commerce sales and tasked Sam to set up this new channel business and bring the organization into the future…

Jacqueline is a client lead for a large advertising company. She recently won a new business, and it’s a lucrative one, accounting for 20% of the company’s sales quota for the year. In other words, they are a very important client, and Jacqueline can’t afford to lose the account. But already the client has a beef with Jacqueline’s project team. Missing deadlines. Shoddy work. The only thing that’s consistent about the project team is delivering too little, too late. What alarms Jacqueline most is their feedback about the project manager. The project manager has been firing off rude emails to the client at 2 a.m. The client has tried to give him feedback directly, but he dismisses it. The project manager has a habit of talking down at the client and not taking their inputs seriously. Turns it into a joke, dripping with sarcasm, and then laughs it off as if the conversation never happened. Blissfully unaware that his behavior irritated people…

Cindy’s workday is filled with back-to-back meetings with employees and business partners. After a while, the string of meetings becomes one big blur. Same, same, but different. People sharing their pressing problems, venting their frustrations and blaming the world for their misfortunes. They shower Cindy with a million reasons why something can’t or shouldn’t be done until she is practically choking from their suffocating insecurities…

This is Anne’s first day of work as the Asia Pacific Managing Director of a global advertising agency. She’s having mixed feelings. On the one hand, she’s excited because she’ll be responsible for steering the company forward in a dynamic industry that is changing fast. On the other hand, the company has not been doing well financially the last few years. Anne is not sure what she’s getting herself into. She was told during the interview that she will be starting on a clean slate. The previous Managing Director, whom she is now replacing, had already gone through one round of retrenchment…

After building a career in investment banking in the US, Ben arrives in Singapore to do his MBA. For ease of convenience, he lives close to the campus and gets his groceries at the supermarket nearby. It has a pitifully limited product range. What’s more, Ben has to lug the bags of groceries home. He is not used to this manual labor — and the sweaty polo tee is not a good look on him. Back in New York, Ben’s groceries would magically appear on his doorstep, which is a godsend for a busy professional like him. Ben is perplexed. Singapore is one of the most tech-savvy cities in the world, but they lack this one basic lifeline. Online grocery shopping is a necessity, just like water, electricity and internet. This is an emergency!…

Sam leads the e-commerce business for a global computer manufacturer. His management team has seen the explosive growth of e-commerce sales and tasked Sam to set up this new channel business and bring the organization into the future. Some people question the mandate. Is there really a need for this new channel? Will it cannibalize the existing businesses? Business looks better than ever. Revenues are growing, clients are rolling in every day, and everyone is extremely busy. If it ain’t broken, why fix it?…

Eric started his own creative agency two years ago with a small team of five people to serve one client. They were like a roving in-house creative agency flying across Southeast Asia to support the in-country product teams to deliver award-winning localized marketing projects. Like the SEAL Team Six, they would dive-bomb into the country for a month to launch the campaign, and then evacuate…

Alex oversees the Asia Pacific business for a global logistics company. A year ago, the organization decided to merge two of its largest business units to become the number one global superpower of the logistics industry. Alex’s mandate? To turn that vision into reality. Scale matters in this industry, and the competitive advantage can make the difference between making negative and double-digit margins. The winner takes all, and his organization is determined to capture the dominant market position…

Anne is the Asia Pacific Managing Director of a global advertising agency. The agency is closing the financial year of 2020, and Anne already knows there will be hell to pay. The coronavirus pandemic has led to an immediate and drastic drop in advertising spending. All media buyers and brands paused spending as quarantine took effect, with travel and retail media taking the brunt of the hit. As a result, Anne’s organization made significant losses. Anne knows what is coming up. Anne knows the drill. At the close of the year, when business has not been good, there’s housekeeping to be done. A cost-cutting exercise, which usually means laying off people. This is not a peculiarity confined only to Anne’s organization. In fact, the entire industry goes through a round of musical chairs. We don’t raise an eyebrow. It’s just business. It’s standard operating procedure. We all know the game. We’ve been playing by its rules for a very long time…

Sam is a business leader working for a global computer manufacturer. Sam does not have the best impression of Human Resources (HR).

HR only sides the business, not the people.

HR doesn’t know the inner workings of the business, but they think they do.

HR = administrivia…

Bob recently accepted a new regional role to head the Asia Pacific cloud services business for a big global technology company. He is excited to be driving the growth mandate for Asia Pacific, the fastest-growing region for the organization…

Jack heads the digital business unit in a global advertising company. His business unit is the meteoric rising star of his organization. Its rapid growth far outstrips the growth of its people, requiring a continual flow of talent with very specialized technical skills. It has been frustrating for Jack trying to fill all the roles, especially the senior ones because of the talent shortage in the market. Jack currently has four Client Leaders in the team, but he doesn’t think they are good enough…

Anne is the head of one of Asia’s fastest-growing advertising groups when it is acquired by a global advertising network. Externally, the message is very positive, with lots of song and dance. But internally, Anne faces a complex challenge around the integration process. The organization is more like a hodgepodge of advertising agencies, from eclectic boutiques to entirely honorable corporations — the consequence of an enormously successful growth strategy through acquisition. But Anne is now faced with a dilemma. How is she going to align 20 brands and 1,700 people behind the new global advertising network without anyone leaving?…

Jacqueline is a client lead for a large advertising company. One of her most important clients is not happy with the work that is being produced by the project team.

This problem is not new to Jacqueline. This is a new and fast-growing area; there is a very limited pool of talents with the relevant skills. Most of them are barely fresh out of university. The head of learning and development (L&D) has been suggesting to her for the last six months to send the project team for training. But Jacqueline couldn’t afford for the project team to take time off work…

Think positive. Set goals and OKRs. Avoid loser talk. Look at the bright side. Suppress your negative emotions. We’ve heard these types of advice for performing under stress. They make a big part of leadership development. When things get harder, our automatic response is to work harder and longer. Go big, or don’t go home…

Every day, you encounter challenges at work. You throw yourself into overcoming them. It gets you pretty far. But every so often, you get stuck. No matter how hard you try, you can’t figure it out. You think you’ve fixed the problem, but a new problem arises. You seem to be fighting the same fires but on different days. Same, same, but different…

Greatness requires a personal commitment. Your leadership brand is a representation of your personal commitment to scale your impact in the world.

Your leadership brand reflects your unique point of view. It represents your values; what you believe is important. Your leadership brand is personal. It’s not the same for everyone. It’s not one-size-fits-all. Because you have something very special and unique. You have something worth saying. It can’t be taken from you because it’s essential to who you are. And you can lead people with that. You can scale and build on that, whether it’s a career, a team, or a company. It’s the thing you believe you are uniquely positioned to do. The thing you fundamentally believe you are the best person in the world to do. Where you have a unique proposition, given your story, to solve that challenge…

The biggest challenge organizations face today in promoting or hiring leadership is the alignment of the leader’s personal vision and the organization’s vision. From my experience, the confusion is around what “alignment” means. Alignment is not about squeezing into a certain leadership mold, or bending to fit a job description, or chanting the corporate slogan. The sycophantic glorification of the corporate mantra hints of cultism, no matter how persuasive the performance. It’s not about becoming Steve Jobs or Elon Musk. That’s not alignment; that’s conforming…

Congratulations on your new leadership role. You have been given an ambitious mandate. It is a moonshot, and to achieve it, you need to build a firm foundation. You know that if you can’t get all the ducks in a row in the first 60 days, you will not hit the 12-month gate. There is no honeymoon period. You’re hitting the ground running. The stopwatch has started…

We have our own experience of witnessing the most skilled orators. They project that fabled “reality distortion field.” They draw us out of our neuroses, and we fall hopelessly under their mesmerizing spell. I’ve had my fair share of falling in love with these magicians spinning their web of fantasies and luring me into doing things that I wouldn’t normally do, like happily spending Christmas Eve chasing a Purchase Order from a client instead of sipping champagne at a party…

Have you ever had a deep conversation with someone where you feel transformed by the end of it? Something shifts during the conversation; the griping at the beginning of the conversation turns into a sense of awe and wonder. Both of you are no longer the same person from the beginning of the conversation. You are transformed: happier, stronger, more confident…

One of the most heartbreaking things about the modern corporate world is that people don’t feel as valued for their work as they would like to be. From my experience, this is because people feel awkward about praises — whether giving or receiving them…

Imagine a conversation where people discuss, debate, and, above all, decide on a lot of stuff in a fraction of the time. They leave the meeting feeling energized and enthusiastic like they’ve accomplished something, and they can’t wait to share it with others…

It’s an incredible time to be working in Asia Pacific. This is a fast-growing market that truly resonates with mobile first, with a large and growing population that is incredibly young. When I talk to organizations that are on a hyper-growth trajectory, this is what I often hear: “Our organization is growing faster than its people.” To capture the market growth, these organizations are adaptively redefining the way they work. And in the process, they are surreptitiously creating long-overdue change in the talent landscape.

Congratulations, you have reached the end of the book! But in some ways, it is also a beginning. Because this is where you must make a conscious choice. This is where you decide to start. To dance on the edge of greatness…

The following sections are included:

• About the Author
• Acknowledgments
• Endnotes