"Can, no problem": hearing the real answer in a Singapore meeting
The regional director asks if the new timeline works. Everyone says it can. Six weeks later it cannot, and nobody is surprised except the director. The answer was never really a yes.
Blog
Notes on managing in Singapore
Longer pieces on the management problems that come up repeatedly in Singapore: written for practitioners, not for search engines.
Managing a regional team from Singapore when the working day is split across time zones
Regional teams run on a narrow window of shared hours. What to decide without meeting, which rituals to keep, and how to stop the people outside the hub feeling second-class.
Flexible work requests: what the manager decides, and what belongs to HR
Formal flexible work requests now follow a defined process in Singapore. What that process leaves to the line manager, and how to decide without it becoming personal.
Keeping your people when the next offer is one MRT stop away
When a competitor can always outbid you, retention stops being a salary question. What a manager can do in the year before the resignation letter, not after.
One language, many rulebooks: what a shared English hides in a Singapore team
A shared working language makes a multinational team look more aligned than it is. Four gaps that survive fluency, and what a manager can do about each.
DISC or the Enneagram: which one, for what
Both are used in self-awareness training and they are often confused. They answer different questions, suit different situations, and share one firm limit.