Our Tribute to Singapore
Too many nations assume that they cannot be bankrupt or even fail.
Today, Consulus is proud to join fellow Singaporean firms in celebrating our Nation’s Golden Jubilee.
Our nation’s success has been widely covered by both the international and local media so there is no need to expound on them here. But from glowing reviews to critics of our growth story, one thing is clear: that success is never assumed for Singapore; to survive, everything had to be done with purpose and implemented effectively by design. From achieving 92% of home ownership for all Singaporeans, grooming capable political leaders, to the most basic thing of ensuring trees in every corner of Singapore, this has been the one nation on earth shaped comprehensively by design.
Others have derided Singapore as a nanny state but yet the principles that led to Singapore’s success is not new. Great faiths like Christianity and Islam shape the lives of their believers by comprehensively designing how their believers worship the faith and interact with the world. Influential companies such as Apple and General Electric, shape their corporate cultures and product experiences comprehensively through clear principles by design. These entities understand that success is never assumed and only by comprehensively defining and designing the solutions to achieve the desired outcomes shall they succeed.
Too many nations assume that they cannot be bankrupt or even fail. But the examples of Greece and Yemen have shown us that reckless faith in human goodness to do the right thing is flawed because human beings can be driven by self-interests and do what benefits them in the interim while failing to bear in mind the long-term.
The Singapore success story is what has inspired our firm’s work in business design throughout the world. Similar to the Singapore story, there is never a template answer, everything has to be questioned and then a solution, even an inspired one, still needs hard work to redesign it to ensure that it will work in that situation. The Singaporean healthy dose of cynicism lives in us hence we have no patience for simplistic theories or generic answers. The world is far too complex to allow such solutions to work. Underpinning this is another healthy dose of Singaporean realism, that we cannot afford to fail as livelihoods depend on our solutions.
Assume nothing, being prepared for everything and then design an effective solution. This has been the Singapore way and it lives in us too.
Majulah Singapore! Happy SG50
