Yes. Though speaking in defense of the shifting paradigm in change, I musty agree with Atobe that the time that has lapsed since the initiation of such change requests to their respective action phase is probably a lot longer than what the definition of ‘timely actions’ would have been held by a significant segment of the population.
However, it is my personal opinion that perhaps the delay wasn’t originated by the mentality that ‘The Leaders’ know best’. Rather I would have preferred to attribute the fault of such delays to 3 factors, namely:
1)The difficulty of forecasting and prediction of contingencies scenarios and disaster stimulations response and reactions.
2)The inherently passive and externally derived sources behind motivations for changes.
3)A reactive and self limiting cognitive that often responds only to immediate and visible phenomena and threats/opportunities.
Notably, the above factors can be noted from certain events, which have taken placed previously on the domestic soil.
If we were to look back, we would probably come to realize upon the above cultural phenomena from the following more memory provoking examples:
Initiation of Self Governing Awareness and early related movements.Came only after WW2 when SG has unfortunately fell into the JapaneseÂ’ hands after the British Colonial Government has failed to defend the land properly and seriously. The ugly truth behind the importance of self-governance dawned upon everyone only after majority of the local population has experienced the pain of having their family members or friends being massacred by the enemy invaders.
The awakening to the serious and urgent need of a stronger and better prepared National Civil Defense Force.Despite the existence of the early Civil Defense Force back during the time of the collapse, the manpower and expertise of the force was certainly inadequate to meet the scale of disaster of the New World Hotel collapse which had unfortunately took place in the early/mid 1980s.
Perhaps at that time of the forceÂ’s formation, the primary concern of the force was targeted around the notion of how to better fight fires more effectively and efficiently with a speedier frame of time.
Notably for this tragedy, apart from the thousands of personnel called in from the SCDF, army, and police, thousands of civilian volunteers also marched up forth to contribute their assistance.
The lack of appreciation for Quality Corporate Governance and systematic periodic changes and upgrading to better management practices and trends.The problem of stubborn mentality revolving around the early days’ business’ mentality of ‘Why do I need to change?’ undeniably, is a guilty culprit which has played a significant role in the economic crisis of 1984. While macro environmental factors apparently led the domino effect, the lack of creative disaster recovery stimulations and contingencies measures had played a bigger and covert role in the bringing on of the many collapses.
Subsequently after the 1984 crisis, the remedial actions that had been taken involved many, which even I am unable to recall at the moment.
But a significant aspect which I will be using as example in the following contents below to highlight on the existence of our reactive and externally-driven mentality and attitude, would be the NWCÂ’s advocate for changes to the traditional seniority based wages structure to a more flexible and skill recognizing system.
When gloom subsequently struck us again unfortunately during the 1997-1998 regional Asian Economic Financial Crisis, we saw similar faults causes at work one again. While the blow came not from declines in physical export demands this time, the bubble was however burst from the within in the financial markets exchanges, which was made possible thru a lack of early symptoms warning protocols in place.
Despite the difference in the originating appearance of the two calamity sources, the core and fundamental problem cause remained the same.
While the antidote to the first plague was given, everybody only took in the medicine rigidly. Nobody bothered to exam further for any other undetected loopholes in our systems, nor to re-examined upon the damages that had already been done and to stimulate upon an even more drastic disaster scenario where further assessment and conclusions may be derived to alert us of how lucky we have been to be able to have avoided even further pitfalls that were potentially there in existence, but merely did not occur.
Apart from a handful of vigilantes who saw beyond the problem and effectively developed and took early pre-emptive environmental detection and contingency system measure coupled with the reconfiguration their organizational structure and various internal systems to enable higher survivability thru the next storm, others stubbornly continued to rely primarily on blind faith and luck to hope that theyÂ’ll survive and pull thru the next incoming storm which they have no idea when it will arrive.
Relating back to the Flexi-wage example, a significant number of privatized corporations and SMEs were still in large, reluctant to unwilling to push for the change on their wage structure. Many continued to gamble on luck.
Into the new millennium we came, and while still painfully threading on forward towards the path of recovery, hell struck again with not just one, but from a few sources.
While what has happened in the recent months is clear to most and us and needs no further elaboration, I have to highlight out that with regards to a certain particular spin-off of the layoff and wage cutting problem in existence, a majority of such occurrences could have been avoided if the corporations and businesses have heeded the early warnings and continuous advise of the NWC counsel.
No doubt a mere change to the flexi-wage scheme would neither be omnipotent or sufficient enough to save all the jobs that have been or are inevitably to be lost, nor be capable of effectively preventing the decline in business activities revenue. In the least however, it could have better structured both businesses and corporations, as well as the ordinary common wage taker for better bracing against the storm.
Hence as seen form the above flow, perhaps the major obstacles towards speedy reactions or response to a better suggestion or concept is not entirely always the fault of the Government.
On contrary, by appearance, it seemed that the population has more of a hand in the much and many of the delaying process. And unless we rid ourselves of the current passiveness and empower ourselves with strong inner locus controls, pre-emptive and less risk-aversive mentalities, weÂ’ll only continued to roll and carry on forward in this blame shifting game and becoming sitting ducks again when the next calamity hits us again.
