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July 11, 2008
'Between my brain and my guts, I can get things done'
Stop planning so much - and Singapore will make the next economic leap. Philip Yeo, the former EDB chief and zestful seller of the Singapore story to the world, tells Lee Siew Hua stories of this rise, and how not to derail its trajectory
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ST PHOTO: LIM WUI LIANG |
MR PHILIP Yeo has been a big player in Singapore's rise from the Third World.
But the success story he helped create during his 20-year leadership of the Economic Development Board (EDB) - from 1986 to 2006 - is also feeding a 'we-have-arrived' mentality that he opposes.
Singapore is 'fanning itself vaingloriously like an empress dowager', he tells Insight.
His concern is that once nations or companies reach the top of the totem pole, they descend all too easily into a 'belly-button' frame of mind that is more about rules and routines than actively creating the future.
Then Singapore cannot make the next economic leap and good talent will leave the country, he argues.
Due process as religion
SPEAKING to Insight from his overflowing office at the Biopolis, Mr Yeo, 61, lets it rip.
Risk aversion, complacency and what he calls 'process disease' can all set into the civil service, he proclaims.
This squashes creative and pioneering efforts in economic development by braver officers.
'The greatest danger we have in government is that as we become developed, a lot of attention is paid to due process, which means you don't need thinking people,' he says.
'Due process becomes a religious pursuit.'
The early days were very different, he recalls.
'When you are hungry, you try everything,' says the lean and spry chairman of Spring Singapore, the enterprise development agency.
'When Singapore was being built, Dr Goh had no master planning.'
Dr Goh Keng Swee, the nation's economic architect, was Mr Yeo's mentor when he started out as a young Defence Ministry officer in 1970.
Highs in his 38-year career include positions as the Defence Ministry's permanent secretary, EDB chairman and then co-chairman, and chief of A*Star, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research.
But as he says, he has really only had 'two careers' - in defence and economic development. No one can question his domain knowledge in these.
Then, as now, the way he works appears radically plan-free.
'I'm always looking around for opportunities. It's opportunistic planning, then execution,' says the Toronto-trained engineer who keeps a practical mindset and a zestful spirit.
'I plan on my feet. I plan with my eyes two, three steps ahead.'
If anything goes wrong, he changes course.
As he tells it, such opportunistic planning marked the establishment of the Biopolis biomedical hub, the Jurong Island petrochemical complex, and the quest for 1,000 PhD researchers.
None of these initiatives linked to the man involved written plans and processes.
He makes the Biopolis idea sound startlingly easy: To him, the building blocks for this pioneering effort were two trips, one partner, and guts.
He was visiting California and learnt about the Mission Bay biotechnology hub. Next, he visited Sweden and came across a similar idea.
Then in February 2001, when he took over the National Science and Technology Board - the NSTB, as A*Star was then called - he pushed the idea of a Singapore Biopolis with a key partner. This was Mr Lim Neo Chian, then chairman of JTC Corporation.
Their dialogue zipped along in this style:
Mr Yeo: 'Come, let's go and look for a piece of land to build something new.'
Mr Lim: 'What do you want to build?'
Mr Yeo: 'I want to build a new biomedical complex.'
Just as every religion needs a Mecca or a Rome, he reasoned, Singapore needs the Biopolis as a centre for world-class biomedical research.
Things moved at lightning speed.
May 2001: Three months after Mr. Yeo arrived at NSTB, a site in one-North was chosen for the development of Biopolis. British-based Iraqi architect Zaha Hadid was quickly appointed to do the master plan for one-North and soon after JTC started design work for Biopolis.
October 2001: JTC called for contractors.
December 2001: Construction on the one-North site began shortly after the September 11 terrorist attacks. 'That was the best time because land was cheap,'' he says. 'Our cost per square foot was only $150, very cheap.'
And two weeks before the December ground-breaking, he invited Mr George Yeo, then the trade and industry minister, for the event.
That was when the minister - one of his former defence officers whom he praises as a non-follower of rules - first came to know about the Biopolis.
Reflecting on those days, Mr Yeo demands of critics unseen: 'Why do I have to write a proposal about Biopolis?
'It's not that I don't have a plan. The plan is my head. The drive is my guts. That's it. Between my brain and my guts, I can get things done.'
Eunuchs and robots
SCENARIO planning, an initiative in the civil service that began in the early 1990s as an attempt to plan for alternative futures, comes in for another big scolding from him.
The exercise creates alternative futures like straight lines, he says. It creates Steps 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 that force officers to follow like 'eunuchs' or 'robots' who think, look and talk alike, he says scathingly.
Shell, the oil company from which the civil service learnt the idea, has abandoned scenario planning, he points out.
'It takes away the fun, it takes away the exhilaration of doing something unknown,' he says. 'You lose your soul.'
Him, he gets to his goal, whether via a 'straight line, curve or meander'.
Probe the no-plan man deeper, however, and there is one pattern he sticks to. This is what he calls a 'life-cycle' frame for growth.
'Every five years, I look for a new industry because I believe it takes five years to build an industry, five years to grow it, and 15 years to mature it. And then you better look for another.'
In his two decades chairing the EDB, a spirited journey that wrapped up in 2006, he pushed four waves of investments at five-year intervals:
· Data storage (1986-90)
· Semiconductors (1991-95)
· Chemicals (1996-2000)
· Biomedical sciences (2001-06)
What's next after biomedicals?
'I leave the fifth wave to the new EDB team,' he says.
'Must make them earn their living,' he quips.
Identifying the next big thing after biomedicals requires the kind of passion and out-of-the-box thinking that made possible a Biopolis or Jurong Island, he indicates.
Sceptics in those days felt there was 'no basis' for either. But he was willing to try a new direction - and roll over naysayers.
The larger point he is making is that if routine replaces imaginative policy thinking, the finest talent will exit Singapore.
It is death by due process.
'If good people leave, then there is no good team to bring forward the next curve of growth,' he asserts.
Trainer of multitudes
MR YEO pictures his best contribution as being a groomer of talent. Not being immortal, he wants to be the nation's trainer so the vital work of delivering growth will be carried on.
'In my career, I've trained more people than anybody else,' he says.
These include the A*Star scholars whom he is famous for hand-picking. He jumps up and points to a wall of professionally-done posters of the men and women who have taken up A*Star scholarships.
These include a blonde karate-kicking German-Singaporean who is doing a PhD in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Another poster shows a pair of well-travelled identical girl twins who are pursuing PhDs in genetics at Stanford.
These scholars can be released as leaders into the national talent pool.
'The more I train, the more I can have a multiplier effect,' he says.
A*Star is on track to source 1,000 PhD scholars, each with a $1million price tag, by 2010. Even if just half of them stay on with A*Star, he still has 500 bright young people.
The key, he says, is to have a high enough quantity and quality of talent. 'Then you can afford to release them.'
When he was the EDB chief, he was happy to let his officers quit to join the private sector for three or four years, then re-enter the agency as more experienced, mature staff.
'In and out, it doesn't bother me. There's no stigma.'
He used to tell them: 'EDB is not a career. EDB is a training ground.'
Also, his scholarship bonds are short, as he is willing to let talent leave and permeate the private sector. He is creating a future cohort of CEOs.
'The Government can afford to train people,' he says.
And that includes non-Singaporeans.
'Ideally, I want to bring them in when they are 12 years old. Better still if I can steal them when they are 10 years old,' he says, ever vivid with phrases.
But he has a serious point. If scientists come to Singapore only when they are fully grown, they may have difficulties adapting to Singapore's culture, especially if they cannot speak English.
Rice clumping
HE RECALLS that when the NSTB recruited scientists from China between 1994 and 2000, many spoke Mandarin in the laboratories and stuck together.
'My daughter calls it rice clumping.'
In 1999, he learnt that a German scientist who worked in one of those labs quit because of the Mandarin-dominated workplace. He had spent 14years at the Institute of Molecular and Cell Biology, but did not feel at home any more in Singapore.
So Mr Yeo imposed the rule that all must speak English at work.
These days, he gets some of his young scholars - 15per cent are foreign but all will take up Singapore citizenship - to take extra English classes.
'More effort is needed to get hold of talent when they're young,' he says. 'But if you take in ready-made talent instead, they have no common roots.'
He is not downplaying foreign talent, however.
The most hard-working people in the EDB when he joined were all Malaysians, he observes, adding: 'My own view is that without foreign talent, Singaporeans will be lazy. Singaporeans will suffer - we have this we-have-arrived mentality.'
And he returns to his dark concern about Singapore sliding into mediocrity: 'We'll spend our time analysing, doing routines, drawing up rules.'
The sizzle of a seeker
BUT HE is not a doomsayer, despite his warnings. He is much more a seeker and creator of possibilities.
Some are Biopolis-sized. But at least one is a quieter project that reflects both the overarching strategy and the inner heart of this spirited overachiever.
True to his calling to train people, he says Singapore must find a way to give scholarships and bursaries 'liberally' to youngsters in the neediest 20per cent of the population.
There is a limit to how much their parents can be helped. But he feels perhaps 5per cent or 10 per cent of the children can be uplifted.
He is now trying to help St Joseph's Institution (SJI) International raise $20million. He donates the fees he gets from his speaking engagements in the Middle East, for instance.
The former SJI boy wants the cash to fund poorer students here and from the region. 'Even if they go home, so what?' The best hope for the poor is education, he says.
Ever the talent hunter, he adds: 'The reason I give to SJI International is because I want them to bring in foreign students.
'Bring them in young, so they can stay and add to the talent pool.'
And then the Singapore success story will live on.
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THE SERIAL RULE BREAKER HE REFUSED to take his Administrative Service examinations in the 1970s when he was a young officer in the Defence Ministry. Preoccupied with solving problems, Mr Philip Yeo could not see the priority or purpose of those 'hurdle' exams on Instruction Manuals 1, 2 and 3. These were 'monster manuals' specifying the Singapore Government's administration rules and regulations. 'So I was not confirmed for four years,' he tells Insight, unabashed. 'My bond was for five years. I was planning to walk out a free man.' His boss, former defence minister Goh Keng Swee, discovered this anomaly and called up the Public Service Commission (PSC) chairman to scold him. The PSC chief then was Mr Tan Teck Chwee, and he in turn rang Mr Yeo to complain: 'You're a very troublesome guy. You break all the rules.' In any case, Mr Tan invited him for lunch and advised him to join the private sector. But Mr Yeo could not bring himself to 'abandon' Dr Goh. The former Economic Development Board chief understands the power of rule-breaking, if done in the right spirit. 'I do it to improve the system,' he says. Once, he 'stole' a whole football field from the Singapore Armed Forces for Singapore Automotive Engineering (SAE) to park the AMX 13 tanks that needed an overhaul. The defence and speciality vehicles company in Ayer Rajah is now known as ST Kinetics. It was June 1976. He had just returned home from Harvard Business School to be director of Mindef's logistics division and assumed the secondary appointment of SAE chairman, and urgently needed space to grow the company. So after 5pm one day, he arranged for barbed wire to encircle and 'annex' the field. Someone complained to Dr Goh, who laughed and said: 'Philip is like that. What can I do?' Mr Yeo likes to joke that he is neither 'civil' nor a 'servant' by nature. Yet he has spent his career in policymaking - because of Dr Goh. 'I respected him and stayed. He gave me a lot of freedom.' He did not fear being fired. 'My bargaining power was that I just didn't care.' In the event, he was 'double promoted' soon after. This shows that walls do not matter. 'I always tell my officers, there are ways to go over the wall, under the wall, around the side. So don't tell me you can't get over.' The pioneering society had no rules, he points out. 'If you depend on people like me to break the rules, what happens the day I'm not here?' There's no Philip Yeo the second, third and fourth, he says. Cloning has not succeeded. He thinks those who break the rules should be praised. 'In Singapore, we spend our time praising people who follow the rules. People should not be forced to follow the rules. If you do so, the good ones will leave; the ones who follow the rules are not necessarily the best.' But lest you think he is all for anything goes, he tells you: 'We're not asking them to break rules to steal money. 'Break rules to get a job done.' LEE SIEW HUA |
PIONEERS, THE INSIDE STORIES
ABOUT MR PHILIP YEO
AS THE Economic Development Board (EDB) chairman and then co-chairman from 1986 to 2006, he helped develop high-tech industries such as biomedical sciences, promoted services, and nurtured small and medium-sized enterprises.
His other top roles have included Defence Ministry permanent secretary, plus chairmanships at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star), National Computer Board and Sembawang Corporation. He is now serving as Spring Singapore chief.
A player in Singapore's success story, a risk-taker and a talent- groomer, Mr Yeo has relentlessly helped expand Singapore's economic space at home and globally.
ABOUT THE EVENT
The EDB Society-Straits Times Pioneers seminar gives Singaporeans the chance to hear from pioneering figures. Mr Yeo will speak at a seminar on July 23 at The Arts House.
HOW YOU CAN TAKE PART
Have a burning question for Mr Yeo on the pioneering days, or on current issues? E-mail [email protected]
Several questions from ST readers will be posed to Mr Yeo at the July 23 seminar.
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