Mar 16, 2010
How a banker built SIM from scratch
Late last month, the Singapore Institute of Management launched the SIM-Richard K. M. Eu Scholarship to honour its founder Richard Eu, 86, whom it lauded as being 'synonymous with the early development of professional management skills'. -- ST PHOTO: STEPHANIE YEOW
WHEN the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbour in December 1941, Princeton freshman Richard Eu was all of 18 and still mourning the death of his father seven months earlier.
'I was stuck in the United States until the war ended,' recalls the retired banker and founder-chairman of the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM). 'Luckily, my father had sent me enough money.'
Dr Eu, 86, is the seventh of 13 sons of Malayan tin-mining towkay Eu Tong Sen, after whom the street in Singapore's Chinatown is named. The elder Eu, who married 11 times and also had 11 daughters, built the Chinese medical hall empire Eu Yan Sang which today is a global health-care company steered by Dr Eu's eldest son, Richard Eu, Jr, who also happens to be SIM's current chairman.
Late last month, SIM launched the SIM-Richard K. M. Eu Scholarship to honour its founder, whom it lauded as being 'synonymous with the early development of professional management skills'.
In 1964, the married father of four was already a well-known banker with Lee Wah Bank when then Economic Development Board (EDB) chairman Hon Sui Sen asked him to helm the EDB's management training unit. Ten years later, Dr Eu welcomed SIM's first batch of 40 part-time students, who became Singapore's pioneering batch of managers.
But let the man himself tell you about why and how he built the tertiary institution, which he now considers his 'baby', while still holding down his day job:
He was very concerned that Jurong, which was a swamp being developed into an industrial area, would be filled with factories but that there would be a void in the top management because the British never bothered to train the locals...
Then, when the EDB was training managers, the Ford Foundation wanted to donate US$300,000 to it but could not do so because its policy was that it would not fund any government, or government-linked, institution.
So Mr Hon told the foundation, 'no problem, we'll put the EDB's training unit into a private organisation that is linked to the EDB.' So SIM was registered as a society.
When Mr Hon asked me to do so, I had great reservations. I told him: 'I'm only a banker, I know nothing about management education.'
But he said: 'All right. You just take it over first and you'll learn.' I said: 'Whatever I can do, of course I will oblige. But don't expect too much from me.' We had tough times in the beginning.
Well, we had no office. But then one of our supporters was Lien Ying Chow, who headed Overseas Union Bank. He said: 'We're using only the ground floor of our branch in Cross Street. You're welcome to the upper floor.'
That's how we started, with 16 people, including the office boy.
Well, we were unknown and so how would we get students? But it turned out that that was not really a big challenge because if people were willing to better themselves, they would come, especially as we didn't, and still don't, charge very high fees. They practically got a free education.
First, my colleague Professor You Poh Seng of the then University of Singapore and I wanted to give our students a piece of paper that qualified them for middle management. So we started our Diploma in Management Studies in 1974.
We were a bit conservative. We just said: 'Let's aim for an enrolment of 40 people.' But when we launched that course, we had about 120 people and had to look into getting more classrooms and staggering enrolments.
The university here then did not ban their lecturers from doing outside work, so we paid them the same rates the university did. We assured our students that as long as we could get them university lecturers, we were just as good as a university.
For many years, I wanted somebody else to take over the chairmanship. But nobody wanted it! We had no money, we were always looking for money and, really, we didn't have even the infrastructure for a tertiary institution until we built the campus at Namly Avenue. We were in rented premises for years.
No, the mentality among them at that time was: Let the Government look after SIM. Why should they bother? They were taxed enough already.
Funnily enough, throughout the years that we ran SIM, we never borrowed money except to build SIM's Namly Avenue campus. Our operations were always in the black.
Well, we ensured there was very little waste. And we had honest people running the show. Without that, we could not have done it.
I'll tell you our secret. When we took over the Open University operations from the Ministry of Education in 1992, I looked at the figures and said: 'No, I think we can do better than that.' Of course, we didn't tell the MOE that; they were so anxious to hand it over to us. But (in return) we wanted a piece of land from MOE to build our main campus. That's how we got our Clementi site - on the same terms as for schools (not private enterprises). Also, we don't employ our lecturers. They're paid only when they teach.
Actually, I've never liked that because nobody knows us outside of Singapore. To the rest of the world, who is SIM?
Exactly. That's the thing. But it takes time. I think what is lacking is the opportunity for the individual to think and act independently. In Singapore, there's always the fear that someone higher up is going to clamp down on the middle manager. And because of that, he's unwilling to let himself go.
Of course! A manager has to meet circumstances as they occur. He cannot go on a set of rules and say: 'I manage according to this.' That's not a good manager. In the life of a company, there are certain times when you come into a crisis and then that's where the challenge is for you - meeting the crisis. And if you can't think independently at that moment, then you've lost out.
No matter how much education you get, it's never enough when you meet reality. In that respect, we are way behind the United States because parents there teach their children to be really independent.
Mar 16, 2010
Short on words, long on humour
A MAN of few words but with a wry humour, Dr Richard Eu is justly chuffed about how he built the Singapore Institute of Management (SIM) from nothing. Here he is on:
How he came to found SIM
'Hon Sui Sen looked around and tried to find a sucker. And I was the one.'
How he found Mr Hon
'He was a very nice man. I once played golf in Las Vegas with (then Finance Minister) Lim Kim San. Hon didn't play golf, but he came along to drive the buggy.'
How SIM got its first students
'We had people on our governing council who were from various companies and we'd twist their arms to get them to sign up their employees.'
SIM awarding its own degrees today
'It's not fair for its students to have gone through their courses and earned degrees that are only recognised in Singapore.'
What he'd change about the way managers are trained at SIM
'Given the command-and-control culture that we're in, there's really nothing much more I can do.'
Why parents here need to teach their kids manners
'If a rich man is ungracious, all the wealth he has means nothing. But if a poor man is gracious and gentle, he has more than the rich man.'
The Government's efforts to foster arts appreciation
'You cannot stuff art into people. They must themselves love it from within.'
His secret to long life
'I try never to let anything worry me such that I can't cope with it.
Shunning greed
'I'm not filthy rich and I don't aspire to be filthy rich because I can't take it with me...
'Maybe I can say all this because I was born with a golden spoon in my mouth. But not so, really.'
CHEONG SUK-WAI
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