By Rajesh Dhillon
A Singapore youth outfit pulled off a good session on hearing the Sikh community voices in a scenario based on the question ‘What If’.
The inaugural one-day Sikh Voices Conference organised by the Young Sikh Association (Singapore) (YSA) had sessions with rich conversations.
One of the best conversation I enjoyed was the first panel discussion where the future ready leaders – former Singapore MP Inderjit Singh, civil servant turned entrepreneur Devadas Krisnadas and investment expert Harjit Bhatia – sang in chorus of the need to embark on the train of change or be left behind.
Some of the key takeaways as they led the audience on the crescendo was the need for all of us to break out of our current mindsets and dare to be different.
Devadas, founder/CEO of management consulting firm Future-Moves Pte Ltd, shared about the people being affected by a leadership and planning complex, where we feel without a strong leader driving us, we will all be lost, where we must plan for everything we do “failing to plan is planning to fail” and we plan our future on the basis of profits.
The point he stressed on was the fact that what the leader needs most is the people. The ground is what moulds his verbal directions. It’s the people that move the world. With planning, it’s the skill sets of emotive judgment, competency, social and emotional resilience, people skills are the human qualities that push and will continue to push business ahead as we evolve in the future economies.
“Be unreasonable in our thoughts when we have decided in making a change,” he challenged, challenging the Sikh community to be unreasonable in looking at circumstances!
Inderjit Singh, the founder/CEO of Solstar International, shared the global axis of change, much like an introduction into change management in an organisation. The advice of the global entrepreneur was for us to think global from day one.
“If we start with the aim of building small in Singapore only or only within the community then by the time we want to explore expansion, it will be too late because someone else would already have cast his/her net around the globe,” he told the audience.
His demand that we must have an inquisitive mind, the risk-taking mindset and aiming to be good at what you do is what will keep us aligned with the state of disruption and not to embark on the “me too” train. I do agree that there is enough of train breakdowns for us to not be aware of the failure rate in that. There is a need to embed lessons from our learnings and after action reviews to ensure the need of knowledge transfer and knowledge co-creation to make us future ready.
Harjit, Chairman/CEO of Asia Growth Capital Advisors (Singapore), shared on that while technology is a disruptor, it is also a great enabler. We have to embrace it. There are proven practices that have been success factors for many organisations. There is room for disruptors, for young entrepreneurs to be role models to be leaders of our kind.
On the whole, the nuggets resonated with that of the ground feel, we are not unaware of the need for the Sikh community to have a voice, we are not unaware of the need to have champions to be representatives of their contributions as representatives of our Sikhi faith. While we are today known as global citizens we are guided by the core values of our Sikhi faith which makes us individuals in the global arena. Like my table partners, we all enjoyed the session and discussions. It was indeed a Saturday well spent.
[Singapore Senior Minister of State Chee Hong Tat gave a presentation on ‘What if Singapore’s Organising Principles Change?’ and presented certificates at the graduation ceremony of YSA’s second Young Leaders Programme]
Rajesh Dhillon, a knowledge management practitioner and community leader with 20 years of leadership experience, took part in the one day forum. He can be reached at rajesh8@gmail.com
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Sikh Voices to encourage ‘deeper discussions’ for Singapore Sikhs (Asia Samachar, 4 Oct 2017)
