Entering NUS Business School?

Yesterday would probably be the last time I help out at an NUS Open day for Business School. Yes, because I will be graduating in less than 2 months!! Recalling this post which was written two years ago (here), I am glad that I am still able to contribute to the decision making of university prospects, with over 7000 views to date. 

And now, with two more years of experience, let me try to dish out more of my honest views as well as provide some guidance to the prospects.

How happy am I?

I recall a parent asking me this question: “How happy are you in this course?”

Honestly, four years in university still constitutes a large portion of my life (1/6 as of now). I can’t be always happy and I definitely was the least happy during my second year. Right now, I am happy not because I like my studies, but because I’m graduating soon 🙂 

That might sound discouraging. Haven’t I once felt enjoyable during these four years? Yes I did. Mainly due to activities outside academic and a handful of modules which I truly enjoyed. However, the majority of school work were really dull and just not for me. Hear hear: NOT FOR ME. I didn’t mean it won’t suit others. On a side note, I am a really chill person; I can probably forget to go for an exam and not blink an eye. I’m just not an academic person especially towards things unrelated to math and science. Which comes to my next point.

Why the heck did I choose NUS Business School? There are definitely a lot of you out there like me; Excelling in math and science but you just hate, you just freaking hate to practice countless of questions in order to secure that A in the exams. Yes, I wanted to try something new, something unrelated to what I know I can do, to challenge myself in another field. Did I regret my decision? No. No I don’t because I never know what will happen if I had accepted NTU Aerospace Engineering with Business minor, if I had accepted NUS ME or NUS MSE. Yes, I changed my choices two times during NS. I don’t regret entering NUS Business School because I wouldn’t have met the people whom I cherish now, the mentors who guided me, the friends who been through shit with me… I don’t regret it because I am a different person now from what I used to be before I entered university. I don’t regret it, because I wouldn’t have gotten my current job offer if I took a different path (I should probably write a separate post on this: How to get a job without internships).

And my complains about the school? Rest assured, for I will do the same thing be it NTU or SMU. It’s just my view that there is something wrong with the Singapore education system, and that why I learnt more, had more fun and had slacker classes during exchange. 

The Curriculum

I have teenagers coming up to ask, “Can you tell me more about what this course is about?”, “I don’t know much about business..”, “What do you all study?”

In short, we study how an organization run and how to keep it running. Be clear, it is how to make money for an organization, not how to run an organization, and definitely not how to create an organization. You don’t expect to graduate from business school to become a CEO of an MNC. There are generally 3 kinds of students in business schools: 1. Those who want to climb up the corporate ladder. 2. Those who want to be entrepreneurs or businessmen. 3. Those who do not have the slightest idea what they want to do with their life. Which one do you belong to?

There are aspiring entrepreneurs of course, but there is only one core module called “entrepreneurship”, that turns out to have more negative reviews. You see, business school has nothing to do with whether or not you want to be your own boss. You learn the skills that the school teaches you, and you decide for yourself if you are ready or if you are cut out to be your own boss. Please do not expect to enter business school and create a start-up company because you have “marketing skills, people skills, business analytics blah blah..”. A computer science year 1 who is proficient in Java, Python and C++ will own you quite badly. That is precisely my point about why I felt that most of the classes were not value-adding! Or rather, do we even know what we learnt? Can those skills even be applicable? I’m digressing a little here, but yes my point here is that in business school, we learn basic skills that can somehow contribute to the operations of a company when we first enter, and thereafter everything is about experience, be it promotion to the top management or starting your first venture.

Coming back to the curriculum. There have been quite some changes to the NUS curriculum from the time I was a freshmen. Let me do a quick pitch before going into details in case TLDR. As a year 1, you only have to think about 1 elective for each semester because you will be allocated 4 modules each semester and you cannot choose. You have all the time in your university life to figure out what modules to take in year 2 and year 3 and what specialization etc. If TLDR, you can leave now.

Typically, one module in NUS weighs 4 modular credits (MCs) and a semester’s workload is 20MCs or 5 modules. So for a business undergraduate without honours, we should complete 120MCs in order to graduate in 3 years or 6 semesters. 20/120 of these are university-level requirements (ULR), which are considered electives, but they are not free-to-choose electives. Rather, you have a choice from a list of modules. So, there are 5 of these ULRs that you have to take in order to graduate. 88/120 of these are programme requirements aka business modules. 64MCs or 16 mods out of these are core modules, which in short, are modules that you can only reject to take if you come from polytechnic with exemption or you quit the school. The next 24MCs or 6 mods are 6 other business modules (you can choose) which most people use to specialize in one of the four (Finance, Marketing, Management and Supply Chain). Yes, you have to use 6 modules to do one specialization. Lastly, the remaining 12/120MCs are your fun tickets (Unrestricted Electives). Use them to take interesting modules or something that can pull up your CAP. 

How about the honours programme? As you should know by now, one additional year equals an additional 40MCs, or 10 modules. For the honours student, we have to do something called the Field Service Project (FSP) which is like a consulting project to a real company with real problems and you have to try to solve them with real solutions. That is where you would likely apply your wealth of skills. The FSP is worth 8MCs or two modules. Next, the thesis, or we called it Honours Dissertation (HD). The good news is HD is not compulsory! I’m not going to talk about it because I have no idea what it is about besides lots of research. So in order not to do it, we have to do three level-4000 modules (level-1/2/3/4000 are just the module codes.). There you have 20/40MCs now. Good news about being a BBA honours students is that we have 5 more fun tickets to use, bringing it to a total of 8! Hence, some students will use 6 of these to do a second specialization. As for me, I used 7 of these to learn 3 languages. How cool is that right. 😀

Is doing honours worth it? It really depends on the individual. If the job you want to get into looks at honours for starting pay, and you really mind that increment, by all means. Some students do not want to graduate “too early”, while some still have no idea what they want in life to graduate in 3 years. Some students feel that the audit and marketing industry looks more at experience than honours degree. It is important to note that the requirement to enter honours programme is lowered from 3.5 to 3.2, which means more people are able to do it. And this also means that it is less valuable isn’t it? Is CAP 3.2 easy to get? I’m not ashamed to share. I screwed up my first semester (My worst semester) with a couple of B- and a C+. My CAP was 3.3.

Student Exchange Programme

Are there opportunities to go abroad? Some asked. Actually most. This is probably the best faculty for overseas experience. Take a look at FASS and Engineering where the sheer number of students can probably stomp down the whole Mochtar Riady Building. They have limited slots for exchange and it is competitive to get in. NUS Business School? I think the BBA office will probably ask me to tone down my opinion, but I really feel that as long as you are eligible for (CAP 3.0 I think?), and you want, and you can afford to go for exchange, you are guaranteed to go (Condition: you don’t mind going anywhere). Note that this is just my opinion only! Because really, I haven’t met anyone who didn’t go for exchange, not because they were rejected. In most cases for these people, they either do not want to go for exchange or they refuse to open their minds to other countries/schools after failing to get their choices. Having said all these, I am not saying that you are guaranteed the school or country of your choice, like I said as a condition. There are limited slots for every school and you will need to compete with your peers. However, there are just so many schools that you will probably not mind going to Budapest if you can’t make it for Manchester. Let me stress again that in NUS Business School, everyone has a very high chance of going for SEP if you plan it properly. 

Double Degree/Double Major/Minor

I have already answered this in my post two years ago. Major and Minor are course outside of the home faculty, in this case, outside of business. Can you take 2 Majors? 10 Majors? Yes you can if you can afford to. Should you take double degree? My take at this point, no. Unless you can justify yourself why you should. “More options in the future” is not a good enough reason. Let’s say you have a DD in BBA and Law and you enter the legal industry first. You don’t expect to quit 10 years later and try to find a managerial job in Unilever because you have a BBA degree. They’ll probably hire you as their legal advisor or throw you to start from an associate. You should understand by now that a degree gets you your first job and then experience is all that matters.

Incidentally, I took this new module: BSP 4515 Managing Social Networks in Markets and Organizations last semester and yes we learnt from case studies that in most cases, networks get you your first job and career progression. It was one of the modules I found enjoyable. So to current BBA undergraduates, do consider it. I got an A for that, but not because I was good, I think. As a new module, there were only 6 students (no bell curve) and my professor was probably too kind to us.

Yup, if you are still considering between the 3 schools, read my previous post here. Good luck for your applications~ Apologies for spelling or grammar errors because well.. I don’t really care if there are errors.

Business: NUS vs. NTU vs. SMU in a nutshell

Update: This year (2016), my new post answers more about the curriculum.

Having helped out at the NUS open day for the second time today, I looked back at my decision then. Did I regret choosing NUS Business? For all the past BBA prospects events (including this) that I have been to as a student ambassador, I have been asked the same questions over and over again. My stand will not change. I gave the same answers.

Generally, there are three types of prospects for business course.

1) Decided on Business/BBA or Accountancy, but unsure of which school to choose

The number one question mostly comes from this group of prospects for obvious reasons. They generally performed relatively well to be confident of securing a slot in one of the schools. When more choices are open to you, who wouldn’t consider them all carefully? Who wouldn’t want to make the best choice, which is more or less the “best school”. They want to know which school is the best, which school’s degree is valued the most, which school’s graduates has a higher employment rate and starting pay. They don’t want to make the “wrong choice”.

GUYS, CHILL. I can give you an answer right now, and it has nothing to do with the curriculum, the future prospects or the university rankings. The answer is, IT DOES NOT MATTER!

Honestly come on, let’s not cheat ourselves. Please take a look at these three surveys.

NTU   NUS   SMU

Let’s just compare BBA (Hons). All three schools’ graduates have overall employment rate of more than 90%, with SMU’s starting pay generally higher than the rest.

So you can safely make your choice now, pick SMU because you will then earn more than your other counterparts! Why aren’t you choosing SMU then? Something must be holding you back. You value the campus environment. You value the learning dynamics. You value the relationships that you will forge. The list goes on…

You ask about the learning environment, the curriculum. You ask if NTU offers more, if NUS is more “general”, or if SMU offers the best curriculum. I don’t think there is anyone in this world who took the full course in ALL three schools. That is to say, no one in this world can give you an accurate answer as to which school offers the best curriculum. Looking at facts, graduates from all three schools will be competing for the same jobs and companies obviously will hire graduates from all three schools. That shows that the content you learn in all three schools will very much be similar. You are worried that one school might not teach certain things and you lose out. But do you not know that each school teaches things that the others do not?

You go to NTU open house and the ambassador tells you, “Nanyang Business has blah blah blah and NUS Business lacks this.” Don’t you think the ambassador in NUS open day will also tell you about the qualities of NUS? That said, we do not have enough information and experience to give an impartial judgement. As an NUS student, I will of course tell you about the qualities of NUS because that’s what I know the most. It will be unfair to the other schools however, if you just take words at face value. Branding is important, but if the product is very much similar, I think you can safely purchase any of them. Tell me, is Colgate or Darlie better for your teeth? Frankly, I don’t really care, no I meant I don’t care at all, I just use.

As much as there are employers who prefer NUS graduates, there will be those who prefer NTU and those who prefer SMU graduates. University is totally different from JC. You want this job? Show me what you have more than grades and degree. The branding of the degree is important if you are comparing among many universities. But Singapore… no point man, no point. You won’t be telling your employer all that you have got out of 4 years is a first class honours from NUS and expect to get hired. Your other achievements and experiences weighs a larger portion, not to mention your personality.

Does that quell your anxiety?

It all comes down to you as an individual. Sure, each school has its own strengths and will be able to develop you, but your success lies in you, not the school. Your future lies in your hands, not dictated by the school. You make your choice, not because what the school can offer you, but what you hope to get out of entering the school’s curriculum and environment.

For me, easy. I want a conventional campus and somewhere near my house. NUS it is, period. I make the best out of what NUS Business offers me. Did I regret? No I did not. If given a chance to make a choice again, I will still choose NUS. The student life experiences were just awesome.

BBA (Accountancy) vs. Accountancy degree

Perhaps I’m not the best person to talk about this as I don’t have the technical knowledge on accounting related prospects. However, NUS BBA (Accountancy) graduates and accountancy degree graduates compete for the same jobs in general. So what do you say? Not much difference lah huh…

2) Indecisive about BBA  (Double Major, Double Degree, and other concerns)

These group of prospects can range from racking their minds over Economics or Business to Double Major or Double Degree.

Hello guys, have you decided what you want to do in the future? Most likely not right? Otherwise you would not be pulling out your hair making such a life changing decision.

For those who are considering DDP or other special programs (and having no direction), just admit you are greedy. You have the grades and you can make it to the top programs. You think that by taking these extra programs, they add value to your degree and you have more jobs options. You are right, your degree is value-added and you have more career options. You are taking a safe and smart choice. But is this necessary? Only you can answer that yourself. By all means you can try and drop at a later time, but please do plan your modules for retreat in case you decide to drop.

BBA a general degree? So isn’t it losing out in competitive advantage? Yes, it does. But there is something called specialization. Specialization is the competitive advantage of your degree over a general one. For example, BBA (Finance) is a BBA degree specialized in Finance. Then again, a general degree has its advantages too. You have more options! The point is that you don’t have to weigh the pros and cons so much. First, go for interest. Second, go for practicality. Last, it doesn’t matter, make the best out of it.

Double specialization is not to be confused with Double Major. If I’m double specializing in Marketing and Management, then my degree will reflect BBA (Mkt & Mgmt). A Double Major means taking a major outside of your discipline (in this case outside Business). This means something like Economics from FASS, but you will only be awarded one degree which is BBA. It is legit enough to say I major in Business, or major/specialize in Marketing (Business obviously) but not legit to say I double major in Supply Chain and Management. A double degree is quite clear cut I believe. The name tells you that you will be awarded two degrees at the end of the day, for example BBA and BA (Economics). This also means that you will be feeling the full extent of the wrath of an Arts degree. However, you only need to take modules relating to economics/to complete your major if you are doing double major instead. Hope this information clarifies much of your doubts.

3) Unsure of securing a place

If you are just trying your luck, just do it, but please put a safe choice as your second choice. That’s all and hope for the best. If you die die want to take business course, the doors to other institutions are always open. Face it, grades are required to enter university. No point sulking over something that you have already done and foreseen.

At the end of the day, it is not so much about which school is the best. Make your decisions more than just paper value, and make the best out of your decisions. No regrets. You shape your own future. All the best!

 

Update: This year (2016), my new post answers more about the curriculum.

CK’s Leadership Theory

You should have read my previous post to understand my basis for developing this theory. To recap, the textbooks on leadership theories serve no purpose in describing all the assumptions and studies about leaders’ behaviours. At the end of the day, all that they tell you are: “it is uncertain”, “there are still more to be discovered”, “but it depends on the situation”, “however, there are still other…”. Yeah yeah just shut up if you’re not going to give me a proper conclusion on what I am supposed to learn. If I were to die tomorrow, I don’t want to regret wasting the last moments of my life trying to study something worthless like drinking cat shit coffee.

You can’t quantify leadership as if it is kinematics. You cannot use science to explain leadership. It will be foolish to do so, just like trying to use science to fight faith. It will end up going around in circles.

CK’s Leadership Theory cuts all the crap and goes straight into how to be a good leader. I don’t have to define what is a good leader. Good means good, period.

CK’s Theory of Leadership

This theory is based on observing the traits of good and effective leaders throughout my lifetime and summarising them. I don’t give you the crap of exceptions. In primary school’s civics moral education you learnt that right means right and wrong means wrong correct? They don’t tell you, oh this act is technically wrong but it benefits many people so it can be right. You have a brain, assess the exceptions yourself.

1) Leaders know themselves well

All of these good and effective leaders have very high emotional stability and maturity. They know their own limits and do not take unnecessary risks. They learn on the job and adapt well to changing situations. They remain calm and composed under pressure.

The above descriptions don’t seem like there is anything to do with knowing themselves, but these are in fact the results of self-awareness. Once they understand themselves, they are able to control their thoughts, attitudes and behaviours to a higher level.

2) Leaders empathize with others

You will be surprised at how much these leaders know you. It is as if they read your mind through WIFI and you feel comfortable talking to them. Okay even if you don’t due to the power distance, you still respect them as your leader. This is due to the way they portray themselves (point 1) and the way they communicate. Good leaders understand your concerns.

3) Leaders know their purpose

A leader without a purpose behaves like a follower. The effective leaders know what they want. They possess the drive and passion to work towards their goals. They inject life and excitement into their followers, inspiring them to strive for success. Good leaders don’t give up halfway, they dedicate themselves to all the tasks that they have started on and finish them, even though they may not like it.

4) Leaders possess good ethics

Good leaders have a sense of righteousness. They are selfless, sincere and fair. They make the most appropriate decision in grey areas. They don’t have to “follow the book”, because they are “the book”.

Guidelines

Some people believe that a leader is born, not bred. CK’s Theory believes in giving everyone a chance. All that comes down to it is to first be a better person as a whole. You will still be a failure if you are fucked up. Look at Durai, who got himself in jail. How do you be a good and effective leader then? Here are some guidelines to CK’s Theory.

1) Know yourself

This is quite obvious. If you do not understand yourself from head to toe, soul and heart, inside out and upside down, how will you understand others? Take some time, sit down and reflect on yourself. Look back at incidents, and see how you could have changed the situation to make it better. Look back at times you felt strong emotions, and see how you could have controlled them to make things better. Look at your interpersonal relations, and correct any imminent problems and issues you care about.

Spend some time to engage in some internal conversations with yourself. This is not autism! You are weird if you had never talked to yourself before. Don’t believe? What is going on in your mind while solving a mathematics problem? What is going on in your mind while reading a book? You ask questions in your mind right? You read aloud in your mind isn’t it? If you never had this experience, I wonder how you had managed to live for over 20 years. But it’s okay, just follow CK’s theory.

Talk to yourself, ask yourself questions. Like what would you do if someone killed your family? How would you react when you found out your spouse is cheating on you? How would you deal with a friend who betrayed your trust? Test your own limits mentally. Get yourself into different moods and experience them internally. What do you have to do to master piano? Practice right? So you have to practice to master your own emotions. Look at the Honda road bully case, would it have happened if both of them had control over their own emotions?

By the way I’m not a psycho, people who know me well know that I am very strong emotionally. And it was through all these internal conversations that built my strength.

Find out if you are a visual, auditory, kinesthetic or an auditory digital person. That way, you can accomplish things with half the effort. For me, I’m more visual. Just see the way I use my words: “See”, “Look”, “Find” etc. I also process information in pictures, and I have a knack for remembering a string of numbers in photographic form.That’s how I know I’m visual.

See, by understanding yourself, you don’t have to know what is task-oriented or relations-oriented. It comes naturally. You don’t have to uncover your traits based on what the textbook says. You already know them. You don’t have to try to achieve emotional maturity. You are already matured.

Other than having self-awareness, you must also behave appropriately. Being aware of your anger and your bad habits without attempting to change them positively serves no purpose. You still let them happen, and then? There is no need to define what constitutes good behaviour. I’m sure all of us are old enough to tell the difference between good and bad. Portray yourself appropriately.

2) Know others

In leadership, it is never just about yourself. You must manage your interpersonal relations. Find out what type of person the other party is (visual, auditory, kinesthetic or auditory digital). This has been proven to work. If the party is auditory, use aural words in your communication and you will have him clicking with you. For example, “Can you show me a way to look at this idea in a bigger picture?” will not sound pleasant to the subconsciousness of an auditory person. Instead, “Can you tell me how to tune in to this idea on a bigger note?” fires the person’s neurons, which makes a difference in the kind of information you get from him.

Also, by knowing yourself, you will be able to empathize with others more easily. You will be able to put yourself in their shoes and be more considerate towards them.

See, by putting effort into knowing others, you will know how to influence them with the correct approach. There is no need to figure out if a legitimate tactic or an apprising tactic should be used. There is no need to even study these terms and try too hard to apply them. It is just like trying to calculate the angle and force required for you to shoot a basketball. “Shoot means shoot la, what angle power and shit.” A lot of things in life are “just like that” and there is no point looking in too deep. It all comes naturally.

Of course you can’t make best friends with every father mother son. There are people whose personality you just can’t click with! But you can still maintain good relations with them by understanding their concerns. We all like people who understand us don’t we? They make us feel comfortable to share our ideas and concerns.

You can command respect by knowing others.

3) Know your purpose 

Some call it goal, others call it objective. To me, it includes your mission, vision and whatever sion. But frankly, it doesn’t get any closer to these. Nonetheless, in order not to complicate things like the textbooks, every mother single term under the sun related to achieving falls here. You must know what you are here for. To help the company to boost sales? To train a batch of difficult recruits? Or to manage a student club?

We can hold a leadership position for a few weeks, a year or even 30 years. We may not be able to set a specific goal for 30 years where you don’t even know when you will die. However, we must have a purpose.

Goals don’t have to be SMART. Fuck this shit on specific, measurable, attainable etc.  You will become a robot doing this! Humans are born to be flexible, not to blindly follow stupid not-so-SMART rules. I am not talking about an organization’s KPI or targets here. These goals are mandatory as a job requirement so suck it up. I am talking about goals with intrinsic value to you personally. Something as simple as this will do: “I want my team to have the most memorable and fun time under my charge.” Please don’t come and tell me “fun” and “memorable” cannot be quantified, so this is invalid. This is CK’s Theory so screw off. SMART goals are for people who lack self-discipline, self-awareness and sense of purpose. Undertake an effectual approach, and you will find plenty of opportunities waiting for you.

Referring to the above example of a goal (your purpose), you will then put in your best in making sure love is in the air. Show your passion and dedication. Your subordinates will love coming to work. You inspire them to go after what is important for them. There should not be anything specific thing you ought to do. It comes naturally.

4) Know ethics

Even though you may be a great leader, there is a difference between a good ethical leader and a good unethical leader. A good mafia boss who treats his men well is acting against the law and moral code. He is not ethical. Look at Hitler, he is a good leader but what happened in history you should know… There could be a grey line between ethical and unethical, but we all have to agree that there is what we call a “social norm”, which majority of the society agrees on. Most of such “social norms” are defined by the law, but there are certain practices that the law does not cover.

Reserving seats using tissue paper is one such social norm that the law doesn’t cover. By taking away the packet of tissue paper and sitting on that “reserved seat”, you may be deemed as  being unethical and can be sued in court. My point is that good leaders have to act diligently and perform with integrity. All these come naturally when you tell yourself to stay upright.

Summary

That concludes CK’s Leadership Theory! It very much summarizes all that you need to know about leadership. Much of these 4 points overlap and work in sync to build an effective leader. To work towards a good and effective leader, you have to know yourself well, put in effort to understand others, be passionate about your purpose and act ethically. You really don’t have to try too hard, it all comes naturally as you develop yourself. Lastly, they cannot be too long-winded too, so effective leaders conduct effective meetings that take minimal time.

Final words

I don’t claim to perfect all that I just wrote but it never hurts to keep trying. We should always aim to be a better person as a whole. Anyway I must clarify, there is a difference between vulgarities and adjectives. There are some expressions that you just can’t express with the same impact without using the appropriate adjectives, that may appear as profanities. Rest assured these adjectives are just for emphasis, and I have very much restrained from using others that bring more impact. Speaking from the Singaporean culture, if you come from a typical Chinese family and went to Chinese schools, you know what I mean. Our English vocab is limited, which brings me to clarifying that I’m not angsty when I rant or complain. If I speak, I speak in a calm tone.

Thank you!

Chun Kiat

Learning Leadership?

I am taking a module called Leadership and Ethics this semester. Funny isn’t it? Can leadership be taught in one semester? Can leadership be learned by reading a textbook?

This module makes me feel like I’m wasting time in school. I shall be kind and just list out three irritating things about this module.

1) Leadership theories are useless

If anyone wants to challenge me on this, please just go knock your head hard on the wall first before coming. I think that would wake you up. What is the use of knowing about path-goal theory, influence tactics, multiple linkage model? What is the use of knowing about terms like instrumental leadership, transformational leadership, relations-oriented? Let’s not even talk about using the knowledge to earn a living. If someone has ever got the need to “apply” these “theories” on himself, then I think he must either be  fucking stupid or lazy to perform his leadership requirements. What else are these theories useful for? For a HR personnel to assess the leadership of a manager? So the manager’s pay is going to be determined by what kind of leadership skills he possess… #okaycan. Well, for people like Gary Yukl to write a book that has not much meaning and earn royalties. This is valid.

I know I have referent power. So what? I know you suck up to your boss, and ingratiation makes it sound nicer. Please, suck up means suck up. Don’t come up with such a sophisticated word. My point here is that this leadership theory thing is just an act of beautification, much like trying to beautify cat shit and sell it. Well I’m referring to cat shit coffee, or Kopi Luwak. Shit means shit right? Why would people still want to drink it? It doesn’t even differ from normal coffee, just that the method of production sounds interestingly shitty. When you take it in, it does no harm to your body, but it does no good either. It does nothing. You end up peeing. You spent your money and time. It’s the same thing here for these leadership theories! You take it in, and it comes out soon after the semester ends. It doesn’t benefit you, nor does it harm you. You just wasted your money and time, which brings me to my next point.

2) The textbook changes almost every semester

Really, what are the differences among all these textbooks when all they are trying to communicate are these old leadership theories? How much can they differ? If the school wants us to take this compulsory module, fine. Why must we be “forced” to purchase a new edition just because it’s for our own good, our better learning? If every semester the textbook changes because there is always a better one out there, then the focus isn’t the content anymore right? Textbooks are not like Samsung Galaxy or iPhone you know. New theories or concepts don’t just appear within 6 months or even several years. So my conclusion is it must either be a scam or the department is seriously incompetent.

3) The author of this textbook suck

Let me find a classic example from the textbook, and do a favour by typing it out wholesale.

“Review articles or meta-analyses of relevant research have been published for path-goal theory (Podsakoff, MacKenzie, Ahearne, & Bommer, 1995; Wofford & Liska, 1993), situational leadership theory (Fernandez & Vecchio, 1997; Graef, 1983, 1997; Thompson & Vecchio, 2009), leadership substitutes theory (Dionne, Yammarino, Atwater & James, 2002; Podsakoff, Niehoff, MacKenzie, & Williams, 1993; Podsakoff et al., 1995), cognitive resources theory (Vecchio, 1990), the LPC contingency model (Peters, Hartke, & Pohlmann, 1985), and the normative decision model (Vroom & Jago, 1988).”

Wow, wait a second. Was that one full sentence? Oh yes. It could easily be written as:

“Review articles or meta-analyses of relevant research have been published for path-goal theory,  situational leadership theory, leadership substitutes theory, cognitive resources theory, the LPC contingency model, and the normative decision model.”

And I would have known that the main points are “path-goal theory,  situational leadership theory, leadership substitutes theory, cognitive resources theory, the LPC contingency model, and the normative decision model.” 

How the hell am I supposed to read the citation-littered sentence smoothly? My overall reading momentum was halted the moment the bracket came it. I’m sure there is a better way to credit the relevant persons, but definitely not citing them in every fucking line! I have no interest in knowing whether it was Podcast or MacDonald or Boomer who wrote the theories. I just want to know the content for my quiz! Gary Yukl you tell me, how am I supposed to concentrate studying it even if I want to? You are an author yet you can’t organise your book. Fuck you. We pay you so much for your lousy piece of shit work. And the school is convinced to use this book. Why don’t you share this influence tactic with us instead?

I don’t have to say much now. It was just a rant anyway. In my next post, look out for CK’s Leadership Theory. It is the most novel, practical and useful theory.

Goodnight 🙂

Chun Kiat

Respect #1

Well, I thought I will be writing more about this topic in the future so I had to number the title!

Anyways… What is respect to you?

There are many forms of respect of course, but today I’m gonna discuss about this: Acting with due regard to the feelings, wishes and rights of others. 

I shall just lay down a typical and simple example, which most of us know. I invited you to a party and you rejected simply because you feel socially awkward. I am just going to respect your decision no matter what your reason was. I can attempt to convince you, but in due regard to your feelings, wishes and rights, I am definitely not going to force you, turn nasty or threaten you with our friendship. This is what I termed Respect #1. Your decision deserves my respect because I laid it out to you as a choice and it is your freedom to choose. I have no rights to make you feel uncomfortable because both of us are stakeholders in this relationship.

Coming to my main point, I had an 8am seminar class today. I am always sleepy in 8am classes except for this module, because it is very interactive and the content is interesting. There came to a part of the lesson where we had to do a small role-play: An egoistic manager versus his superior in a mock performance review. One representative from a team had to act in a role and there were two pairs of similar roles-plays. That sums up to 2 teams sending two managers and 2 teams sending two superiors. I was acting in the first pair, as the manager. It wasn’t as bad as I thought it would be as I just said what was on my mind (no script provided). When it was the second pair’s turn, one team sent out a manager…… That’s it? That’s it!

Where was the “superior”? Which team was supposed to send out a representative? Our professor smiled at the team who was supposed to send out a representative and asked if any of them would like to come out. They looked back at her with a blank face. The class turned silent.

“Psychic girl, would you like to come and try?” My professor said in a motherly tone.

Psychic girl looked at her and turned to her group mates, left and right, apparently using telepathy to communicate.

“What-is-your-problem boy, how about you?”

What-is-your-problem boy shook his head with a slight sheepish smile.

“Angmoh guy, do you want to try?”

Angmoh guy said no.

“Is there any reason why you don’t want to come and try? Is it because shy?” Prof still spoke in a motherly fashion calmly.

Silence….. The whole class was freaking stunned at the heroic act of this group. I meant rebellious, well… A few tried to break the tension by calling out the names of others.

The second role-playing ‘manager’ was left sitting alone on one of the seats placed for this activity and the atmosphere was SO AWKWARD. Luckily, prof managed to salvage the situation by asking what she could have done differently as compared to me. So we did not have a second role-playing activity.

Back to my topic, the attitude of this group showed a total disregard for the feelings and rights of my professor. What the fuck is wrong with them right? I seriously cannot stand this kind of attitude! The prof had been very nice to us all along and her lessons are always interesting. Is this how you treat her? I don’t give a flying fuck whether your team dynamics is good or bad. I don’t care if you don’t like your team members and haven’t been discussing about the activity for the past 10 minutes she had given us. I don’t want to know whether you all had selected someone to represent the group and he chickened out at the last minute. As an individual, all of them had failed to demonstrate proper respect to an educator. That was her lesson and she had every right to conduct it the way she wanted. It was not as if the role-playing will cause your head to roll, or give you an emotional trauma. Who the fuck are you to reject the prof’s repeated calls and disrupt her well-planned lesson? You are nobody, in a classroom of 30 students.

As students of the class, they are the stakeholders of the atmosphere in the classroom. They are the stakeholders of this classroom relationship. They did not show us due respect by avoiding the activity outright, and by making everything so difficult. They did not even open their gold-taped mouth to explain themselves, acting like little mermaids who lost their voices to some imaginary Ursula in the seminar room. I thought that exchange students, especially Caucasians will be more vocal and willing to participate in activities. I thought wrong. I was so disappointed in them. This module is called HUMAN RESOURCE MANAGEMENT for a fucking reason. You learn how to manage people. Now if you cannot even manage yourself and your own team, please just drop the module. You are just wasting your time, and ours too, which leads me to talk about the essence of education. So what if someone is highly educated, has achieved top grades and is very experienced? So what if you are year 4 and majoring in marketing and management? So what if you are double-degree? This small little act has shown how narrow-minded and emotionally immature you are. How are you going to succeed in life, I wonder.

Another flaw of the Singapore education system. What is respect?

(I used “they”, “you” and “someone” interchangeably but I meant the group in general)

I can’t believe I actually witnessed such immaturity in university. Joke.

-Chun Kiat

The importance of a university degree

I refer to an article taken from The Straits Times website almost a year ago by Toh Yong Chuan: http://www.straitstimes.com/breaking-news/singapore/story/university-degree-not-vital-success-khaw-boon-wan-20130505

“Singaporeans do not need to be university graduates to be successful, said National Development Minister Khaw Boon Wan yesterday.

What is more important is that they get good jobs after leaving school, Mr Khaw told some 160 students and young adults in an Our Singapore Conversation dialogue.

“If they cannot find jobs, what is the point? You own a degree, but so what? That you can’t eat it. If that cannot give you a good life, a good job, it is meaningless,” he added.

Mr Khaw was responding to a participant who said the Government should set aside more university places for Institute of Technical Education (ITE) and polytechnic graduates.”

How do I feel about this comment in the position of a Singaporean and a student of the country’s National University? Have I just wasted 2 years of my time studying in university? While I do agree that university degrees are “not vital” for success, I felt that Mr. Khaw was being insensitive towards the younger generation. Listen to your people.

So what really is the value of a university degree? Individuals perceive it differently, and what about me? Possessing a university degree is getting very common in Singapore today, and anyone can Google for the statistics. Okay i’m lazy to find the statistics but I’ve lived in Singapore long enough to know. The word “common” is debatable too, because we still find that university graduates are still a minority of the population. Look how I used the word “common”. Why did I use it knowing that the majority of Singaporeans do not go to university? This is because most of the people i spend time with are either undergraduates or graduates. I have very few friends who do not go to university. This is the way my life turned out to be, but this is also the flaw of society. Having only mingled with the “same species”, we do not see the rest of Singapore.

 

“Our Species”

I grew up in a bubble. I went to a neighbourhood primary school, scored relatively well in PSLE to gain entry into a “good” secondary school, and then Junior College. I was young and I didn’t exactly know what happened. My parents told me I must score well and so I did. The society told me that I must study hard, get good grades, go into good schools, get a university degree, a good job with high pay so that I can live happily ever after. The Singapore education system separates students into “neighbourhood” and “good” schools. Some even classify “top schools”. What this system does is to cut the ties between people with different learning standards. I do not like to study honestly, but I have a very strong learning capability. That was why I was able to “do well” by using what I called “lazy methods” to study. I grew up in this education bubble where I was separated from the more colourful side of Singapore. The people whom we called “cannot study one”, “gangsters”, “小混混” etc. were all outside our bubble. We only mingled with our “own species” from secondary school onward.

It wasn’t until I entered the Army that I realised “our species” was actually the minority in Singapore. Oh for that matter, I was enlisted in the “Junior College” batch. So naturally everyone was the “same species” during my basic military training. I became an instructor and saw people with broken families, people abusing drugs, people who dropped out of school for various reasons. These are the majority. It was overwhelming. It dawned on me that “our species” is very ignorant. We are helpless compared to these “other species”. I had to learn to be a counsellor, a baby-sitter as well as a disciplinarian. Dealing with people holding a different mindset is not easy.

The value of a degree

 

Now, how much does a university degree worth to this “other species”? It is not important at all. They have much more important matters to worry about, so much so that we should be ashamed for worrying about “what modules should I take?”. Education did not come easy for these people. It could be their choice, but this whole meritocracy thing is still bullshit. We don’t start on fair grounds in the first place.

How much does it worth to “our species” then? Oh please. Just take a look at the class participation wars, the deadly invisible arrows flying all over the campuses, the cocky behaviour of some CAP5s and interestingly, the sulking “I hate local Us” poor-things who got rejected by local Universities. Oh not to mention these lost souls who will say, “I’m unsure what I want to do, I get a degree first and plan later”. The degree is their life. It’s the gateway to heaven. It’s the gateway to being a CEO, CFO, COO for some, or even buying a COE for that matter. Having a degree does not necessarily secure you a job, but it definitely helps in a job competition with someone who does not possess one. Who are you kidding minister?

The value of a good job

How do you define what is a good job? Similarly, individuals have different perspectives. For some, the culture of the company is the most important. For others, gold is greed. People do look at many aspects the job and company can offer.

“What is more important is that they get good jobs after leaving school”. This statement is very vague. To many, “good jobs” are jobs that require university degrees. Please do not tell me being a taxi driver is a good job. Maybe a personal chauffeur would be a better one? So what can these non graduates do for a “good job”? You cannot compare, YOU C-A-N-N-O-T COMPARE JUST LIKE THAT. If I define a “good job” as being a management associate in CitiBank, and I only have a polytechnic diploma of what… business management… you are gonna tell me to dream on right?

So now I assume that this statement advises people to be self-content. Oh, it’s not important to get a degree… what is more important is for your child to get a good job so that he can at least earn a living, because not many people can be ministers, not many people can be high officials in the government commanding high pay. I seriously think it is utmost inappropriate for ministers to advise the average to be self-content. This is an insult to us “commoners”.

The value of success

What does success mean to you? I am sure Mr. Khaw is successful! Being a minister and all, must be so proud. We are proud of you too! Well I totally agree with you that I do not have to get a degree to be successful. Wait, but if I want to be a minister I have to get a degree right? Well I don’t want anyway. Let’s continue.. Many successful people such as Robert Kiyosaki said: The A graders work for the C graders and the B graders work for the government. Look at Steve Jobs, Richard Branson, Bill Gates and Mark Zuckerburg. They were all dropouts right? Aren’t they all very successful now? They are all in Forbes’ list of billionaires. But wait again, how come I don’t see a Singaporean dropout billionaire? This is not really about meritocracy or not okay, it’s the culture we are immersed in, the policies we are subjected to and the societal rules we are bounded to. In Singapore, the government sucks out quite a number of A graders, and the C graders were kinda dumped by the education system. Let’s just be honest, you put the students with poor grades together and talk about meritocracy.

And you expect them to say, “Hey we can all do better than the graduates”.

And you expect them to be “successful without a university degree”.

I don’t mean it is impossible or in any bad way, but just look at facts. Proper advice should have been given instead of saying such insensitive comments! How can these non graduates be successful? Isn’t the government encouraging entrepreneurship? Aren’t there so many grants that the government is offering? Why not put the government in a good light by mentioning how the society can improve together? All these successful billionaires provided free lessons for us. For C graders to be successful, go into entrepreneurship! You certainly do not have to have a degree to start a business.

My takes on a degree and success

Like I said, I am a lazy person. I want to do what I want to do. Being an employee in a structured company is not an option for me. Well basically I never wanted to work, but that’s impossible because income doesn’t drop from the sky. So what can I do to stay free while still surviving healthily to enjoy the moments in life? I must have passive income, and how do I achieve that? That is a question we have to answer ourselves. Businesses, property, investments etc. The list is never ending, so why settle for something that can never compare to having total freedom? All the concerns regarding starting up a business are just excuses. To me, there is no “whether can I do it”, there is only “whether I want to do it”. I don’t know about others, but I only live once, and I’m gonna live it big.

So why did I study in business school? What a waste of time. I won’t even use my degree to find a job right? Frankly, I didn’t know the answer. I just studied because I was in my bubble. But I came to learn that some of the things we learnt in class are very useful. Although not very hands-on, the knowledge served as a foundation to being all-rounded. I don’t mug, I don’t compete for grades. I’m happy with just a B grade as long as I knew what I learnt and I knew that I could apply in real situations. I came to university to learn, not to obtain that degree. A university degree is not important to me, at all. Well, at least the degree will be a nice display in my room in the coming years.

-Chun Kiat