TR EMERITUS

I’ve spent a good portion of my working life in the media, both as a creator and seller of stories on the PR end or writing them from the publication side. In those years, I’ve realized that as far as media is concerned, there’s one uncomfortable truth – personalities sell. This truth is regardless of the topic and thanks to social media, we’re becoming even more personality obsessed. There was a time when “celebrity” was restricted to the world of entertainment. These days everyone is a celebrity.

Let’s face the basic fact – it’s far easier and therefore fun to talk about personalities. The Trump era in American and by extension World politics was the prime example. Everything was focused on the personality in the White House. Say what you like about the man but he had a way of getting people to talk about him, whether it was good or bad. Everyone in the media by extension everywhere else talked about him. Political discourse inevitably went around his orange tan or whether you thought his bluster was actually based on anything. Nobody actually seemed to care to discuss the policies he was proposing.

We, as a species, are bitchy. As mentioned, I spent half my working life in and around media. So, yes, I’m guilty of gossiping and even writing about people (I’m not important enough for Ng Yat Chung to care about what I’ve written about him). Funnily enough, being a bitch isn’t limited to the media. In Singapore, professional circles are so small that personalities end up getting discussed at all sorts of “professional” gatherings. This bitchiness is so prevalent that I’d actually worry if people were not saying things about me behind my back – it would be a sign that I was totally irrelevant.

Whilst its second nature to “civilized people” to “bitch” about each other, there’s a slight problem with this. The easy topic is actually the most distracting. It’s so easy to talk about people that the people you are “bitching” about become the main thing that you think about. Then, when all you think about is the people you are bitching about, you lose interest in doing anything else in between the hum drum of ordinary life.

There has, as far as I know, never been a study on the correlation between bitchiness and the collapse of civilizations. However, there would be case for it. The Millenia of Chinese Imperial Courts filled with eunuchs, for example was probably so bitchy with everyone in court bitching about each other than nobody realized that society had stagnated or that the “White Devils” asking to trade actually had far more advanced technologies that could damage everyone else.

So, if we can’t talk about each other, what else can we talk about? Well, I did something vaguely intelligent last week and made an appointment to catch up with my former battalion Rece officer this week.

Ours was a very unusual friendship. We meet in the armskote room at 23SA. I was the Orderly Sargent (COS) on duty trying to get the arms cleared. He was the battalion Duty Officer (DO). He had gone through the US Military Academy at West Point and graduated seventh in his class. I, by contrast, should have failed my specialist course, had they been allowed to fail me. The caliber of personalities was very clear and I got a dressing down. Never raised his voice but the battery (Company equivalent in an Artillery Unit) duty officer, who had cleared the arms previously, was summoned and everyone in battery line was exceedingly sympathetic the next day.

We didn’t really keep in touch. He had his career in the army and I went onto ORD, go to university and start my freelancing journey. However, he left the army and got in touch with me. Our friendship started to develop in the post-phase of his career because, while we didn’t meet often, our meetings were and remain sessions for discussing issues that matter to us and bouncing ideas as what we can do. Our coffee session at the Tower Club was no exception:

With Mr. Christopher Lo at the Tower Club

In the years since the military, I’ve understood that it wasn’t just the rank that made him my superior. It was the level of conversation that he brought to me that made him my superior. People and personalities were never the main focus of our discussions. What makes the discussions I have with him different to the people I deal with in the course of my professional life is that personalities are never the main topic. Our main topic is ideas.

So, yes, talking about personalities can be a lot of fun. If anything, it becomes the focus on life when you work in an organization that becomes the centre of your life. Offices, be they bureaucratic or corporate are hives of discussions on personality. Hence, they are grossly unproductive.

However, once you get people away from their little holes, you get them to think of things beyond the personalities. You get them to think and talk about ideas that excite them. As my favourite data analytics entrepreneur states – Innovation doesn’t happen in big companies. The big companies have to buy small ones to get innovation. Silicon Valley works because people get together to talk about and get excited by ideas. In a bureaucracy, people get turned on by talking about other people whom they can either build up or trash according to their convenience – hence such organizations do not grow. Clearly it is best to look for the people who want to talk about ideas that excite them rather than the personalities.

Tang Li

*Although I’ve been based mainly in Singapore for nearly two decades, I’ve had the privilege of being able to meet people who have crossed borders and cultures. I’ve befriended ministers and ambassadors and worked on projects involving a former head of state. Yet, at the same time, I’ve had the privilege of befriending migrant labourers and former convicts. All of them have a story to tell. All of them add to the fabric of life. I hope to express the stories that inspire us to create life as it should be.

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