Public recognition identifies work experience that can extend value across Singapore’s business community
AT THE Singapore Corporate Awards on Sep 21, I enjoyed celebrating the winners and reconnecting with friends and fellow practitioners. It was heartening to see work that often happens quietly in boardrooms and management teams receive public recognition.
The gathering also suggested an opportunity. Behind each achievement were decisions made with incomplete information, disagreements worked through and practices refined over time.
Inviting award recipients to share that experience could help develop the next generation of corporate leaders.
An award makes good practice visible. A sustained exchange between practitioners can make it more widely understood and used for the benefit of all in the marketplace.
Experience worth passing on
Much of what a new director or executive needs to learn is difficult to capture in a manual.
A governance framework sets out responsibilities. It cannot fully explain how to challenge a confident CEO without shutting down discussion, or how to recognise when a reassuring answer warrants another question.
Such judgment is developed through practice and exposure to how others think. The useful material lies in the reasoning.
Consider an acquisition. Knowing that it succeeded tells another board relatively little. What did the directors know when they approved it? Which assumptions did they test? What evidence would have persuaded them to walk away?
Discussing these questions also guards against a common weakness in accounts of success: making an uncertain outcome appear inevitable.
Participants need to understand what could have gone wrong and where luck may have played a part. A respected leader’s willingness to acknowledge a misjudgment may teach more than a polished account of achievement.
An investor relations team could explain how it brought uncomfortable shareholder feedback into the boardroom and what management did with it. A finance leader could discuss how the team challenged assumptions behind an investment proposal.
Each example would show how a principle works when people disagree or face pressure.
The shape of these conversations can influence how we act long after the details have faded.
Increasing access to leaders
Access to these discussions, however, can depend heavily on whom we know. A capable professional in a smaller company may have fewer opportunities to test a difficult question with an experienced practitioner.
Sharing knowledge across company boundaries would widen that access.
A practical start would be a series of small discussions convened by an issuer body, such as SGListCos, working with professional associations. Willing award recipients and members of their teams could use a difficult corporate scenario as a case study to guide emerging leaders.
The Chatham House Rule could encourage candour, because it allows participants to use what they learn without revealing the identities or affiliations of speakers or other participants.
It does not override confidentiality or market disclosure obligations. Hence, public cases and hypothetical dilemmas would provide scope for discussion without requiring privileged access to company information.
Places should be deliberately offered to first-time directors and professionals from smaller companies, including those outside established networks.
Otherwise, an initiative intended to widen access could end up circulating knowledge among the people who already have it.
Experienced leaders would benefit too. A younger practitioner may question a familiar assumption; someone from a smaller business may expose the limits of a process designed for a much larger one. The discussion should help participants adapt what they learn to their own circumstances.
There is a commercial reason to do so. Listed companies compete for capital within a market whose reputation is partly shared. Poor disclosure or weak oversight at one issuer can prompt investors to question standards elsewhere.
Helping other companies strengthen their practices contributes to the confidence on which the wider market depends.
Make contribution part of leadership
For this initiative to endure, companies must make room for it. Boards and CEOs could recognise mentoring in leadership assessments and give employees time to contribute.
Involving the teams behind an award would also acknowledge that corporate achievement seldom belongs to one person. A first meeting should lead to further work. Participants could return after several months to discuss a practice they changed, the difficulties encountered and the results.
A better way of presenting risks to a board, or a clearer process for escalating investor concerns, would be useful evidence of progress.
Its credibility would rest on evidence from those who received the help. What changed in their practice? How did the guidance contribute?
Counting events or mentoring hours would tell us little about whether anyone became better equipped to lead. Recognition should follow demonstrated benefit.
The programme itself could begin modestly, with a few willing companies and a small group of participants. Their experience would show what deserves to be expanded.
Many of us can recall someone who took time to explain a difficult decision, challenge our thinking or trust us with a responsibility before we felt ready. Passing that help on should become a normal expectation of experienced leadership.
Years from now, someone who never attended this year’s ceremony may ask a better question in a boardroom because a winner took the time to help them learn. That is a return on recognition worth pursuing.
The writer is chairman of SGListCos and a senior accredited director of the Singapore Institute of Directors
