Building People

Here is a ‘must read’ for any manager.

Building People & Building People 2 by Liew Mun Leong.

The books carry the subtitle ‘Sunday Emails from the CEO’. Any Singaporean would know that Mr Liew Mun Leong was the CEO (now retired) of CaptitaLand and the subtitle will tell you what he did on Sundays.

This is why I like the books:

Easy reading as each chapter (email) is just a few pages.

Very practical management knowledge, most of which you can apply to your own work environment instantly.

There are a few emails which are in a firm ‘telling mode’. These are the emails about values and being incorruptible. Most emails are in a softer mode encouraging the reader to do his / her own thinking.

This leads me to the point what you can learn from his management style. There are many, though, for me the most outstanding are:

1. There are a few things that cannot be discussed, e.g.  zero tolerance to corruption. The boss says so! For many other things everybody is empowered and requested to make their contributions to the business success.

2. Transparency – What a wonderful situation for the staff to receive information from their CEO on what is happening in the company, including explanations and reason etc.

3. Non blaming culture – Not being awarded the mega project of building an integrated resort in Singapore, after bidding twice, was certainly one of the biggest setbacks for CapitaLand. The emails referring to this subject indicate a ‘cool’ analysis of what went wrong, reflect mutual responsibility, not blaming individual parties.

4. Staff development – As a CEO, he certainly spent a lot of time and effort to develop staff by conducting regular feedback sessions, workshops etc.

Just copy these four points and you will have taken the next leap towards being a successful manager. And, not to forget, read the books. There is a lot of wisdom.