True to its core
http://digiday.com/agencies/inside-agency-mid-level-talent-crunch-not-just-money-issue/

People don’t leave jobs; they leave managers.

Just a reminder

http://www.businessinsider.com/9-things-managers-do-that-make-good-employees-quit-2016-3?IR=T&r=US&IR=T

Not all the counts, can be counted

From WPP annual report

Year 2000

“Quantification brings credibility. But figures and tables can deceive,
and numbers construct their own realities. What can be measured
and manipulated statistically is then not only seen as real; it comes
to be seen as the only or the whole reality.” And Chambers summed
it all up like this:

“Economists have come to feel
What can’t be measured isn’t real.
The truth is always an amount –
Count numbers; only numbers count.”

Coming to feel that only numbers count is seductive. Numbers seem
so safe and scientific. Numbers protect us from making subjective
judgments that may be open to challenge. Numbers are like security
blankets. But in our heart of hearts, we already know that not
everything that matters can be quantified: so we look for ways to
measure the immeasurable."

---
Year 1999

“It is, of course, an intensely personal business and an intensely creative business. Our many clients come to us for the brains and inventiveness of our people. Across all the disciplines, around the world, project by project, each assignment is individually undertaken and each solution painstakingly made-to-measure. And when all the hundreds of thousands of such assignments are totalled up, and expressed as they must be in monetary terms, they deliver the numbers reported here. But numbers alone, however good in themselves, only poorly express the creativity, the applied discipline and the infinite diversity that make up your company. So we would ask you now, as share owners, to look behind those numbers; to remember their origin; to recognise the 39,000 people who work for WPP companies and associates around the world; and to join us in respect and admiration for their talent and gratitude for their dedication. We hope they enjoyed themselves. It was an excellent year: and not just in the ways that can be measured.”

Are we doing enough for the environment?

Recently I learned an insight about Singaporeans. We are sympathetic to situations, but apathetic in action. Unsurprisingly, I’m guilty of it as well.

A case in point is on environmental conservation, the practice of protecting the natural environment on individual, organisational or governmental levels, for the benefit of both nature and humans.

Ask any Singaporean and more often than not, they are aware of issues like climate change, global warming and rising sea levels. In fact, a common complaint is how Singapore is getting hotter and hotter! Ask what they are doing about it, and you will likely get awkward pauses or tepid replies on how they reuse plastic bags or recycle some paper.

Why are Singaporeans so predictably irrational? It could well be attributed to a “Diffusion of Responsibility”, a socio-psychological phenomenon where a person is less likely to take responsibility for action or inaction, where the individual assumes that others are responsible. This situation typically happens to large groups of people where responsibility is not explicitly assigned.

Now it starts to make more sense. It is easy to assume that environmental conservation is the job of environmentalists, the government or the duties of other countries contributing most to degradation.

Recycling rates in Taiwan are among the highest in the world, but the journey to earn this accolade is not without effort. Taiwan’s recycling culture was born out of necessity. During the industrial boom in 1980s-1990s where production skyrocketed, the land scare island was filled with mountains of household waste that rotted in the streets. In 1998, the Taiwan government created a fund to encourage reduction and recycling of waste, with about 6 billion dollars subsidies yearly. Now the past is history, with recycling companies generating billions in revenue from trash and Taiwan residents having one of the best recycling culture ingrained in their society.

Do we have to wait till we experience a critical waste situation before taking action? Given Singapore’s efficiency in maintaining what appears to be a clean and green environment, will we ever take action?

Even among those who engage in light recycling activities, the common sentiment is whether the effort of one is significant at all. Indeed, it is true. Environmental conservation is not the job of one but the duty of all.

To the individual, search yourself if you have done enough or even any at all to aid environmental conservation. It is never too late to start and do not relegate it as a task for tomorrow but take action today.

To the government, after discontinuing the door-to-door green bag collection in favour of the recycling bins at void decks, did you not notice a drastic drop in recyclables collected? Have enough been done to educate and encourage Singaporeans to embrace environmental conservation?

Personally, I should not have been oblivious about the discontinuation of green bags collection when I decided to pick up recycling again nor have the need to search about what type of plastics can go into the recycling bin if enough education and awareness was done.

Taiwan has established an impressive recycling culture, made possible through public policy and behavioural change. As we move into the new year, let environmental conservation be one of your new year’s resolutions and make reducing, reusing and recycling a habit and a Singapore culture as well.

Sources:
http://www.nytimes.com/2013/11/30/business/international/short-on-space-taiwan-embraces-a-boom-in-recycling.html?_r=0
http://www.laurencaldwell.com/recycling-culture-in-taiwan-public-policy-and-behavioral-change/

There is no such thing as a ‘self-made’ man. We are made up of thousands of others. Everyone who has ever done a kind deed for us, or spoken one word of encouragement to us, has entered into the make-up of our character and of our thoughts, as well as our success.

George Matthew Adams

http://digitalsynopsis.com/inspiration/privileged-kids-on-a-plate-pencilsword-toby-morris/

"The days are long but the years are short". Do things that matter.

Sometimes I feel too much, for too little.

Redamancy.

A love returned in full; an act of loving the one who loves you.

“They are quiet, happy at being together, happy at being seen together.”

Jean-Paul Sartre. “Nausea.” 

It's like I knew you.

  

I knew you through a past. 

Through another person.

Through another experience.

Through the joys and the pains. 

Through how it started and how it ended.

Through a charm that renders me helpless.

Through an abyss I'm hopelessly drawn.

Through an ambiguity that keeps me perplexed.

Through an exasperation I cannot get enough.  

Yet through an unfounded certainty that this is right. More right than before. As right as it can get.

You are different. Ever more unique. Even more alluring. The missing piece of the puzzle. 

The piece that I'll never be sure if I can find. The piece that may not even want to be found.

The piece that I fear seeking out.  Not because I don't want to.  But because I don't dare to. The piece that is too precious to lose. Too much to lose. 

Everytime I leave you, I miss you a little more.

For Joseph Kossuth, artistic expression was in the idea rather than the form. Maybe that's why the idea of a person is the most beautiful, untainted by the form that dissonats from the idealistic realms of your mind.

Initiative is something not very hard, but is something sorely lacking in humanity.

Please do not be poisoned by speeches of how injustice is preferred over disorder.

Is it possible to miss something you never had? Grammatically it's not, but theoretically it is. 

It's like I used to see you everywhere, at ever corner and every turn.  And without realising, it stopped.  Now I can't remember where and why, and how it seemed to matter so much but not anymore. 

Perhaps it's time or perhaps it's our memories - protecting ourselves from ourselves. 

Reality is sometimes up so close you hardly see it. 

Today I realised that it is quite possible to teach a person anything except common sense.

Common sense is not common.

“All my life, I have been in love with the sky. Even when everything was falling apart around me, the sky was always there for me.”

Yoko Ono

“Lonely people have enthusiasms which cannot always be explained. When something strikes them as funny, the intensity and length of their laughter mirrors the depth of their loneliness, and they are capable of laughing like hyenas. When something touches their emotions, it runs through them like Paul Revere, awakening feelings that gather into great armies.”

Mark Helprin, Winter’s Tale

"The past is something he could see but could not touch."

And if you're still bleeding, you're the lucky ones.

'Cause most of our feelings, they are dead and they are gone.

The minute you settle for less than you deserve, you get even less than you settled for.

Promises unmade are never broken. -Murakami.

“I think she was afraid to love sometimes. I think it scared her. She was the type to like things that were concrete, like the ocean. Something you could point to and know what it was. I think that’s why she also struggled with love. She couldn’t touch it. She couldn’t hold on to it and make sure it never changed.”

Carrie Ryan