To discuss the latter first, talking about productivity now is important but unfortunately sad and awkward. Why important? Because it is definitely true that given a limited set of resource, one can only increase output by increasing productivity. Being asian as we are, and furthermore, being Singaporeans as we are, we will definitely want to squeeze every single drop out of what we contribute, akin to using a roller press to squeeze every bit of toothpaste we have in the tube. Why sad and awkward? Because it is rather surprising to talk about productivity in a developed nation (if we acknowledge ourselves to be one). Developed nations usually talk about investing in the future, innovating and staying ahead of the curve. Developed nations look into themselves, ask themselves why they are considered developed nations and aim to continue to be leading the world. Developing nations, on the other hand, would focus on productivity. Nothing wrong with this dichotomy, just the natural course of things. Developing nations gather more manufacturing and low to medium tech jobs and more importantly, they have a lot of labor to fill these jobs. It is these jobs which are more easily and significantly targeted by moves to increase productivity. Innovating is messy and inefficient. It goes through lots of failure and may generate little output for the tremendous amount of resources it consumes. A streamlined work process is, however, methodological and any process engineer can look at it and tweak it to incrementally increase the output.
It further begs the question: why are we even at a sub-optimal productivity such that we should be increasing our productivity? Some people may say it's human nature to be lazy and there we are, being our lazy selves. That is partially true but we also have to account the powerful force of rewards that come with our output. Who wouldn't want to increase productivity to maximize our rewards or compensation? This, I believe, is clear to everyone, whether in a developing or developed nation.
I offer what all these phenomenological events mean based on my personal worldview.
1) Singapore reverting back to its old efficient mindset
In short, targeting productivity is easy (relative to innovation but still difficult is its own right) and is where the buck is worth its greatest value. If one looks at a work process and decides certain changes have to be made, he, being the manager or boss, changes it immediately, tests the new process and receives the result immediately. Through many more iterations, the process can be quickly optimized. Innovation, on the other hand, is never a defined process. No one knows what is going on and it takes years to verify if something implemented to promote innovation works. For policy makers holding on to tax payers' money and striving to push on to achieve results, it must be very unsettling to choose to target innovation over productivity. The "we must be efficient, make some changes, and be able to reap some benefits from them" mentality is strong and hard to fight. Again, nothing wrong with this mindset. In fact, it's this mindset that pulls us up from a third-world to a developed nation. The million dollar question is: can we move on with this mindset from now on?
2) Great mismatch in productivity and compensation
For those who took economics before, economics 101 always talks about the fact that in a free market, people's behavior will be driven by market forces. If there is a demand for a type of good or service, there will definitely be suppliers appearing to answer to the demand, because they want to earn the profits associated. So the fundamental reason why there would be Singaporeans who choose to fluctuate at a sub-optimal productivity level is that there isn't compensation or reward to motivate them to increase their productivity. This notion of insufficient compensation is further broken down into two causes: 1) There is literally low than expected compensation 2) Singaporeans have higher expectations of compensation than what they are receiving, thus forming the perception of insufficient compensation. It takes a long discussion to distill where we are between these two (and I believe we are somewhere in between). But let's just put it bluntly as insufficient compensation for whatever reason. Many times, I read our leaders giving examples of how waiters and waitresses overseas multi-task and manage tons of work alone. At the same time, I read in many forums how the immediate response from people is that the overseas waiting staff gets to earn tips if they perform well while the local staff only sees a fixed pay. This is blunt, but it is true. The motivation offered by compensation is very great and somehow, we do not have that to propel ourselves forward.
3) Being caged in a certain mindset
Here's a feeble attempt to tie the first two points together. We have been caged by our "developing nation" mindset and it's difficult to shake it off. A wide survey of society supports this. 1) We tend not to look beyond the economics. The point above proves useful here. Some may argue that we should have overcome this childish, worldly attitude that we must be rewarded in materials for every bit of effort we put it. E.g. as our leaders put it, being a productive waiter saves work for his colleague. Now, this is a mindset of the developed world. Having moved away from the state of always having to deal with survival, we devote more time to thinking about the greater social good and when the time arises, we step up to contribute to benefit not necessarily ourselves but the larger part of society. How many of us have such a worldview? Sadly, very very few. Being in a developed nation, we are still operating as though we are fighting for survival (which many would argue we really are, but I dare say we really are not, given the true poverty is becoming rare in Singapore). (It seems unrelated but this mindset can play a part in our "generous" contribution of $50,000 to Haiti and Chile to aid their earthquake victims. Our contributions may be, unfortunately, tied to how relevant these parties are rather than how devastating the earthquake is) 2) We are still trying to walk the world being a developing nation. One minister, when interviewed by the papers, claimed that Singapore is pressurized by cheap labor from India and China. We, therefore, have to do the same job at a price competitive when compared to India and China. Wait a minute everyone, why do we want to be looking at the same job as India and China? We have to be creating jobs suiting the skill and knowledge of a developed nation and creating a niche for ourselves. This being said, we have to bite the bullet and take the path of innovation. During this innovation time, our GDP may fall and people up there may lose jobs for not producing "results". But we just have to do it.
The third point is the most tricky problem. It is hard to change people's mindset. It takes generations to do that. In a way, we "created" this problem ourselves. We advance rapidly economically and for some reason, neglected to advance our mindset as rapidly. If a term can be borrowed, I would say we have experienced "inorganic growth". To be more exaggerating, we are almost like Robin Williams in the movie "Jack", experiencing Werner Syndrome and growing up so fast that our minds cannot catch up. The inherent problem is not that we are always trying to play the catch up. It is that our mind will eventually catch up, and by then, have we already grown too old in Jack's terms or should I say if we still stay relevant in the world stage?
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