Life is not a sprint but a marathon

I attended the A*STAR Scholarship Ceremony for the Class of 2021 and this was a momentous event for all. The beaming freshly minted scholars have 8 years of studies and 6 years of bond ahead of them, just as I once had. As part of this ceremony, I had to think of a quote to inspire scholars. I reverted to something which I have always told the younger scholars which is reflected in the title of this post. And as usual, I could not but reflect on my own journey. The scholarship has given me so many opportunities, a true passport to bigger things. But how has it really been for me?

Back in 2012, it was never so easy. Then, I came back to IMRE after my postdoc stint in Cambridge. I started out with myself as the only member in my team. I tried out wacky experiments. Most failed. Opportunities for grants were rare. I was in the lab a lot. Scavenging. I needed to puild a good publication record. I published interesting review papers with my close associates and friends. Life back then was tough but still rather enjoyable. I was really flying in terms of my creativity and pursuit of success. Teatime was what I looked forward to, talking about big things, discussing wild ideas and "plotting" to publish in the best journals.

I subsequently got a couple of grants and hired two staff who worked very closely with me on my interest in thermogels and polymers derived from biomass. The times were tough but my team and myself worked hard in the labs for the scientific breakthroughs. I was new to the game of starting my own lab and my staff took a gamble on me and joined me. Setting up my own lab has been a dream I had for a long time. As I got some results and gained some recognition, I was asked to do more. My work took on an additional responsibilities and I took on research planning, curating proposals. Some administrative work, some unhappiness from colleagues in not letting some of their proposals go through to submission. There were reasons, of course. Sometimes then proposals were not of good quality and this tended to affect the funding body's perception of our institute. Happiness started to drop but I put up with it because I saw progression. As a young chap, I wanted career progression and I thought that that was a way to do it. If at this point, I had no chance to climb the career ladder, I would also be unhappy. In a way, I was looking for a way to climb. So sometimes, be careful of what you wish for.

Opportunities came thick and fast, I was then asked to lead a program and this also meant I was brought into the management team of the institute. I got even further from research. The meetings made sense only to a certain extent. None really had anything to do with my research. Worse was to come in appraisal meetings. Everyone was excellent in each of the heads' eyes. I had to balance the needs of the different staff, and push for their case upwards at senior management level. Happiness came down even more as there started to be staff who were not very happy with me. They could not perform and usually gave excuses. Yet come the time for their renewal, they will inflate their achievements to make it seem like they have made a monumental discovery of sorts. My own team now had 12 staff. I also started taking in more students. Errors in judgment of characters also happened in my pursuit to expand my group. I hired people who should not be hired in the first place. Problems inadvertently happened. Because of my growing reputation, more people wanted to join my group or were recommended to me by others. I didn't know how to say no and took them in whether they really fit or not. Some were unsuitable and I had to let them go after a while.

Next level of progression was to be a department head. All people in the department reported to me. Nightmare. More things to solve. Their problems became my problems. I became a sponge for negativity. I managed to maintain my group but because I was told to start to give up my research, I gradually exited from a few proposals. Unwillingly. My cutting edge was blunted even further. My papers came down. My work dropped. Just look at my publication record and you will know. My citations dropped. I sacrificed my personal research interest for the role. Fortunately I did not cut off all my research. It seems that my research work grew in importance as the years go by. This department head role is a role which I took up only after much persuasion and I would say it gave me the requisite experience to be considered for my current role. So there are pros and cons.

Then came my current role as ED IMRE last year. This current role is by far the toughest assignment that I have been given. Now 400 people's problems are my problems. I built teams to help me manage but I don't know some of my heads very well and had to rely on intuition to get things going. I set out to build a strong institute, I coaxed the younger researchers to try for grants, I persuaded the good people not to leave. I received strong support from some of my closest associates but I was never going to get 100% of the institute's support. I had my share of the negatives and I had a fair share of people who loved to criticize for the sake of criticizing. Anonymous feedback seemed to be the platform from which the harshest criticisms were launched. This aside, I have to spend most of my time lobbying for support for my people's ideas and also navigating through various administrative and bureaucratic hurdles. I am always in a state of flux. Most of my days are spent trying to resolve conflicts, justify for things or quite simply sitting in meetings. All these take time and time is something I don't have ample supply of. Not only that, I don't enjoy the fact that during this pandemic, virtual meetings have become the norm. Meeting after meetings. No break in between. After the initial euphoria of being appointed to lead the institute, the feeling has subsided a whole lot. All it took is one year and your life can be completely sucked out if you get caught in it. A little like a mistiming in the initiation of the kick in a long distance race. You end up out of breath and lose the whole race. As I learn more about how the different parts of the system works, I get a little more discouraged. I want to be fast and do things well, but I realise that not everyone will share my aim of wanting things done fast. Things can be done when people are within my institute, probably because they feel that their annual appraisal depends on me or maybe they do buy into my vision. But for people outside, I really struggle to get them going. Frustrations for me aside, I could be termed as having 'poor stakeholder management skills'. No man is an island but I feel stranded. The default daily feeling I have is one of resignation and now a sense that I have hit the asymptote as far as taking the institute forward. I attribute it to the "systems syndrome" whereby I attribute the system for everything that I am facing. Like an ant caught in a spider's web, I am stuck and entangled. People can ask me for solutions when they face a problem, I used to say "Let me check." And when I check, either I drop into a rabbit hole or I find that no one bothers. These days, I really feel like saying "What to do?" and throw in a shrug. There are also sacrifices that myself and my institute has to make for the 'greater good'. I don't wish to dwell too much into that but an arm and a leg is lost and I have to find a way to make it up somehow. I do hope for a certain level of stability somehow, the institute has gone through 5 years of changes in leadership and directions. How can I even say that as the leader of the institute, I have no control? On another aspect, I do see weaknesses in the system everywhere but for the sake of preserving good relations, I have stopped trying to highlight. No one likes to be told that they are not quite up to scratch and it is also not within my jurisdiction to meddle. Besides, I think I have started to sound like a broken record. Benchmarking, of course, is a nice word but can always be gamed.

But looking towards the positives, I see changes that I have made appears to have revitalized the institute. Certainly more can be done. I also enjoy discussing ideas with my core management team, they are a dedicated bunch. I wish they will not be poached. Talents are often tapped. Everyone needs good people to help them run their organisation. I enjoy talking to my research team to exchange ideas but I never have enough time for these. I try to prioritize my time these days. Compare and contrast my current life to that in the past where I simply had to turn up in lab and dream of my next concoction of polymer. That's gone now.

But just looking at myself now, I am half the scientist that I used to be. I am no longer as sharp when it comes to writing papers. Neither am I as fast. I am definitely paid higher now but yet it seems like my happiness index has dropped by a chunk. I cannot blame anyone but my own choices. I feel totally bewildered by this. Don't we feel happier when we are paid more? I work fast paced and everyday but for what, for who and with who? I want to do my best for Singapore and Singapore science but I realize that the system will take some time to evolve. I do not see that everyone has the same vision of success. Within the ecosystem, celebration of mutual success is rare. I see turfs being carved out, ideas being casually taken and sometimes disagreements and running down of ideas because of different parts of the elephant being seen. This happens at all levels and permeates throughout our system. Never forget that of course at this level, everyone is a boss of sorts and everyone has their own thoughts and agenda.

Within my job scope, I oversee 400 people but not all are what I consider crack troops. Some are passing time, some see this just as a job. The efficiency that I can squeeze out is not going to be anywhere near 50%. And yet, there really is no quick fix. I will have to make do with what I have. It is like having a leaky pipe and being told to wait for the people to come and inspect, certify and finally mend (in sequence) rather than patching up the leak straightaway. Do the quick fix in a less than tactful manner and look out. Staff now have more channels to vent and express their frustrations and this is usually expressed toward the operational frontman, which is me. It is sometimes hard to take when all I have been doing is dedicated to improving the institute. It is also somewhat difficult to have to uplift the spirits of the institute when I am feeling bogged down myself. I tell myself that people are watching me and for the researchers in the institute, all they want is the opportunity to do their science. They are the same as me as I was starting out. This was why I thought about what can make them feel more secure.

It is perhaps hard for me to imagine how in a short span of 10 years, I have seen the concept of doing my own science turn into being part of a machinery generating output. I have seen art turn into a mechanized series of drawings. This is how I feel research has become. And with people who are weak and should go? Perhaps I am not a person who likes to kick the can down the road. I should clear the weeds now, but that will not make me a popular chap. I can easily avoid that but I have seen many years of this happening and how it is the primary reason why organizations stagnate and eventually degrade. What is the right thing for me to do? Work on this and do good for the institute but at the same time sacrificing myself? It will take many years to untangle all the knots.

I am making an extra effort to get back into my science as well but this is tough. The scientific world has moved on while I was dallying with career progression and management. Each step is painful but must be done. I don't think I have great talent for management nor am I cut out to be the sort of manager who obeys by the rules and follows processes. I can survive with all the rules and processes but it makes me half as effective as I can be. I just want to be the best at what I am and the highest level that I can bring my organization to. I like ambition and I hope that I can be surrounded by like-minded people. However, in all likelihood, if I am the oddball in a conservative group, seeking greater achievement and pushing for the next higher levels, I won't be able to survive very long in my role. I just wish that one day when I have to step away from my current job, I can at least have something to fall back on. My science, hopefully.

The work that I am doing now has a whole lot of stakeholder engagement, strategizing, operational oversight, talent development and damage control. It is not the glamourous job that romantics will paint it out to be. Money? You earn every single cent of it. There are no free lunches in this world. Don't take on my job just for the financial benefits.

It is still a worthwhile case study to see how I was plucked from relative obscurity to head my institute. Could this be a case of right person but wrong place and wrong time? Or a wrong person but at the right place and right time? How a person like me, who is more like a ping pong player where everything needs to be fast, has to think about learning perhaps golf where things are an order of magnitude slower. How about personal dreams vs for the greater good? I know some people like to preach about doing the right thing and for greater good but there are those who say this but totally have no trust in the system. It's like they like to keep looking in the rear view mirror for the on-rushing car. I always like to say to people that I got a PhD for science, not management. I am an absolute novice at what I am doing. How can I possibly do well?

Still, many interesting things and insights can be uncovered by looking at my journey. I view myself as the unlikeliest of all EDs. I am a science nerd who does not wish to pretend that I am a born manager or a politician. Why did I even agree to take it up and put up with all that I am going through? It was because I have grown too attached to the institute. I want it to do well. I feel with sufficient conviction that my ideas can work and will work. My other worry is that if the wrong person is helming the institute, then the institute will continue to slide and even more good people will choose to leave. This is where I had built my ambition to establish a world class materials institute. While mindful and always careful not to say the wrong things, I can and do say things too directly for people's comfort. I can be very tactful one moment but in another situation be totally tactless. I have no patience for inadequecies but yet mine are flashing as brightly as a LED in a dark room. Impatient and sometimes abrasive. A bumbling, rumbling and tumbling scientist who managed to get into an executive role and trying to do a good job. And maybe my story can be an example for the ones who follow after me.