Singapore Cabinet ministers must work as a team
It is important for the cabinet ministers to work as a team. They should discuss the challenges facing the country and use the resources of their ministries and civil servants to deal with these challenges. 

It will be very bad if the ministers work in silos and each minister looks after his own KPIs (key performance indicators) to achieve a good score and earn a better bonus given by the prime minister. 

This silo approach will be bad for teamwork and bad for the country. It will produce wasteful and inefficient outcomes. 

There was a recent challenge arising from the decision of Heng Swee Kiat to step down as finance minister and prime minister designate. 

How does the prime minister address this challenge? If he works with his ministers as a team, he will get all of together in a cabinet meeting and ask the questions:

a) What are our key challenges arising from this event?
b) What is the strategy to address these challenges?
c) Who are the people best suited to manage these strategies?

This does not seem to be the way that the challenge was addressed. 

Instead, we now learn, from the interview given by minister Ong Ye Kung, that he received a telephone call from the prime minister and was told that he has to move to be the health minister. They spent 45 minutes to discuss what was expected to be achieved in that ministry. In other words, the minister was told by the prime minister about his KPIs.

This is a bad way to manage a team and a bad way to manage the tremendous challenges facing the country.

This is the way that I read the situation. I may be wrong and may have interpreted it wrongly.

Anyway, I am concerned for the future of Singapore and for our future generations.

Tan Kin Lian
 

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