On governance, culture, and failure

I was just thinking about the newly-released Sustainable Singapore Blueprint (more thoughts on that later. I am astonished that even people in the environment community are surprised at the breakdown of recycling rates by material and sector – industry recycling is thriving, household is not), and the targets in it.

After six years of covering Singapore, I realise that the Singapore Government simply does not commit to targets it cannot achieve – whereas in other cities and countries the attitude is ‘if we hit these targets ahead of or on time, they weren’t ambitious enough’.

Interestingly, the public in those countries seems to agree. I’ve even heard that attitude – ‘if we hit these targets early, they weren’t ambitious enough’ – from CEOs and CSR heads of listed (foreign) companies talking about their sustainability policy.

Sure, I get that policymakers elsewhere might not always be looking to the long term, and might not even be around to be held accountable for the policies’ success or failure when accounting time comes.

But to what extent is the Singapore public less forgiving and more likely to take agencies to task for perceived failure? Is this a reflection of how failure is perceived and reacted to in Singapore society? Is this why we’re afraid to be ambitious? Not a pretty thought.