This PhD Thinks with Jovina Ang

“In search of meaning” is the topic of the final episode of this inaugural season of “This PhD Thinks”.

My guest, Albert Johnson-Mussad shares his views on how we can live a meaningful life.

According to Albert, there are five ways where we can find meaning:
- Relationships and connections and the experience of love
- Work can represent a cause or a purpose
- Vocation when there is a commitment to a greater good
- Spiritual connection that is bigger than us
- Enjoyment – relaxation, recreation, renewal, discovery, time to be and notice
- Tradition and rituals

The journey towards self-actualisation starts by setting intention.

Albert tells us that being curious is one of his intentions. He also makes it a point to ask questions like:
- What do I want?
- Who do I want to be?
- How can I contribute?
- How can I connect to tradition?
- How can I make this situation go better?

He is also open to an eclectic mix of traditions and pathways.

He notices facts versus stories. Facts can mean different things to different people. And stories can help us to have a more productive experience.

Meaning in a life can be measured as satisfaction and gratitude.

When we are anxious, the two questions that we can use to help us reduce anxiety are:
- What matters?
- What is the next step or the next right thing?

Meaning is also about perspective or the view that affords the rewarding outcome.

Meaning can be achieved in small moments, as well as big moments.

My guest, John Yan shares his views about entrepreneurship.

To succeed as an entrepreneur, you essentially need 2 P’s, which are Passion and Persistence.

You need to first find out what you are passionate about and stick with it for a long time. Additionally, you need to be agile, fail fast and pivot quickly to meet user needs.

The tipping point happens when you reach the product-market fit when the product is in its growth stage. Most start-ups reach this stage in about 7 years.

John’s advice for creating luck or opportunities is to be conversant of what you need to know, do and learn.

Another advice from John is – if you have a desire to be an entrepreneur, start early.

My guest, Maleena Suppiah shares that well-being should be approached holistically where the mind, heart and soul are at peace with each other and are thriving.

One way by which we can look at well-being is by using the Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs – to ensure that our needs including our physiological needs, our emotional needs etc. are taken care of.

Of the many aspects of well being, the most important aspect of well being is social well being.

Maleena advises us to be deliberate and preserve time for our well being. Even the pockets of time that we create in our days can make a difference in preserving our well being.

Furthermore, Maleena talks about the importance of knowing and respecting who we really are, and having deep self knowledge.

My guest, Steve Wyatt, who is an authority of leading in the 4th Industrial Revolution, shares his insights on how to lead in this highly unpredictable time.

The management practices that have served us well in the past, e.g., forecasting, ‘peck and chase’ strategy and processes don’t work well at a time when things are constantly changing.

Which is why we need 3 important skills for us to work at speed in today’s world of change. The 3 skills are:

(i) Sense and making sense of what is happening around us

(ii) Seizing the opportunity by coming up with a solution

(iii) And implementing the solution quickly not just at the home base but right across the world

In my conversation with Steve, he stresses the importance of optionality. He also talks about knowing when to stop doing things as the tendency for many of us today is adding too much stuff onto the ‘To Do’ list.

A good analogy of how all of us move forward is to use the analogy of crossing a river by stepping on stones. While we might not know all the steps to get ahead, we can’t stop moving as stopping would result in us being washed away by the currents of the river.

In this episode, Paul Lim shares his thoughts about adulting, which essentially means how to be an adult.

The two reasons why youth are resisting growing up could be due to (i) pervasiveness of information on the internet, and (ii) fear of being cancelled.

Paul gives the following advice on how we can help the youth:

(i) Don’t cancel them or invalidate their perspectives

(ii) Be empathetic, listen have a heart of humility to learn what the youth are going through

(iii) Give them small wins to help them move along the adulting process

As for the youth, please don't assume what you are going through is unique. And do reach out to someone older for advice.

In this episode, Jim Woodell shows us how the Venn Method can help us create value for our organisations and ourselves.

Jim originally used the Venn Method to help universities drive economic development by looking at the intersection of talent, innovation and place.

At work, we can use the Venn Method to find what we have in common with the other party to ascertain the shared vision, shared goals, commonalities etc. for enhancing collaboration.

The Venn also enables us to understand each other unique strengths.

In so doing, we can push ourselves forward to see what is possible for our organisation.

Another benefit of the Venn is to use it to describe our unique proposition – our unique strengths but also the intersection of what we bring to the table.

In this episode, Jochen Reb shares the many benefits of mindfulness.

The practice of mindfulness can help us to look inside and help us to cope with the challenges of life.

Mindfulness is much more than for stress reduction.

There are many benefits of mindfulness including calmness, clarity of mind and better decision making – which is a key reason why many CEOs are turning to mindfulness.

Mindfulness can also help us to be more socially connected and understand of what is going around us.

There are two key takeaways that Jochen would like to leave with us:

1)  Mindfulness is something we do every day in regulating our attention

2)  Mindfulness is something that we should try to experience for ourselves

In this episode, Hsien-Hsien Lei shows that everything we do in business is connected to science and policy.

Science helps us to think and act in a rational manner. Policy, which is driven by scientific data and evidence, provides the guidelines for how we govern our business.

Science training can also help us to better assess and manage risks.

As a trained epidemiologist, Hsien advises us not to be complacent about COVID-19 as it is still an infectious disease that is still amongst us. Hence, mask wearing is highly recommended.

Hsien also shares her views about happiness – happiness is something that comes from within and it can come from trying new experiences.

In this episode, Charleston Sin shares his views on how we can be more innovative.

Innovation must involve both the mind and the hand. In other words, thinking and action.

It is also imperative that we develop computational thinking – which is a thinking process that breaks a problem into small steps before solving it in a systematic way.

Charleston informs us about the “App Inventor”, which is an easy application for anyone to develop apps for Android and IOS.

Additionally, he tells us about the MIT innovation process -- which is a detailed 24-step framework. That said, the 2 steps that are critical for any innovation are:  (i) Defining the persona for the innovation, and (ii) Conducting primary market research.

Given that most of us would probably have a 60-year career, it is important that we learn how to learn.

As most of us have a finite capacity to learn, one important step for us to learn how to learn is to empty ourselves for the new things that we want to learn.

In this episode, Anne Gregory shares why communication is so fundamental for organisations. She also provides insights about reputation management.

Communication is constitutive of organisation. 

In other words, unless there is communication e.g., from a CEO/managers to the employees, employees to get their ideas across etc, the organisation will not exist.

One way leaders can communicate better is to step into the other person’s shoes and understand his or her perspective.

Reputation is a consequence of doing good things.

This quote by Abraham Lincoln sums it aptly for us: “Character is like a tree and reputation like a shadow. The shadow is what we think of it; the tree is the real thing.”

Anne says that "if we do what makes our heart sings" -- do things well and with integrity -- our reputation will follow.

My guest, Markus Karner, who is an expert in biology, shares with us the many lessons we can take from biology for business application.

One important lesson from biology is the concept of complementary partners. A symbiotic ecosystem that comprises of many complementary partners can create enormous value.

Biology also provides a different viewpoint about growth. Unlike construction, a thing that grows has already within it its final form. 

Whereas in construction, the final form is not known until the construction is finished.

Another lesson from biology is the concept of recombination as way to drive innovation.

In this episode, Luke Ng shows us the similarities between playing video games and motivation.

One theory that helps us understand how we are motivated is -- Deci and Ryan's Self Determination Theory. 

This theory states that all of us are motivated by 3 needs. The 3 needs are:

-  Autonomy

-  Competence

-  Relatedness

If we understand how an individual is motivated by the different needs, we would be able to motivate him or her better.

My guest, Jaclyn Lee shares her insights about culture, which is defined as the taken for granted values, assumptions, expectations that characterise the members of an organisation.

The right culture can make a lot of difference to productivity, performance and employee retention.

Culture change takes time and it is not something that we can just unfreeze, change and freeze. Purposeful actions have to be taken to drive the organisation towards the desired culture. And culture change cannot be forced onto the members of the organisation.

In this time of constant change, culture agility is an important aspect of culture that we cannot ignore. One way to achieve culture agility is through fluid organisational structure by which teams can be assembled easily to work on projects etc.

In this episode, Prakash Bagri shares his views about digital transformation.

Digital transformation is more of a process – it’s like transforming from a larva to a butterfly.

Some tips for succeeding in digital transformation:

1)  Understand what problem you want to solve

2)  Map out the processes to solve the problem

3)  Don’t try to boil the ocean altogether. Digital transformation is not binary and it does not all happen in one sweep

Additionally, if we are open to the different possibilities of digital transformation, it can bring us lots of opportunities to innovate and do things differently.

Sense making of a bigger world is an important skill in today’s world that is complex and constantly changing.

There are many ways by which we can learn to do expansive sense making.

My guest, Douglas O’Loughlin offers several ways for how we can think better. They include:

1) If we find ourselves telling a version of a story, we could think about whether there might be other possible versions of that story.

2) If we want to find out what people are thinking about a certain topic, we could get them to complete a sentence about that topic.

3) Another way to think bigger is the subject-object interview. This method entails interviewing the subject about the topic and then analysing why they are thinking that way.

4) Adopt polarity thinking. A simple way is to do polarity thinking is to use the word ‘and’ to expand our thinking.

5) And finally, if we hold our opinions more lightly about us and other people, we can also expand our thinking.

My guest for this episode, Havovi Joshi, shares how all of us can write better.

Writing is an experiential skill – the more we write, the better we become in writing.

Her tips for writing well are:

1)  Start by having an outline

2)  Then focus on writing to get the first draft out

3)  Go back and edit furiously

Negotiation is something we do every day whether for work or life.

My guest for this episode, Horacio Falcao shows us how to negotiate better.

Contrary to popular belief, negotiation is more about learning rather than persuasion. 

Negotiation is also often thought of as a power play (win-lose) and non-power play (win-win), in other words, negotiation is about achieving an outcome. 

However, if we take the time to learn what is important for the other party and understand what the possibilities are, we will be in a better position to achieve a better outcome.

There are 3 'substances' of negotiation:

1) Substance -- the terms, money or whatever we want to achieve

2) Relationship -- particularly, how we build trust with the other party 

3) Communication -- using questioning and using the right words to influence the other party's response to the negotiation

In this episode of "This PhD Thinks", Les Buckley shares the benefits of games for learning, developing strategy and future-proofing our careers.

The involving aspect of games helps us to be invested in the outcomes whether this is to learn or to develop a strategy.

Furthermore, playing the “anti-company” and the “pre-mortem” games can free our thoughts and help us to generate ideas for dealing with disruptions that are affecting our organisations, as well as our careers.

In this episode of "This PhD Thinks", Yong Hsin Ning shows us how to learn better.

In today’s changing environment, we no longer can use “an old map” to navigate a new world.

Hence, it is important to be intellectually curious and not be bound by today’s mindset.

And like play, we need to allow a bit of free play in how we learn.

In this inaugural episode of "This PhD Thinks", Eric Sandosham gives a unique take on data. 

Data is more than maths or numbers. 

In fact, data is a representation of symbols of information. 

There are precise and imprecise aspects of data. Think about describing an apple - in maths, an apple is an apple. But in English, you could describe it as "red" or "green" and this imprecise way of representing data provides a way of information creation. 

One way how we can adopt a "data mindset" is to learn how to interpret the precise and imprecise aspects of data. Additionally, learning how to catalogue, as well as see the linkages between the different sets of data, in other words, learning how to apply knowledge graphs is an important skill in today's work. 

This is the launch episode for "This PhD Thinks", with me, Jovina Ang