Because our Y-chromosome-carrying CEOs aren’t as ‘desirable’

I love TODAY – I leave home with a copy tucked under my arms, and proceed to devour it, regardless of whether I get a seat or stand the entire 45 minutes of my daily bus journey to work. When I do get a seat, I’m always struggling between reading the articles carefully and scanning them so I get to catch up on my sleep.

Which is why, it’s always nice to turn a page and catch sight of some eye candy – simple things like these go a long way towards perking up an otherwise-mundane morning. My daily dose of poison came in between pages 38 through 45 in today’s Today.

Extracted from TODAY Online

On the left, we have pretty Ponz Goo – she may be 35, but she certainly doesn’t look a day past 25 (at least in photos)! On the right, we have sassy Yenn Wong, who at 27 looks…well, 27 (okay I ran out of my wits here).

In addition to looking just fine, Ponz and Yenn are both CEOs of their respective businesses – Ponz founded and owns the Haach Spa and Wellness Chain, while Yenn runs JIA (a boutique hotel in HK) on top of her HK online gaming and Bangkok-based interior construction and furniture businesses. I couldn’t find any official statistics, but my hunch is that S’pore’s female CEOs are a minority amidst our male-dominated club of SME CEOs.

Which only serves to put the majority of S’pore’s male CEOs to greater shame! I cannot even begin to fathom showcasing our lot of generally undesirable male SME CEOs in a similar spread in the newspapers. For this year’s Budget, we heard how the Singapore Government wants to attract and nurture our pool of world-class SMEs. I think we’re quite some ways from achieving that, especially when our SME CEOs are short on the areas that really matter – competencies, ambition and mindset.

When you’re an SME, there’s a need for the CEO to serve multiple roles. Yet a lot of them can’t really master basic stuff like business planning, human resource planning, marketing, or financial analysis planning, much less complex topics like Level 5 leadership, creative incentives and employee compensation, and other complex Organisational Behaviour issues.

Certainly, you can hire people or outsource a large chunk of these, but where then is your value-add as the CEO, beyond the money and/or the idea? On top of that, some of our CEOs also lack that ambition or drive to bring their businesses to the next level. I hear stories of conservative CEOs who are keen on maintaining a particular lifestyle, and prefer not to take even the most calculated of risks with their businesses. A chunk of these folks refuse to look beyond the shores of Singapore, and instead are contented to live off the fat of government tenders.

Little wonder then for new chairman of Spring Singapore, Mr. Philip Yeo’s comments.

We cannot do the same SMEs as we have today, which are manufacturing, services and retail. We need to train the new generation of SMEs…it will be a different Spring.

Today, “New Spring chief to groom future CEOs”, 29 Mar ‘07

My guess is that he’s given up on changing the ambitions and mindsets of the existing lot of underperforming SME CEOs, and will instead focus his energies on grooming an elite cadre of well-rounded scientists-cross-trained-as-businessmen scholars. I know I know; elite, cadre and scholars go hand in hand, but my English teacher once said repetition can be a form of emphasis!

If there’s ever a miracle worker in Singapore, it’s got to be Mr. Philip Yeo. The man with the golden touch has given us the National Computerisation Programme, a robust MNC landscape, Jurong Island, Biopolis, Fusionopolis and a bustling Life Sciences industry. Will he once again leave behind a wondrous legacy?

Or will our ailing SMEs be a harder nut to crack? Only time can tell.

Until Philip’s poster-boy/girl SME CEOs return to our shores in their shiny steeds, the majority of our SME CEOs will continue to remain…well…plain ‘undesirable’.

*wink*