Welcome to the Winning With Honour blogsite!
The periodic blogs will seek to share ideas on Honour as an extension of what is to be found in the book “Winning With Honour in Relationships, Family, Organisations, Leadership and Life”.
A book is like a snapshot of thoughts and ideas at a moment. These blogs are to keep Honour as an ongoing winning practice in life.
Winning With Honour is co-written by the same authors that wrote the book “The Leader, The Teacher & You”, which won the Singapore Best Literature Prize for Non-Fiction in 2014.
In this introductory blog, we describe why Winning With Honour came to be written. It is, in a special way, a tribute to the work of Mr Lee Kuan Yew and the other founding fathers of Singapore.
Singapore celebrated 50 years of independence in 2015. For many countries around the world, 50 years is not such a big deal. But it is a big deal for little Singapore, which has been described as a “little red dot” on the world map.
The government of Singapore in 1959 had not believed that Singapore could survive as an independent sovereign state on its own. Singapore was still a British colony, and with no natural resources to call its own, Singapore needed a contiguous economic hinterland; merger with Malaya to its north seemed the obvious solution. This happened in 1963 with the formation of Malaysia made up of the Federation of Malaya with Sabah, Sarawak, and Singapore.
But the marriage did not last long for Singapore. Independence came suddenly and unexpectedly on 9 August 1965. Singapore had to find its own way to survival, security, and success despite thinking it impossible in 1959.
There was nothing in Singapore, apart from its people hungry for work and life. Even the earth was not fertile. The solution, under the leadership of Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, was to build a brand of Honour centred on integrity, trustworthiness, dependability, determination, tenacity, hard work, and adaptability.
It was a brand about being a people and a government who delivered on promises we made, and who left no doubt that we would honour our word whenever we gave our word, no matter what. Success followed the temerity and the imagination.
According to Brand Finance, the world’s leading independent brand valuation and strategy consultancy, headquartered in London, Singapore was the world’s strongest nation brand in 2015. As the CEO of Brand Finance said in his foreword: “In a global marketplace, a nation brand is one of the most important assets of any state, encouraging inward investment, adding value to exports and attracting tourists.”
In the Executive Summary of Brand Strength (as distinct from Brand Value) came the statement:
“Singapore is the world’s strongest nation brand in 2015. Nation Brand value is reliant upon GDP, i.e. revenues associated with the brand. Singapore’s small size means it will never be able to challenge for the top spot in brand value terms, because its brand simply cannot be applied extensively enough to generate the same economic uplift as ‘brand USA’ for example. However in terms of its underlying nation brand strength, Singapore comes out on top.
“As the city-state celebrates its 50th anniversary its citizens can be rightly proud of the nation they have created. … The chief architect was of course Lee Kuan Yew. The vision, pragmatism, longevity, intolerance of corruption and relative benevolence of the country’s first prime minister and elder statesman are widely seen as the key reasons for its success.
“Unfortunately for nations looking to replicate Singapore’s success, finding the next Lee Kuan Yew is no easy task and may be a foolhardy one. Long-term leaders are often correctly regarded as more concerned about their own power than the interests of the nation, with Lee Kuan Yew being the exception that proves the rule. … Singapore’s international reputation has spread by word of mouth as much as it has by active promotion.
“Though the passing of Lee Kuan Yew in March this year (2015) is a sad loss, he leaves a legacy that few can hope to better. Singapore is now seen as modern, innovative, industrious, welcoming to outsiders and increasingly culturally rich, and has left its neighbours (including Malaysia) far behind it.”
However, celebrating 50 years of independence will not make the future for Singapore unless the virtue of honouring our word is understood and sustained by succeeding generations. The genesis of the book Winning With Honour was a sense, almost of compulsion, to share our convictions on the utter criticality of Honour to make Singapore’s future.
As we studied the literature and developed our arguments, it struck us that Honour was not just about explaining Singapore’s journey from Third World Economy to First World Economy in a generation, but was an essential virtue that undergirds purposefulness in life, happiness in family, stability in society, advantage in business, success in leadership, and security in the nation.
Thus it came about that this book became one about life and living, and not just about the survival and success of Singapore.
The book is written from the perspective of Singapore and Singaporeans, but it draws wisdom from history, geography, culture, religion, the wisdom of the ancients, as well as writings and examples from all over the world. We believe there is a universality in the message of Honour that can prove valuable to all who would care to reflect on how to sustain success in one’s life, family, community, organisation and/or nation.
Most of us live full lives—but do we live fulfilled lives?
Many people spend their whole lives running and striving to get “there”, but once they get “there”, they find that “there” is really not where they wanted to get to. To their dismay, they find that they were either busy running the “rat race” in a wheel—furiously running but getting nowhere no matter how hard they tried—or climbing the “ladder”, only to realize that the ladder was leaning against the wrong wall!
The purpose of this book is to invite you to think about what “winning in life” actually means. What is success? How do you define success? What makes for a satisfied life?
The book seeks to raise consciousness about the virtue of Honour in our lives, and posits that a good way and the best way to win in life and work is to practise and promote Honour, particularly in the two dimensions of:
- Honouring Our Word
- Honouring Each Other
The book draws wisdom from the ancients and religion, as well as from recent research and contemporary commentators. We do not claim to have all the answers, but we share what we ourselves have learnt so that you can come to your own conclusions and convictions of what makes a successful and worthwhile life.
We hope that you will find enormous benefit from the book, whether it be to enhance your capacity to lead your lives, your families, your communities, your businesses and organisations and your nation, or simply to question what you are doing with your time and your energy to achieve good for yourselves and for those around you.
Live Life. Live Well. Live Good.
WIN WITH HONOUR.