Chin Siong Seah
Change. Awareness. Wholeness.
Chin Siong is dedicated to unlearning conventional “wisdom” and now seeks answers to how fragmented organisations and communities can be whole again through systems thinking and leadership to tackle big global challenges.
Chin Siong thinks and writes about complexity and the challenges this increasingly presents to organisations and people everywhere.
Career Highlights
Chin Siong is the former President & CEO: Singapore Institute of Management and a past CEO of Singapore Pools Pte Ltd and the founding CEO of IDA International, a government subsidiary, Prior to that, Chin Siong served as Country Managing Director and Public Service Operating Unit Managing Director for Asia-Pacific in Accenture.
Independent Board Chair, Chubb Insurance, Singapore
Corporate governance for one of the world’s leading insurance companies.
Chairman, National Volunteer & Philanthropy Centre
A major charitable organisation with the purpose of making Singapore into a City of Good.
Chairman of iShine Cloud Limited
A charity delivering solutions to other charities via a secure cloud-based IT platform.
When Chin Siong discovered the value of ‘leading from the whole’ to face our colossal global challenges.
I grew up in humble beginnings during the early years of Singapore’s independence. My family did not have much means. I was a young teen in the 70s. The only luxury we had was my aunt’s black and white television set which we get to watch western cartoons and programmes. Yet, for some reason, I had big dreams. I dreamt of flying to different cities in big commercial jets as a successful person even when I had never been in one before.
I flew my first and long-distance flight in the late 80s when I began my career with Arthur Andersen. By 2000, I had become a partner of Andersen Consulting. I was frequently flying in and out of several major cities in the world then. Such is the power of dreams.
Yet, well into my 40s, I realised something was not quite right. Success has its price. In the pursuit of bottom line for a listed MNC, many of my colleagues suffered burnout and other related problems. Big and complex projects that we undertake with clients began to take their toll on our people. This caused a transition phase for me, moving from the relentless pursuit of business results to contemplating the reasons for doing so, and at what personal cost. Perhaps the most basic question I asked during this time was: Why?
Years later, I came to realise that we have compartmentalised our lives in much the same way society has compartmentalised itself, into different groups. That we sometimes have conflicting desires and objectives in ourselves in much the same way societies have conflicting objectives amongst different groups. The same happens in, and especially with organisations. I discovered that the absence of wholeness is fragmentation. In Latin, the word “fragmentum” means “a piece broken off”. It is a separation from wholeness and oneness. I believe this is the root cause of our problems, from the smallest personal matters to global challenges that we face today.
As such, I have spent the last several years unlearning conventional “wisdom” and seeking answers to how organisations and communities tend to fragment and how to make them whole again. This led me to systems thinking and leadership. It is a discipline which is desperately needed today as we face colossal global challenges. It is about the primacy and leading from the whole. I dedicate much of my time now to this because unless we act as and from the whole again, we will always experience the pain of separation and fragmentation.
