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Mr Philip Yeo must be the only senior public officer who got away with never having to write a memo. He has been in the Public Service since June 1970, when he joined the Ministry of Defence (Mindef). He was then seconded to the Economic Development Board (EDB) from January 1986. He retired from the Singapore Administrative Service in March 1999, but stayed on to help out at the EDB, and then, from February 2001, at the Agency for Science, Technology and Research till March 2007.
In his office at the Biopolis, his hands sweep across the expanse of space outside the window, where the biomedical sciences complex and the neighbouring Fusionopolis stand. 'Look at this place. There is no Cabinet paper for it, no Ministry of Finance approval paper, nothing.'
In the 37 years that he has been associated with the Public Service, Mr Yeo is proud to say he has never written a policy memo or paper, and considers doing so a waste of time. But the truth is that he gets away with not writing papers because others - including Cabinet ministers - do it for him.
Mr Yeo gets things done by talking, persuading, cajoling and bullying people into giving him resources. As he tells it, Biopolis was built when he approached Jurong Town Corporation with a proposal: you build, I rent the space from you. A similar deal was worked out for Fusionopolis. In fact, so well known is his aversion to putting thoughts on paper, that even Dr Goh Keng Swee, who was Mr Yeo's boss and Defence Minister from 1970 to 1979, would pen memos for him, he said.
In May 1989, Mr Yeo took Dr Goh, then chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to Batam to view a 500ha plot of land that Mr Yeo was thinking of turning into a lower-cost industrial park to complement Singapore's high labour-cost manufacturing operations. Dr Goh thought it was a good idea. 'So he said, 'What are you going to do?' I said, 'Going to start construction work now.' 'How can you do that?' I asked why? He said, 'You have to write an aide memo for collaboration between the Government of Singapore and the government of Indonesia for your project. I write for you.''
Dr Goh wrote the draft aide memo, Mr Yeo checked the facts, and Dr Goh handed it to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to take up with President Suharto in their August 1989 meeting in Brunei. The Batam Industrial Park was launched in February 1990. In his career, Mr Yeo actively took part in the growing of Singapore's 'second wing'.
His modus operandi is unorthodox, to say the least, in a public service renowned for its rules-bound administration and attachment to doing things according to the Instruction Manual or Standard Operating Procedures. But this is Philip Yeo. The Philip Yeo way is never-say-die, do what it takes to get things done, never mind the rules. His one rule, which his subordinates soon knew, is: ignore the rules. But there is one caveat - if you can survive the fallout from breaking rules.
He knows he was lucky to have found in Dr Goh a mentor and protector who shielded him from others' anger when he broke rules. In his world view, there are two types of people in the Public Service: the scribes and the doers. The doers get things done: they are the pyramid builders. The legacy they leave behind is nothing less than the physical structures: the pyramids.
But the scribes come along and write up the story of how it is done. Their legacy: the hieroglyphics. Depending on your point of view, you can argue that the pyramids or the etchings on them are the more valuable legacy. 'Today we pay attention to the scribes, and we don't pay enough attention to the doers. The problem with the doers is that they have the domain knowledge, but they don't write it down. You don't see scribes' plans for the pyramids built by the architects.
'But the scribes live by their rules legacy. Knock, knock, knock - all the history of the pharaoh. So you need both. It's true. You go to the government files; there are a lot of files written by my colleagues. My files, very few.' Mr Yeo and his contemporary, Mr Lim Siong Guan, who was head of the civil service from 1999 to 2005, are peers. Both are influential within the Public Service even today, but offer two very different models of what being a public officer entails. Mr Yeo chuckles. 'One formulates/administers rules, the other breaks some rules to get a job done.'
There is a story that Mr Yeo tells, of how he used army manpower to kick-start the computerisation efforts in Mindef and the National Computer Board (NCB). The new NCB did not have enough staff, so Mr Yeo brought over hundreds of 'misemployed' engineering graduates serving full-time national service and 'converted' them into 'civilian' systems engineers. 'Philip Yeo's illegals', as they were known in the service, sped up the work of NCB. But after Mr Yeo left, the national computerisation effort lost its 'cheap labour'.
So is this an indication that things get done because he is Philip Yeo, and others after him cannot carry on the work? What legacy is left, if things achieved by Philip Yeo are not sustained when Philip Yeo leaves?
In characteristic fashion, he pronounces what few in the Public Service would endorse, and which goes against the grain of the ethos of the Singapore Public Service that instils in officers a respect for the establishment and for continuity: 'Whatever I've done, I passed it on; but what happens in new hands, it is certainly not my fault.'
In his office at the Biopolis, his hands sweep across the expanse of space outside the window, where the biomedical sciences complex and the neighbouring Fusionopolis stand. 'Look at this place. There is no Cabinet paper for it, no Ministry of Finance approval paper, nothing.'
In the 37 years that he has been associated with the Public Service, Mr Yeo is proud to say he has never written a policy memo or paper, and considers doing so a waste of time. But the truth is that he gets away with not writing papers because others - including Cabinet ministers - do it for him.
Mr Yeo gets things done by talking, persuading, cajoling and bullying people into giving him resources. As he tells it, Biopolis was built when he approached Jurong Town Corporation with a proposal: you build, I rent the space from you. A similar deal was worked out for Fusionopolis. In fact, so well known is his aversion to putting thoughts on paper, that even Dr Goh Keng Swee, who was Mr Yeo's boss and Defence Minister from 1970 to 1979, would pen memos for him, he said.
In May 1989, Mr Yeo took Dr Goh, then chairman of the Monetary Authority of Singapore, to Batam to view a 500ha plot of land that Mr Yeo was thinking of turning into a lower-cost industrial park to complement Singapore's high labour-cost manufacturing operations. Dr Goh thought it was a good idea. 'So he said, 'What are you going to do?' I said, 'Going to start construction work now.' 'How can you do that?' I asked why? He said, 'You have to write an aide memo for collaboration between the Government of Singapore and the government of Indonesia for your project. I write for you.''
Dr Goh wrote the draft aide memo, Mr Yeo checked the facts, and Dr Goh handed it to then Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew to take up with President Suharto in their August 1989 meeting in Brunei. The Batam Industrial Park was launched in February 1990. In his career, Mr Yeo actively took part in the growing of Singapore's 'second wing'.
His modus operandi is unorthodox, to say the least, in a public service renowned for its rules-bound administration and attachment to doing things according to the Instruction Manual or Standard Operating Procedures. But this is Philip Yeo. The Philip Yeo way is never-say-die, do what it takes to get things done, never mind the rules. His one rule, which his subordinates soon knew, is: ignore the rules. But there is one caveat - if you can survive the fallout from breaking rules.
He knows he was lucky to have found in Dr Goh a mentor and protector who shielded him from others' anger when he broke rules. In his world view, there are two types of people in the Public Service: the scribes and the doers. The doers get things done: they are the pyramid builders. The legacy they leave behind is nothing less than the physical structures: the pyramids.
But the scribes come along and write up the story of how it is done. Their legacy: the hieroglyphics. Depending on your point of view, you can argue that the pyramids or the etchings on them are the more valuable legacy. 'Today we pay attention to the scribes, and we don't pay enough attention to the doers. The problem with the doers is that they have the domain knowledge, but they don't write it down. You don't see scribes' plans for the pyramids built by the architects.
'But the scribes live by their rules legacy. Knock, knock, knock - all the history of the pharaoh. So you need both. It's true. You go to the government files; there are a lot of files written by my colleagues. My files, very few.' Mr Yeo and his contemporary, Mr Lim Siong Guan, who was head of the civil service from 1999 to 2005, are peers. Both are influential within the Public Service even today, but offer two very different models of what being a public officer entails. Mr Yeo chuckles. 'One formulates/administers rules, the other breaks some rules to get a job done.'
There is a story that Mr Yeo tells, of how he used army manpower to kick-start the computerisation efforts in Mindef and the National Computer Board (NCB). The new NCB did not have enough staff, so Mr Yeo brought over hundreds of 'misemployed' engineering graduates serving full-time national service and 'converted' them into 'civilian' systems engineers. 'Philip Yeo's illegals', as they were known in the service, sped up the work of NCB. But after Mr Yeo left, the national computerisation effort lost its 'cheap labour'.
So is this an indication that things get done because he is Philip Yeo, and others after him cannot carry on the work? What legacy is left, if things achieved by Philip Yeo are not sustained when Philip Yeo leaves?
In characteristic fashion, he pronounces what few in the Public Service would endorse, and which goes against the grain of the ethos of the Singapore Public Service that instils in officers a respect for the establishment and for continuity: 'Whatever I've done, I passed it on; but what happens in new hands, it is certainly not my fault.'
