AGILENESS: FUNCTION OF BOTH SPEED AND STABILITY

While NDP 2020 adopted an agile way of working, managing change and making quick decisions were not new to the SAF. What the pandemic did was to reinforce to SAF leaders that we must always consider exploring agile strategies so that we can respond nimbly to new challenges and opportunities.

Organisational agileness is necessary, but it must not be mistaken as merely adopting speedier processes over well-established systems and structures. Strong and stable systems are critical because they are the foundation necessary for truly agile organisations to detect change in time and then change direction quickly without falling apart. Just as a soldier charging towards the enemy needs a strong core and muscles to provide stability as he dodges obstacles rapidly, an organisation too must have the backbone and core competencies to provide a stable springboard when it has to make rapid changes in different directions.

An important component of our strong core - one of our fundamental principles - which was very helpful to the SAF's work on NDP 2020 is our reputation as a good and reliable partner. The SAF has always nurtured the relationships with our partners in our long experience of participating in military coalitions and multi-agency national events. Our partners know that we consider their interests when making decisions. This valuable reputation of being a trustworthy partner has served us well.

In the chaotic and difficult conditions leading up to NDP 2020, the value of this reputation was demonstrated especially when the NDP Show had to be significantly scaled down. We were forced to slash the number of performers from 3,000 to 87. It was no longer possible for our long-time NDP partners such as the People's Association, Singapore Soka Association and Ministry of Education to be featured in the live show. But, as the Show Committee continued to engage them, they were assured that the SAF continued to recognise them as valuable long-time and long-term partners. These organisations were brought into segments such as the Virtual Choir to showcase their contribution to the nation's birthday celebration. Singaporeans were invited to participate by sending self-recordings; the response was so overwhelming that the deadline for submission had to be extended.

The value that can be drawn from the interdependency between an organisation's fundamental principles - in this case, the value the SAF placed on nurturing relationships - and an agile approach was demonstrated even more clearly in the resounding success of the following year's NDP 2021. While the NDP 2020 Committee needed to change plans quickly after the outbreak of COVID-19, the NDP 2021 organisers worked on the basis that frequent changes were a given. With this mindset, they took the many twists and turns and ups and downs, the frequent and extensive adjustments to their plans, in their stride right up to 9 August 2021. The first big adjustment had come when National Day was only four months away, when the original concept of a large-scale performance was transformed to decentralised performances in satellite sites. Then, one month before National Day, when Singapore once again tightened its restrictions because of the Omicron variant, the NDP had to be postponed to the reserve date of 21 August 2021.

Throughout the NDP 2021 journey, the Organising Committee led by COL Tan Cheng Kwee took the lessons from the previous year and was instinctively agile. When the decision was made to decentralise the show, it quickly set up small teams to prioritise what needed to be done at each of the four satellite sites and to then nimbly execute the decisions. These empowered teams were focused and worked speedily, and they came up with ingenuous solutions.