Heart of green: interview with NParks Chief Poon Hong Yuen

NParks chief Poon Hong Yuen's lack of specialised training is far outweighed by his love of greenery
john lui Straits Times 7 May 12;

Mr Poon Hong Yuen shows me the area around his office. The scenery is spectacular because, when you work in National Parks Board's (NParks) headquarters, the area around your office is the Botanic Gardens.

His enthusiasm - and his amazement at his good luck in his appointment - is evident during his guided tour.

'We have rubber trees that are the second generation from the ones planted by Ridley,' he says, pointing to a grove. Sir Henry Nicholas Ridley, the first scientific director of the Singapore Botanic Gardens from 1888 to 1911, helped establish the Malayan rubber industry.

We take the staff electric cart to the Herbarium, a collection of more than half a million preserved plant cuttings.

The numerous specimens are one thing, he says, but there is something else. The 43-year-old points to the spidery handwriting in notebooks, penned by naturalists, many from the years just after the arrival of Sir Stamford Raffles. These archives have the weight of history. So do the trees outside in the gardens, as do all the parks and plants planted in Singapore from the time of her independence.

Mr Poon, who looks younger than his age, is not afraid to display a boyish enthusiasm for his job and the organisation. He and his family have been enjoying parks for years, he says. He uses emotive words such as 'proud', 'amazed' and 'jaw-dropping' when talking about the effect of the island's greening on visitors.

The history of who Singaporeans are as a people is tied to the greenery - that is the point he is trying to make, and that legacy is now in his hands. As he speaks, it becomes clear that 11/2 years into his job, he feels that weight more than ever.

Singapore today is radically different from the nation it was in 1967, when the Public Works Department created the Parks and Trees Unit to handle the growing job of national tree-planting, a project started by then-Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew.

Today, parks and trees are a quality of life issue and no one is more aware of this than Mr Poon.

NParks conducts surveys every two years and the last one, in 2010, is telling. 'Ninety per cent of people say parks and greenery are important, even if they do not visit parks. And 90 per cent of people think nature should be conserved, even if they don't visit nature,' he says.

He offers more numbers from the report. 'The number of people who visit parks at least once a week has grown from 700,000 in 2008 to 1.4 million. Anecdotally, if you go to the parks every weekend, they are packed.'

Expectations have also risen, he adds. 'If you have a road that does not have roadside trees, people will complain.'

Following from Mr Lee's vision of a Garden City, the need to plant trees is now deeply embedded in the national DNA. Satellite photographs show that almost half of Singapore (47 per cent in 2007) is covered in greenery, compared to about 36 per cent in 1986.

Today, there are more than 3,000ha of land space devoted to parks, park connectors and open spaces. Included in this space are the more than 300 parks that fall under NParks'care. In addition, it manages more than 3,000ha of nature reserves such as Sungei Buloh Wetland Reserve and Bukit Timah and Central Catchment nature reserves.

Mr Poon carries on the plans set by his predecessors, such as the City In A Garden framework. 'When I came on board, I wanted to give thought to what City In A Garden means. There had always been this tagline, even since Dr Tan Wee Kiat's time. But we hadn't really fleshed it out, so I started asking the organisation questions and getting people involved,' he says. Dr Tan was NParks' first chief executive.

What emerged from Mr Poon's questions, with the help of online feedback from the public, was an ambitious set of proposals, such as the idea of Destination Parks. These are set to be regional parks that will feature recreational elements not usually found in public parks. Admiralty Park, for example, is hilly and so will have giant slides and climbing slopes, as well as biodiversity classrooms and exploratory gardens.

The other product of internal and online feedback is the Round Island Route, which will be an unbroken coastal recreational corridor around Singapore measuring 150km.

But NParks' continuing mission, he says, is to plant another kind of seed: to win the hearts of Singaporeans, so that they place an emotional stake in the nation's parks and natural habitats.

'There is no doubt we need public housing, good roads and good public transport. But greenery and nature - some people may see it as a good-to- have. I see it as my job, as will subsequent CEOs, to convince Singaporeans that greenery is a must-have,' he says.

His appointment to NParks in 2010, from the post of director at the Ministry of Finance, made him the third head of the statutory board (under the Ministry of National Development) and the second chief to not have background in the natural sciences.

NParks in its current form was created in 1996, taking under its wings the former Parks and Recreation Department, the Botanic Gardens and Singapore's nature reserves.

Its first chief, Dr Tan, had trained in botany, horticulture and orchidology, and is today the chief executive of Gardens By The Bay. He was succeeded by Mr Ng Lang, trained in chemical engineering, who was NParks' head from 2006 until August 2010, when Mr Poon took over.

Dr Shawn Lum, 49, president of the Nature Society, has spoken often with Mr Poon, formally and informally. He considers him a 'good model of a modern chief executive', one who makes sure all stakeholders have a place at the table. This inclusiveness is a necessary trait because of the nature of the organisation and the changing needs of the people it serves.

He says: 'NParks is an organisation with an extremely wide-ranging mission. It does everything from international conservation policy to maintaining playground equipment. Back in its early days, environmental consciousness was not as strong. Today, there are more visitors to parks. NParks has to serve joggers, skaters and cyclists, and people are more vocal. It's just mushroomed and become a more complex job.'

He points out that the worlds of economics and ecology are not as far apart as people think. At the higher level, it is all about systems, using statistical models that are similar across fields, from weather studies to finance.

More importantly, Mr Poon possesses a trait that too few leaders have: letting others take the limelight.

Last year, during a visit by President Tony Tan to the Treetop Walk at the MacRitchie area, Mr Poon invited experts from outside NParks, such as the Nature Society, to come along to speak with the President about the flora and fauna, even though there were experts within NParks who could have done the job, says Dr Lum.

'Mr Poon was extremely gracious,' he says, by allowing others with more specialised animal or plant knowledge to speak directly to the President, rather than acting as the intermediary. 'He has that ability to cede the moment to another person, to accord a place at the table to others outside his organisation.'

How did a career administrator such as Mr Poon become head of an organisation concerned with nature and greenery?

There was a good fit between his personal interests and the challenge of trying something new, Mr Poon says.

'I have always been a regular visitor of parks and the Botanic Gardens. So when I was asked whether I would be interested in the job, I said yes,' he says.

People around him were surprised by his choice. 'The day before my appointment was due to be announced, I told my division in the Finance Ministry, so that they would not have to learn about it in the newspapers. I said, 'You will never guess where I am going,'' he says.

One person gave the right answer. That person had chanced upon the answer by picking the least likely organisation, he says with a laugh.

Asked about differences in culture between his former workplaces and NParks, he noted that NParks is several degrees closer to the people it serves. 'NParks is as social as you can get.'

The other difference is that many NParks employees have a unique closeness to their jobs. There are caretakers who have worked in the Botanic Gardens for decades, whose fathers also worked at the park. These self-taught experts are so familiar with plants that scientists turn to them for information, Mr Poon says.

'The people in NParks love what they do. And they take great pride in being custodians of our green assets,' he says. He constantly seeks the views of staff through town hall meetings and through the board's internal website, where he has a blog.

He hopes that any stereotype of him as a bean-counting finance man, if there had been one held by NParks staff on his first arrival, would have been dispelled by now. His ex-colleagues, though, say he has never been that kind of person in the first place.

Mr Alvin Moh, a deputy director for immigration and registration at the Ministry of Home Affairs, had worked with Mr Poon on Budget 2009 measures, such as the Jobs Credit scheme. Then, Mr Moh was a deputy head and Mr Poon a director in the Finance Ministry.

There is no dogma with Mr Poon, says Mr Moh. 'He likes to get information from as many sources as possible... there is a general openness of mindset. We might have a disagreement over an idea, but we would be able to have a discussion to justify our views,' says Mr Moh.

The Jobs Credit scheme was a radical plan to stop job losses caused by the 2008 sub-prime crisis. Led by Mr Poon, the team at the Finance Ministry devised a $4.5-billion scheme to help companies pay employee costs, allowing them to hold on to more workers. The Singapore economy had suffered two straight quarters of shrinkage and a tsunami of retrenchments was feared then.

The scheme made news because government intervention like that had never been tried. Mr Poon says he has always been drawn to the sort of 'blank sheet' thinking that produced the scheme.

Mr Lee Kok Fatt, 38, principal private secretary to the President, was a fellow director at the Finance Ministry with Mr Poon, from 2007 to 2010, until Mr Poon moved to NParks. At that time, Mr Lee was director of fiscal policy.

He describes Mr Poon as someone who 'plunges into his work and does not shy away from details'.

Says Mr Lee: 'He will find the larger meaning behind the job. I think that is what drives him. He enjoys working with people and building teams and infecting them with his own passion.'

Mr Poon attended Serangoon Gardens South Primary, Maris Stella High School and Hwa Chong Junior College. His mother is a housewife and his father, who is retired, was a businessman and later a taxi driver. They are both in their late 60s.

Mr Poon has one older sister, a younger sister and a younger brother. Both sisters are teachers and his brother is an investment manager.

At junior college, Mr Poon became deeply interested in student government, so much so that he would skip lectures to help organise social events.

He reckons that during that period, he learnt how to deal with groups of people, even though he is certain there is an introverted side to him. 'I think I am a trained extrovert. I got into extra-curricular activities that made me outward-looking and able to make speeches. I learnt it as a student counsellor.'

He then went to Imperial College in London under an Economic Development Board scholarship, where he received a degree in electronic engineering. On his return in 1993, he joined the board where he stayed till 2000, before leaving to join a private venture-capital firm.

He rejoined the civil service in 2003, with the Infocomm Development Authority, before eventually rising to be director of economic programmes at the Finance Ministry.

Since 1997, he has been married to Madam Chew Poh, a housewife. They have two sons, aged 11 and six, and live in a condominium in the Newton area.

In his spare moments, he goes cycling with his family. He is also a regular jogger. The place where these activities are carried out: parks, of course. But now, his eye is a little sharper.

He jokingly calls it an occupational hazard. 'I see it from the customer's experience point of view. For example, I ask 'Is this the best place to put a bench? Is this the best place to put a bin? How can this playground be made more exciting? Is this park clean enough?''

my life so far

'A person like me has the licence to ask stupid questions and that can be very valuable. I always say, 'I may not be a plant expert, I am an average user.' The average Joe might not go deep into the forest to look for wildlife, so it may be a good idea to bring wildlife out of the forest and into where we live, work and play' - Mr Poon Hong Yuen, on the advantages of being an outsider to the world of botany

'Some people are uncomfortable with a blank sheet of paper. Some people love a blank sheet because they can do anything they want. I have always enjoyed doing things that are forward-looking, blank-sheet things' - On taking on new challenges

'I was never a model student. I was never a monitor or prefect because those are chosen by teachers. I was class chairman in secondary school because those are voted for by classmates. In junior college, I was a student counsellor and at Imperial College, I was president of the Singapore Society. If chosen by a teacher, I would have no chance' - On his track record in school

'Former Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew is still very involved. It's encouraging. Our staff at the Istana will get a personal e-mail praising them for the good work. He sent a handwritten note to the NParks chairman, Mrs Christina Ong, telling her that the board's annual report was done well' - On Mr Lee's continuing personal interest in greenery. He launched the Garden City idea and the first Tree Planting Campaign in 1963