I have set up operations in Singapore twice. The same city, similar briefs, very different experiences — and the differences had less to do with Singapore than with me.
The first time, I arrived bright-eyed and bushy-tailed, naively convinced that enthusiasm and a reasonable plan would carry the day. In many respects they did. But I required more direction from head office than I would have liked to admit at the time. I was placed as the "adult in charge". The decisions, though, were rarely mine alone to make.
The second time was different. The mandate was straightforward: go and build it. There was still involvement from head office on skills, roles, and structure — that kind of oversight is sensible, not a constraint — but the responsibility was mine in a way it hadn't been before. That shift, from executing someone else's plan to being genuinely accountable for the outcome, changed how I approached almost everything.
It also coincided with Covid, which made things interesting. Singapore operated under strict rules. Head office, based in the UK, was working under an entirely different set of circumstances. Being the connective tissue between those two realities — translating priorities, maintaining trust with colleagues I had never met in person, navigating a year of remote relationships before travel was again normal — was one of the more demanding but extremely rewarding aspects of the role.
On hiring, the second time was more disciplined. We didn't treat budget as the primary filter; we needed to build something that worked, so we hired accordingly. We involved the leadership team from head office in decisions, which occasionally meant candidates I rated didn't get through. I didn't always agree with the outcome. But I respected the process, and the team we built was more settled and more loyal than anything I had put together previously.
One thing worth understanding if you're hiring in Singapore: there has historically been a degree of mobility in the workforce that you need to plan for. People move when better opportunities arise, and if you are recruiting to a fixed budget in a market where others are not, you will feel that. The second time around, because of the culture and trust we built, that was much less of an issue.
Which brings me to something I would have benefited from understanding earlier. In my first posting, my instinct when a client asked for something outside scope was to say no — to protect the team's capacity, to keep things clean. It felt professional. What it actually was, more often than not, was a missed opportunity. The more useful response is rarely a refusal. It is a question: how do we help you solve this problem? That shift — from managing boundaries to building partnerships — is what earns trust in a new market. A startup cannot afford to say no in the same way a large organisation can, and recognising that distinction earlier would have served me well.
The things I remember most fondly from both postings, though, are not the strategic decisions. They are the smaller things: finding the right office space, setting up the kitchen, buying the snacks, building that long-lasting loyalty that still exists in the team years after I've left Singapore. The unglamorous work of creating an environment where people actually want to show up. That, more than any hiring framework or stakeholder strategy, is where culture starts.