By Darren Leong
Darren is a final year Law student who interned with Skillseed in 2020.
Disclaimer: This piece contains spoilers to the plot of Galder Gaztelu-Urrutia’s ugly and brutal film, “The Platform”. If you’d prefer not to be spoiled, read no further. But of course, your loss. My suggestion: read on. Better to be spoiled than to miss out on musings about my wonderful time at Skillseed. I’m kidding, bear with me.
Introduction
Goreng, chief protagonist of “The Platform”, voluntarily steps into the Pit, offering 6 months of his time for an accredited certification that would have required 2 years to attain. Master negotiator, one would think. Reconsider this proposition against the backdrop of “The Platform’s” setting.
“The Platform” is the story of a Camus-esque vertical prison, euphemistically named the “Pit”, with 333 floors, holding a total of 666 “prisoners” (2 on each floor). Its simple architecture is meticulously designed for sustenance, though it is anything but. Every day, a concrete platform decked out like a banquet feast descends into the Pit in clockwork fashion: floor by floor, 2 minutes at a time, once a day. Inhabitants learn to devour the spread of scrumptious delights within 2 minutes (or to scavenge for crumbs, if they find themselves in the lower rungs of the Pit). Trimagasi’s (Goreng’s first inmate partner) response to Goreng’s innocuous question “What do we eat?” belies a sinister reality that plagues the Pit: “the leftovers of the people above”. At the end of every month, all inhabitants are gassed and will wake up on a different level, surrendering their destinies to a serendipitous Russian roulette. Yet, one would be inclined to believe that nothing ever happens by chance in this well-oiled machinery, where every single movement of its inhabitants is a product of careful engineering by the Pit’s Administration.
I’m neither an avid film critic nor a literary maniac but I’ve decided to share the key learnings of my year-long internship with Skillseed through the lens of “The Platform” because there are a great many parallels between the two. Don’t worry, I will steer clear from drawing the loose and banal analogy that my time at Skillseed has provided me with the platform to grow and develop my interest in social entrepreneurship. That would do injustice to my time with the wonderful folks at Skillseed whom I now call my friends and mentors, instead of the workplace staple: “colleagues”.
I will now share three key learnings from the past year at Skillseed.
Lesson 1: Structure facilitates growth
The rule was simple. “If everyone ate only what they needed, the food would reach the lowest levels,” quipped a forlorn Imoguiri, a former employee of the Administration in “The Platform” who decided to be sent into the Pit to provide assistance in the vertical prison. The only problem was in entrusting the sole task of obedience to inmates whose deviances were precisely what got them into the Pit in the first place. The rule was broken daily. Food never reached the bottom. Chaos ensued.
Disconcertingly, I see traces of the prisoners’ disregard for structure in myself. On the back of a year-long entrepreneurship program in Shanghai, I gained exposure to the world of startups and entrepreneurship. Move fast. Don’t be afraid to fail. Be flexible. Build, measure, learn. Experiment. These catchphrases bandied around cultivate a mentality that there is no one right way of doing things. Structure, commonly associated with rigidity, is often derided as anathema to the startup methodology. Clueless, I bought into it.
However, my internship at Skillseed challenged my suspicions towards structures and frameworks. I was introduced to the Head-Heart-Hands framework adapted by Skillseed to identify inherent assets of individuals and Skillseed’s Iceberg Model for social innovation and community engagement, both of which ground Skillseed’s training methodology. I remember a conversation I had with Wilson earlier this year where he explained that creating frameworks is a cognitive exercise in sense-making and consolidation of vast amounts of information. There is value in such intellectual removals of the chaff from the grain.
Despite the initial cognitive dissonance I experienced, I also soon came to appreciate the value of structures established within Skillseed that have allowed it to grow and continue creating meaningful impact in communities since its humble beginnings. For example, the internal chain of review that our work goes through ensures quality and promotes a culture of excellence within the team. Structure facilitates growth. Indeed, it was the precise structure of the Pit in “The Platform” that gave Goreng and his maverick roommate, Baharat, the courage to stage a revolution from the bottom up.
Lesson 2: Intentionality undergirds valuing people
In fact, that very act of rebellion also bears out another key lesson for me: intentionality is integral to relationality. In a pivotal moment in the film, Trimagasi directed a sobering message to Goreng: “You’ve got a good heart. I don’t think you’ll survive very long.”
One would not be mistaken to think that Trimagasi’s message bears relevance for Skillseed, if not for all social enterprises in Singapore. Indeed, against the backdrop of COVID-19, most social enterprises are put through a crucible of fire – how can we continue to strike a balance between showing care to our communities while remaining financially viable to sustain impact?
Relationality has been, is and will remain an indelible aspect of the Skillseed DNA. Valuing People. To me, the most prominent of Skillseed’s six values. And indeed, is one I see practiced consistently, both internally and externally, by the Skillseed team. Throughout the various projects I was involved in over the past year, I was privy to how the team always kept relationship-building at the forefront of all our decision-making. From simple choice of pronouns in external-facing emails to decisions over the (legal) structures of collaborations with our community partners, I have become more mindful of placing myself in the shoes of the people we work with. Diction is no longer a matter of semantics, as I grew to learn.
Furthermore, both Wilson and Huijia demonstrate what it means to value people in their management of the Skillseed ship. Before I joined the team officially, I received a detailed list of my roles and responsibilities for my year-long internship, which accounted for my strengths, interests and internship objectives. This epitomized the conscious effort put into the design of each and every team member’s portfolio. As an intern, I never once felt undervalued, unappreciated or under-worked; my perspectives mattered. Moreover, I witnessed the thought and deliberation that went into the design of our recruitment process, underscoring the respect that the leadership team accords to said process but more importantly, to any potential team member that comes on board.
Perk-you-ups gifted by the team during my examination periods this year.
As the old adage goes, “kindness starts at home”. It is fair to say that the intentionality of our leadership has rubbed off on the rest of the team and I am eternally grateful to be a recipient of such grace. Make no mistake, valuing people is hard work, best illustrated by Goreng and Baharat’s Sisyphean efforts to travel down to the bottom of the Pit rationing food and re-establishing “spontaneous solidarity”, which eventually cost them their lives. However, there is no better substitute than old-fashioned intentionality when it comes to valuing people.
Lesson 3: Purpose preserves integrity
Goreng and Baharat’s revolution in the Pit involves the preservation of a panna cotta – purportedly the crown jewel of the Administration’s regalian feast for the prisoners – to send it back up as a “message” that the social machinery in the Pit has been short-circuited. Baharat dies from an impossible attempt to stave off the cannibalistic instincts of inmates in the lower levels, while Goreng reaches the bottom decorated with severe wounds. Goreng and Baharat’s persistence in the face of death could only be sustained with a clear purpose. Protect the panna cotta.
Over the past year, as COVID-19 cast a cloud of gloom over us, it was easy to lose sight of our purpose in a bid for survival. The path of least resistance would have been to downscale, which would have adverse ripple effects throughout our communities. However, I was grateful for the constant reminders by Huijia of the raison d’etre of our existence – we exist to serve our community partners, whether in Singapore, Thailand or Indonesia. We stuck to our core, contended with the transition to a virtual environment and innovated with virtual offerings that involved our community partners. I, for one, was extremely encouraged to see the warm reception at our inaugural ABCD Assembly, where we were able to draw on the experiences and aspirations of both our local and overseas community partners to share the development of ABCD initiatives in our region.
Having a strong ‘why’ is crucial to preserving our integrity when put through a test. Our purpose gives us direction and motivation at moments when we’re lost or most prone to give up. And I’m glad to have spent my past year with a team whose purpose never wavered despite the unprecedented challenges foisted upon us.
Conclusion
In a poignant ending to “The Platform”, Goreng realizes that “change never happens spontaneously”. My internship at Skillseed is likewise a year-long epiphanic episode that has made me aware that creating a meaningful change in society requires intentional actions driven by a strong set of core beliefs.
The Pit, as a citadel housing a brutal experiment in social conditioning and blunt Darwinism, is but a microcosm of this world we live in. And I’d like to think that Skillseed is making this world a tad bit easier to live in by making meaningful impact, little by little, seed by seed. Because it did, in mine.
Cover photo from Unsplash