Our Managing Partner/CEO tells an interesting experience about his driving license.
I obtained my driving license when I was around 20 years old. I took up driving lessons with a manual car. In those days, automatic cars weren’t as popular as now, so managing the clutch of a manual car was important, and a skill requiring practice.
Since my family did not own a car at that time, I did not get to practise my driving skill. I don’t recall driving any car until 5 years later, during my first business trip to the US in the first year of my career.
There were two of us, both young process engineers. Before departing, my colleague asked me if I had a driving license. I said yes. Then I asked him if he had one. He said yes. So all sounded good.
Never blindly assume
When we got to the car rental counter in the US, however, something unexpected happened. My colleague told me to register myself as the driver. I said I had never driven before, so I thought he should be the driver. He sheepishly said that he had never driven a car before either, despite having a valid license.
Long story short, I became the registered driver and my driving journey started in a foreign country, in an automatic car I wasn’t familiar with and, worst of all, with a left-hand-drive steering wheel.
Lesson learned: never blindly assume, always check and verify.
Be prepared, with a backup plan
In the years after that first driving experience, I travelled to the US quite frequently. In those days I carried an Indonesian driving license. I had two licenses: type A for car and type C for motorcycle. The license had no other remark to indicate whether it was valid for car or motorcycle, but the letters were sufficiently recognised in Indonesia.
On one trip, my car driving license (type A) expired. Unlike Singapore and some other countries, a driving license in Indonesia is valid for 5 years, so it has to be renewed every 5 years. I did not realise this until I was at the car rental counter, so I had no choice but to present my motorcycle license (type C) to the officer.
The officer didn’t ask what the letter C stands for, fortunately. If he had, I was prepared to tell him that the letter C stands for CAR.
Lesson learned: be prepared, always have a backup plan, and be innovative in finding alternative solutions.
A license is a start, not the end
Possessing a valid driving license did not mean that I was skilled at driving a car. I made some seriously foolish mistakes, although fortunately none had a serious impact. It took me many years and many driving experiences before I could classify myself as “very good”, and even then I dare not say that I’m “excellent” at driving.
Similarly, whether it’s Lean Six Sigma, Industry 4.0, Project Management or Agile, attending a training course and even getting a certification is only the start of the learning journey, not the end.
Training and certification provide you with the basics. You need to practise the skill in order to be good at it.