Social services builder

AS A TEENAGER, Benedict Cheong was fascinated with school timetables. How are these drawn up, such that everyone gets their classes and each teacher also has his share of breaks in between classes?

Later, when he started flying as an undergraduate studying overseas, it was the scheduling for planes and cabin crew that captivated him. "In those days the crews were scheduled by teams," he recalls. "But the cabin crew do not go with the plane; the planes have a different schedule also. So again what's the algorithm? I can never solve it, but I'm fascinated by it." For someone so intrigued by systems and processes, it was perhaps an irony that when he landed his current job as chief executive of Temasek Foundation International in April 2007, there was almost none to speak of. Instead, with the foundation newly conceived, he was given the task to build the processes and systems, from scratch. It was a mandate that would see the 57-year-old pull together lessons from his past lives as a policeman and chief executive of National Council of Social Service to fulfil. And along the way, he would also have to learn to tear these processes apart and redraw them again as and when necessary.

Contrary to what most people think, giving money isn't so easy, he says.