Former SMRT CEO Desmond Kuek has founded a consultancy teaching leadership skills -- after taking a short break.

After SMRT role

This is following the end of his six-year stint as the head of SMRT, a transport company providing rail, bus, and taxi services.

The 55-year-old left the role by end-July 2018.

Kuek is joined by two managing directors at the new company, Genium & Co.

The two men are also formerly military personnel.

They are Fred Tan, the former head of the Singapore Armed Forces Centre for Leadership Development, and Ang Yau Choon, commander of an elite unit for special operations.

Part of Kuek's bio read:

Desmond Kuek has had the privilege of leading at the pinnacles of the corporate world, public sector and military service over a career span of more than 35 years, and has helmed people and organisations through crises and transformative times.

At SMRT Corporation, he steered the company on a path of sustainable growth and system renewal, turning the company around in operational performance and service quality. He successfully privatised the company in an effort that was affirmed by Asset Triple-A as the Best Privatisation M&A deal in 2016. Under his watch, SMRT won numerous human resource, public relations, service excellence and corporate governance awards. He was awarded “Executive of the Year” by Singapore Business Review in 2016.

Kuek previously served as Singapore’s sixth Chief of Defense Force before retiring in 2010.

He then became Permanent Secretary at the Ministry of Environment and Water Resource from 2010 to 2012.

On Oct. 1, 2012, Kuek was appointed President and Group CEO of SMRT Corporation Limited.

Kuek‘s tenure at SMRT was marked by high-profile rail problems, as well as severe employee lapses culminating in the falsification of maintenance records that resulted in an unprecedented MRT tunnel flooding and consequent 20-hour service disruption.

Leadership programmes listed

The buzzword-heavy Genium & Co. website said it offers “holistic solutioning” and “impact-focused programmes” to individuals and organisations.

These include programmes to “empower individuals to gain personal mastery, live their best, and make a meaningful difference to society”, “energise teams to synergistically build competence, cohesion and collaboration in delivering consistently superior performance at work”, and “engage people and organisations to transform themselves, create new possibilities, and shape their desired shared future”.

Its vision, it said, "is to inspire excellence".

The vision statement also read: "Genium & Co is founded on the belief that we can be our own genius to achieve phenomenal success at work and in life, and each of us has the genie within us to turn our vision to reality."

Its values declaration incorporates the verbosity of military commands:

Honour

We say what we mean and do what we say

Commitment

We stay true to our course

Excellence

We strive always to be our best

Listed among its most popular programmes is one on "Crisis Leadership".

It is about making a comeback after suffering a hard knock and involves "real-life case studies" -- which ones exactly was not elaborated on though.

The description of the programme reads:

Our greater glory and higher honour is not that we never fall, but that we pick ourselves up to do better each time we do. How do you take setbacks in your stride and overcome the hard knocks that come your way? Do you have what it takes to lead in and through crisis? Take part in our workshop that uses real-life case studies and an immersive table-top simulation exercise, and learn about resilience in leadership and how to make a comeback when the chips are down and the going is tough.

Kuek's SMRT departure

Kuek's position at SMRT was subsequently filled by senior civil servant and another former chief of defence force Neo Kian Hong on Aug. 1, 2018.

Neo's appointment was the result of a global search for a successor.

Neo was the Permanent Secretary of Defence Development before taking up the SMRT CEO role.

Before Kuek's departure from the transport company, SMRT's vice president for corporate communications Margaret Teo was tight-lipped about his next move: “We understand that Mr Kuek intends to take a short break, and beyond that, it is for Mr Kuek to share his next steps as and when he feels ready to do so.”

News of Kuek's new consultancy was broken by Lianhe Zaobao on Nov. 22.