THE milk I drink every morning has received a grade of “D” from Singapore’s Health Promotion Board (HPB), even though its only ingredient is milk.

Its sugary, chocolate-flavoured counterpart is rated “B” – which means it gets to sport a “healthier choice” logo.

This contradictory rating is not new, but is worth resurfacing in light of a World Health Organization (WHO) call this week for countries to increase taxes on sweetened beverages.

GOOD governance aims to reduce surprises and effectively overcome them when they arise. The recent crisis at OpenAI, which has resulted in none of the remaining founders – Sam Altman, Ilya Sutskever and Greg Brockman – sitting on the interim board today, has again exposed the fragility of governance in high-speed tech organisations.

Many commentaries on the OpenAI crisis excessively personalise and polarise matters, framing the actors as AI doomers, accelerationists, altruists or greedy techno-capitalists. Instead of pointing fingers or engaging in these emotional debates, a more constructive point, we believe, is to acknowledge from the outset that all actors can excel in certain roles and contexts, while falling short in others.

While human nature cannot be controlled to always be good, effective organisations can more successfully harness their people’s greatest potential – and realise their own – by using a key human technology: good governance.

WEANING Singaporeans off cash has taken decades, and the process continues.

As early as the 1980s, there were already campaigns to minimise cash transactions. These included moving to cashless paydays, encouraging the payment of bills through Giro, and implementing electronic payments at points of sale, with a goal to make cashless transactions “a way of life”.

On the face of it, the dream of a cashless society appears to be close to reality. Today, nearly four in five transactions at points of sale in Singapore are carried out digitally.