lim Siong guan
The Best is Yet to Be
About the book
“Lim Siong Guan – The Best is Yet to Be” is not a conventional memoir, but a guidebook of insights drawn from Siong Guan’s public service career from 1969 to 2019. Blending his own reflections with interviews, media articles, and sharings from people who he has closely worked with — including Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam and Prime Minister Lawrence Wong — the book captures life lessons on leadership, resilience, and service that remain relevant for today’s volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous world.
In the book, you get a glimpse into Siong Guan’s childhood, what it was like working up close and personal with Mr Lee Kuan Yew and Dr Goh Keng Swee (the powerful core of Singapore’s founding leaders), as well as what it was like serving and leading as Permanent Secretary of various ministries, Chairman of the Singapore Economic Development Board, and Group President of Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, GIC.
Unlike other memoirs, this is not a book about Siong Guan — it is about what he thinks readers would find useful as they contemplate their futures and strive to be the best they can be. The book provides insights into Siong Guan’s past, his thoughts on the present, and his perspectives on the future, particularly on surviving and thriving in a world of “unknown unknowns”.
It is his desire that reading this book will help you be the best that you can be!
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ABOUT LIM SIONG GUAN
LIM Siong Guan is Emeritus Professor at the National University of Singapore and a Distinguished Practitioner Fellow at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, where he teaches leadership, governance, future readiness, organisational excellence, and change management.
He served as Group President of GIC, Singapore’s sovereign wealth fund, from 2007 to 2016, and then as Advisor to its Group Executive Committee from 2017 to 2019. He also chaired the Singapore Economic Development Board from 2006 to 2009.
Siong Guan was the first Principal Private Secretary to Singapore’s founding Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew, and was the Head of the Singapore Civil Service from 1999 to 2005. He has been the Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Defence (1981–1994), the Public Service Division of the Prime Minister’s Office (1994 –1998), the Ministry of Education (1997–1999) and the Ministry of Finance (1999 –2006). He chaired the Inland Revenue Authority of Singapore and the Accounting and Corporate Regulatory Authority (both 2004 –2006), as well as the CPF Board (1986 –1994), and has served on numerous boards, including Temasek, the other sovereign wealth fund of Singapore.
Siong Guan has co-authored “The Leader, The Teacher & You – Leadership Through the Third Generation” and “Winning with Honour – In Relationships, Family, Organisations, Leadership, and Life”, and authored “Can Singapore Fall?: Making the Future for Singapore”, based on his lectures as the fourth S R Nathan Fellow for the Study of Singapore.
For his various contributions, the Singapore Government conferred Siong Guan the Order of Nila Utama (First Class) in 2006, the Meritorious Service Medal in 1991, and the Public Administration Medal (Gold) in 1982. He has also been awarded the Institution of Engineers Lifetime Engineering Achievement Award in 2025, the Distinguished Fellow of The EDB Society Award in 2020, the University of Adelaide Distinguished Alumni Award in 2012, and the National Trades Union Congress Medal of Commendation in 2003.