For every mother juggling it all
We often describe working mothers as “multi-taskers” who can switch quickly from attending meetings to preparing family meals, from giving presentations to attending parent-teacher meetings. However, the reality is more complex. It is not just about doing more things. Rather, it is about making many small decisions a day, while still trying to show up as best one can. Leaving behind a sick child at home with another caregiver while showing up 100% at work to honour commitment is never easy.
In a speech shared at SPD’s recent Organisational Excellence Day 2026, Board director and Vice-Chairperson of SPD’s Services Committee Dr May Lim, who is an Associate Professor and Assistant Provost (Applied Learning) at the Singapore Institute of Technology, shared her personal experiences as a working mother, and take on excellence in an organisation. An occupational therapist by training, she has played a key role in shaping teaching and learning practices, while also mentoring many occupational therapists, including several currently serving at SPD.
Excellence misunderstood
Dr Lim recalled feeling exhausted as a young leader facing annual workplans.
“Each year, there would be new targets, initiatives and expectations set by the board. I even joked, half seriously, whether there could be a sabbatical year, a time to rest the land, consolidate the work, and not introduce anything new,” she said. The joke lands because many of us know the feeling: the goalposts move, expectations rise, and we wonder when our best will be “enough”.
Yet Dr Lim reminded us that “excellence is not static”. It must be built, reinforced, and renewed over time, with clarity of purpose, values that guide decisions, and a culture where people own improvements together. “It requires discipline and accountability, yes, but it also requires the humility to keep improving.”
She shared a story about her mother’s knee replacement. Instead of calling in favours, she chose to trust the system and the therapists her mother met. It was a quiet test of whether excellence is truly embedded, not dependent on who you know.
Her mother’s strong recovery became a reminder of what good organisations make possible: consistent care, backed by strong systems, delivered with heart.
Dr Lim’s message though was simple: excellence is built over time, through people and systems, and we need resilience to sustain it.
Different interpretations of perfection
One question she shared got everyone thinking: “Is 99% good enough?”
In some settings, the missing 1% can translate into severe consequences, which includes hundreds of babies being mismatched with the wrong parents at birth, medical prescriptions being filled incorrectly, thousands of financial transactions going wrong.
So yes, there are times when we must aim for near-perfect precision, but “Some wrongs lead to innovation. Some lead to better processes. Some reveal gaps that require further training or upskilling.”, she quoted from Amy Edmondson’s book ‘The Right Kind of Wrong’.
But Dr Lim also cautioned against turning that into a personal standard of perfection in every area of life.
At home, she and her husband raised their children, their daughter 16 and son 14, with a deliberate choice to opt out of the rat race, contentment over comparison, and a tuition-free childhood. She has enjoyed motherhood at every stage of her children’s growth.
That would not have been possible alone though.
“I have been blessed with very strong family support from my husband and parents. That support made a real difference,” she said. “It is also important to learn to ignore conversations from parents’ chat groups that create unnecessary pressure, and focusing instead on building our faith, values, resilience, and heart.”
At work, Dr Lim felt fortunate to have many good bosses who, when working styles differed, made the effort to seek alignment rather than conflict.
“If you ask me whether I practice work‑life balance, my honest answer is probably no. But if you ask me whether I have balanced well thus far, I sincerely hope the answer is yes,” she added.
The lesson here, therefore, is not about perfection. Rather, it is about the pursuit of improvement towards excellence. Afterall, “we are all work-in-progress”, she said.
A Mothers’ Day note to working mothers
This Mother’s Day, perhaps the takeaway is that excellence should not be a treadmill that leaves us depleted. The best organisations and the healthiest homes pursue excellence with clear priorities, shared ownership, grace when mistakes are made while making room to learn, and appreciation for the invisible labour that sustains everything.
To all working mothers, may you feel seen, supported, and proud of the quiet excellence you practice every day.
Dr May Lim is an Associate Professor and the Assistant Provost (Applied Learning) at the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT). She serves on SPD’s Board of Directors and also co-chairs its Services Committee. She is a strong advocate for investing in capability development of staff, and has invested her own time in doing so.