PUBLISHED FEB 2,
2020, 5:00 AM SGT
As Singapore becomes more developed and the people more
educated, the expertise level in the country will rise, and more sophisticated
methods will be used to solve problems. Leaders will have to acquire more
technical knowledge to keep up with the work of their organisations and stay on
top of the issues. But even more important than domain expertise is the role
leaders play in character building and in shaping the values of the
organisation.
Recapture spirit of pioneers who succeeded despite lacking
technical expertise
What will the Year of the Rat be like for Singapore?
If I were a geomancer, I might say it will be good if the
people can develop the attributes of a good rat in popular Chinese zodiacal
mythology: diligent, gregarious, quick to act on social occasions, with good
intuition, foresight and business acumen. These are qualities Singaporeans can do more with, apart
from being rational, law-abiding and cooperative. In fact, I believe an earlier generation of leaders in
politics, the public sector and business possessed these qualities and made the
most of them despite their relative lack of academic and technical knowledge.
Singapore's success in the early years owed much to their
rat-like capabilities.
Today, Singaporeans are better qualified, academically and
technically, but do they have as much intuition, foresight and business acumen?
In an uncertain, rapidly changing world, the ability to make
sound decisions with incomplete knowledge is critical.
The early pioneers were also men of strong character and
personal conviction, which you had to be if you relied on intuition and
foresight, or you would be dismissed as a charlatan. Men like Mr Lee Kuan Yew, Dr Goh Keng Swee, Mr Sim Kee Boon,
Mr Howe Yoon Chong, Mr Wee Cho Yaw and Mr Lien Ying Chow left their marks in
their respective fields, not because of their technical brilliance but the
strength of their character. By this I mean strong personal conviction about what is
right or wrong, the courage to pursue their beliefs and ideas, and to move the
people around them to do likewise. They were able to shape institutions and organisations
accordingly.
I think Singapore needs to recapture the spirit of those
days when character and integrity made a greater difference than technical
competence and performance. Over the years, too much emphasis has been placed on the
latter, and not enough on the former.
Of course, both are important. But without strength of character and the values that go
with it, performance will suffer sooner or later, despite the best minds and
technical resources.
In a piece published in The New York Times last month,
political analyst Yuval Levin wrote about how institutions are important
character-builders and suffer grave consequences when they neglect this aspect
of their job. He was writing about the loss of trust in American
institutions, and it is worth quoting him at length: "Each core
institution performs an important task - educating children, enforcing the law,
serving the poor, providing some service, meeting some need. And it does that
by establishing a structure and process, a form, for combining people's efforts
towards accomplishing that task.
"But as it does so, each institution also forms the
people within it to carry out that task responsibly and reliably. It shapes
behaviour and character, fostering an ethic built around some idea of
integrity. That's why we trust the institution and the people who compose it.
"We trust political institutions when they undertake a
solemn obligation to the public interest and shape the people who populate them
to do the same. We trust a business because it promises quality and reliability
and rewards its workers when they deliver those. We trust a profession because
it imposes standards and rules on its members intended to make them worthy of
confidence."
What Mr Levin wrote above is an ideal, a hope we all have
about our institutions. But what happens when it doesn't work that way? He explains: "What stands out about our era in
particular is a distinct kind of institutional dereliction - a failure even to
attempt to form trustworthy people, and a tendency to think of institutions not
as moulds of character and behaviour but as platforms for performance and
prominence." Mr Levin was writing about a US problem aggravated by the
deep political partisanship in the country that has resulted in a loss of
public trust in its institutions.
Though Singapore does not face the same issue, at least not
to the same extent, his comments about the important role institutions play in
shaping character and integrity are as relevant here.
The Prime Minister spoke recently to public sector leaders
about their role in a new, fast-changing world and the changes needed to
respond to the challenge. He was spot on in identifying several of the key
areas, including introducing greater diversity in the leadership by recruiting
those with private sector experience, and encouraging officers to move to
different parts of the service to "reinforce the idea of a collaborative
network and a collective leadership".
As Singapore becomes more developed and the people more
educated, the expertise level in the country will rise, and more sophisticated
methods will be used to solve problems. Leaders will have to acquire more technical knowledge to
keep up with the work of their organisations and stay on top of the issues. But even more important than domain expertise is the role
leaders play in character building and in shaping the values of the
organisation.
When I look back to my early years in the service in the
1980s, it often amazes me how limited our technical capabilities were. I was working on transportation issues - managing the growth
in car population, developing the bus network, and the deliberations on whether
to build the MRT - and most of the people I worked with had none of the
technical qualifications you would expect today. They were mainly staff who worked the ground, dealing with
transport operators: They were honest, diligent and conscientious about their
work. But they were led by men of strong character and integrity
in the ministry who knew that resources were limited and how to make the best
of them.
In my recollection of those days, what stood out was not
their technical competence but the strength of their character, and the values
they represented. As a young officer, I was always encouraged by my permanent
secretary, Mr Sim, to come up with new ideas to solve the transport problem and
I felt at the time I could make any suggestion without fear. He had one constant refrain: "Be practical, and don't
tell me what the theory is but whether it will work here."
Leaders of strong character and conviction are not afraid to
have officers offering their ideas, challenge the status quo, and develop a
culture in the organisation that encourages independent thinking.
From those early years of urban transport planning, despite
the relative lack of technical expertise, came innovative ideas such as area
licensing, which was the forerunner of Electronic Road Pricing, the vehicle
quota scheme, and the decision to build the MRT, all of which are still
relevant today.
As Singapore matures and its organisations become more
complex, it is even more important for leaders to understand the critical role
they play, particularly when they lead men who possess great technical
knowledge.
They should see themselves not as problem-solvers first and
foremost, but as builders of character and integrity.
• The writer is also senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam
School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.
No comments:
Post a Comment