What is leadership, talents, insight, foresight or all the ivory
tower assumptions ? Yes, it is easy for all to agree that
leadership is an important and critical element in
government.
The real issue is not importance of leadership. All too often, the
problem is not with the need for leadership but how to exercise and
implement the leadership qualities referred to and accepted by
all.
So let us look at what we need in actual practice. When leaders
talk about leadership, do they have a conflict of interest and want
to assert their style or brand of leadership or do they objectively
refer to the qualities desired by the people which will bring about
the greatest good of the greatest number or do they only expect
people to accept whatever they are doing out of their own
narrow-mindedness, self-centredness or face.
If leaders are able to brandish about abstract concepts like
leadership, vision, foresight, insight to justify their own actions
and policies after the facts or criticisms or problems are they
still capable of objectively exercising good leadership qualities
in the actual work place?
What kind of leadership qualities did we have previously and what
kind of leadership should have expect from our leaders today
?
Should leaders be expected to brandish their abstract and undefined
leadership qualities as stated in the foregoing or should they be
expected to work with observance of good procedures, processes,
codes of corporate governance, passion, moral uprightness or
nobility of spirit?
It would appear that if leadership qualities remain to be talked
about in abstract and intangibles, it will be too easy for leaders
to ignore accountability and seek convenient justifications and
excuses to cover over their mistakes, negligence or
ignorance.
In practice leaders often seem to be concerned only with look-good
policies, assumptions and justifications of their actions without
basing on true implementation abilities.
Despite many years of such rhetorics, what have we achieved in
terms of leadership other a system of taxing and recovering fullest
costs depriving them of essential services in housing,
transportation, utilities and medical care.
The ordinary citizens are suffering from dropping wages,
unemployments with the domestic economy being heavily squeezed out
of their survival by government's getting into businesses of all
sorts to compete with its own citizens.
What happen to all the talents of our own citizens or do we have no
talents?
The Asian Financial crisis has exposed self-centredness as the
ultimate cause of financial instability.
Why is it that after so many crises and experiences our leadership
is still seen as promoting leaders' own individualism and
self-centredness resulting in malpractices in all the NKF going on
in so many organizations.
Sad to say, apart from look-good presentations and technocratic
statistical digests, very few of the academic leaders have measured
up to a high standard worthy of note or commendations.
Taking into account the above-stated problems do our leaders
realise that the worse form of leadership is to keep talking about
leadership in a top-down leadership system with covering up of
mistakes due to self-centredness of men seeking to cling on to
power.
The real challenge is to work out a system of collective leadership
where all leaders are openly laying out all the major decisions
with guidance and processes set up which allow such challenges to
be effectively delegated or decentralized to be performed in
teamwork and results-oriented manner which involve and motivate all
in doing their parts to upgrade total success of all.
There appears great obstacles to overcome because of many
narrow-minded policy assumptions already implanted in leaders'
minds for too long so much so that people have accepted them as
real.
In the fast-paced technology and knowledge-based age will
leadership by individuals make such a big impact and what happen if
they can only keep talking about leadership and talents but cannot
find the open and collective implementation leaders needed for
success.
What we actually need most may be simple down-to-earth broad-based
technology and knowledge application by the masses.
Therefore we should strive to translate all intangible to
attainable work processes which will allow staff to take over and
exercise their broad-based knowledge application and
teamwork.
We will need to recognize shortcomings and weaknesses like stated
in the "20 major major government policy errors" as posted to the
Feedback Unit since 2002.
We can keep talking about benefits of investing in grandiose plans
like biomedical researches, but if we do not have ministers and
senior officers well versed in translating the whole plans into
action processes then again we will fail to restructure the economy
to value-adding technology-driven economy talked about for
years.
