A corner of excellence.
What businesses can learn from Lee Kuan Yew
Piyush Gupta
I first came to live in Singapore twenty five years ago.
Though I didn’t have the privilege
of meeting Lee Kuan Yew till many years later, he
became my hero very early on.
I marvelled at someone who could marry the vision and big
picture thinking that he had
with the attention to detail and the ability to execute
that he personified. I was struck by his courage and his determination, his
tenacity and his endurance.
I was overwhelmed by the economic wonder – Singapore – he
had created.
His passing saw an entire nation come together, united in
its grief at the loss of a great man
who transformed this little island state from third world
to first. This caused me to also pause
and reflect upon the lessons that he has left behind for
us. It’s often said that he ran Singapore
like a CEO runs a company, and in many ways (though not
entirely), I think that was true.
And as I gave it some thought, I came up with the following
observations that may be useful
for any corporate manager. This is by no means meant to
be an evaluation of the man
or his achievements, merely some reflections on what the
business sector could learn from
some of his principles.
Have a strong sense of purpose. Mr.
Lee had an extraordinary sense of purpose.
He lived and breathed Singapore. The success of Singapore
and the future of its people
were the singular lodestar of his actions. If it was good
for Singapore, for its people,
then it must be the right thing to do. He did not pander
to populist desires,
and if he believed in something, he left no stone
unturned in his pursuit of it.
In some ways, I think that creating a unified sense of
purpose is one of the most important things that a good business leader needs
to do. Consultants will call this the “vision/mission” thing. Unfortunately,
most mission statements lack a key attribute: simplicity. The power of a
statement
of purpose is that it should align the organisation in a
common direction, and that it should serve
as a rubric for decision making. For this to be true, it
needs to be simple enough
so that everyone in the organisation “gets it”, and so
that each person can have line of sight between what he/she does and what the
purpose of the company is.
Have a simple but differentiated strategy. When
Singapore was thrust into independence in 1965, few expected it to thrive. This
was a city state, smaller than New York and London,
which was disadvantaged in many ways. Singapore has no
hinterland, no natural resources,
and its citizens consisted of a hodgepodge of migrants.
Industry was nascent, unemployment
was high and the labour force restive. For this tiny red
dot to be relevant, it had to be different. Singapore’s pioneering leaders achieved
this by pursuing a simple strategy of differentiation –
that is, delivering a first-world infrastructure, both
hard and soft, in a third-world region,
thus making it attractive to global investment. In
hindsight, no rocket science.
However, in the climate of the day (nationalistic agendas
in the post-colonial world,
import substitution rather than export orientation etc),
totally contrarian!
For business leaders, the lesson is instructive – good
strategies don’t have to be overly complex; however, they should be
differentiating. I often think of strategy as having to answer two questions:
what game do you want to play, and how will you differentiate (or why will
people come to you)?
At DBS, we articulated our strategy over the past few
years in six bullet points on a single page.
To create a differentiating strategy, you must have a
point of view on the future.
This does not mean that you have to forecast everything
that is going to happen.
Frankly, this is almost impossible. In 1994, when I was
developing Emerging Market strategy
for Citigroup, we tried to forecast what would happen to
the world by the year 2000.
In 2000, I had an opportunity to review my notes, and was
struck by the fact that despite
the help of world class futurologists, we got precious
little right!
Nevertheless, you have to make some reasoned bets on what
the mega trends are,
and where the world is going. Mr. Lee understood that,
and generally got it right!
Create strong alignment. An
extraordinary achievement of Mr. Lee was his ability to galvanise
a diverse group of migrants from different races and
backgrounds, and to create a sense of oneness among them. Around the
world, the human tendency is for people with similar backgrounds to group together with one another. With Singapore being
a multi-racial society,
how could an environment be created such that different
groups live harmoniously together? Singapore uniquely achieved this
through social strategy – through a residential experiment.
With 85% of Singaporeans living in public housing, the
government ensured from early on
that each block of flats, each precinct, has an ethnic
balance.
This helped to break down walls of mistrust between the
different races.
Creating a sense of oneness, or alignment, is also
important in the business world.
Too often, schisms between business units and across
front/back office functions lead
to people working for their own end, rather than putting
the company first. Eliminating this requires thoughtful and unconventional techniques.
At DBS, we spent time developing a management construct (enshrined in a
document called Rules of the Road) that established clear norms for decision making. We live by a balanced scorecard,
where KPIs are shared and so is evaluation at the top of the house. Unlike most financial firms, we
don’t believe in paying back office and middle office people on a lower scale than the front
office. We have embraced techniques like “Obeya” workshops and “Agile tech development” so
that all stakeholders can come together and collaborate on projects, rather
than rely on traditional waterfall methods with various hand-offs. The new
world of internet and social media allows us to harness the best of our
employees, and creates a mechanism that encourages a cross-fertilisation
of ideas. We have even tried to encourage collaboration by creating open-concept
workspaces, as well as common spaces where our people can mingle, exchange ideas, and develop
better solutions for our customers.
Groom a pipeline of talent. Mr.
Lee was committed to building a meritocratic society.
He believed in getting the right talent irrespective of
source. Coupled with the country’s first-class educational system, this allowed
Singaporeans of all backgrounds, race and religion,
to rise up in society. He also believed in paying for
performance, and this philosophy
helped attract high-calibre officers into public service
and the government.
It goes without saying that talent management should be
central to the CEO agenda.
Strong people engagement is key to any successful
enterprise, and good leaders
not only surround themselves with smart people, bring
them along in their careers,
but also ensure that they are suitably rewarded.
Execute in a disciplined manner. In
Singapore, plans are made 10, 15, 20 years in advance, sometimes even more. For example, to seal Singapore’s status as a premier air
hub, plans for the country’s fifth airport terminal were unveiled in 2013, a
good 12 years before the target completion date of 2025.
The Marina Bay Financial Centre, Singapore’s new
financial downtown,
where our headquarters is situated, was an open sea a few
decades back.
With the foresight of Mr. Lee, reclamation works were
initiated back in the 1970s,
before any need for this piece of prime real estate
arose.
However, a lot of countries make 10 year plans and even
longer. What made Singapore different was the ability to execute, and Mr. Lee’s
extraordinary attention to detail was a key element behind this. For example,
he would personally come and walk around the MBFC area to see how things were going over the many years of the project. He was
famous as Singapore’s #1 gardener… on his various overseas trips, he would try and find
which plants may be suitable for us, and personally bring them back!
This balance between “attention to detail” and “micro
management” can be very difficult
for a business leader. On the one hand, you want to give
your people elbow room to perform.
On the other hand, being too far removed from the details
can be extremely expensive.
I compromise by choosing each year the few “make or
break” agendas that I personally
need to be engaged with. On these matters, I am
incredibly hands-on, including weekly meetings, skip level meetings, and
detailed reviews. In other areas, I am happy to let go.
Mr. Lee was by no means perfect. However, the outcomes he
left behind speak for themselves.
His legacy lives on, all around us. If we in business can
learn something from his methods
and techniques, we will be much the better for it.
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/what-businesses-can-learn-from-lee-kuan-yew-piyush-gupta
A practical overview of Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
How
to choose a book. A Turbo Charged Reading YouTube
Advanced Reading Skills Perhaps you’d like to join my FaceBook group ?
Perhaps
you’d like to check out my sister blog:
www.innermindworking.blogspot.com gives many ways
for you to work with the stresses of life
www.turbochargedreading.blogspot.com for extra TCR
information
www.happyartaccidents.blogspot.com
just for fun.
To
quote the Dr Seuss himself, “The more that you read, the more things you will
know.
The
more that you learn; the more places you'll go.”
No comments:
Post a Comment