One of the key features of the coronavirus for many journalists
has been the White House Briefings on the coronavirus. These briefings were supposed
to be an opportunity for America’s federal government lead by its president to
update the nation on the efforts against the coronavirus.
Unfortunately, the briefings have not been briefings.
Instead, they were opportunities for comedians to gather more material. The most
recent one was when the president openly suggested that a possible cure for the
virus was to inject bleach into the body. That moment can be found at:
Every comedian pounced on this moment and the resulting
outcry ensured that future briefings were put on hold. What happened?
The answer is simple. The man in charge had a need to show
that he was doing something. This was a man who had come into power by telling
the world that he had been given a very special brain. The public looked at the
image he had presented of himself and agreed. He was then put into office.
Donald Trump is correct. He has a very special talent, which
propelled him from being a successful reality TV star into the oval office. Mr.
Trump has an instinctive genius for attracting attention and arousing passions.
As one American customer at the Bistrot said, “There is no neutrality on the man.”
While he has a talent for drawing attention to himself, he’s not a medical expert and in a situation where medical expertise is of the most important variety, one has to question why he’s even suggesting any form of medication (and the bigger question being why people believe him). One suggestion is that he genuinely believes that he’s the smartest person in the room.
Unfortunately, being smart or the smartest person in the room
isn’t the best thing to be. Some of the most successful people in the world,
like Robert Kuok, the founder of the Shangri La Hotel chain, have said that one
should always look for people smarter than yourself to do the job. Mr. Kuok,
who survived the Japanese Occupation of Southeast Asia to build a fortune of
US$12.8 billion (nearly four times that of Donald Trump) is clearly correct. Mr.
Kuok, who started out as a sugar trader, has built a large and diverse empire
beyond his core competence in commodity trading. How did he do it? The answer
was allowing people who knew better than himself to do the job.
While the human brain is capable to thinking of many great
things, it has certain limits. One of those key limits is that human beings
tend to focus on certain things that they like and are good at and the saying “You
can’t be good at everything,” rings true. This is especially true in leading
large organisations and even nations, where the person at the top has to deal
with a wide variety of issues and he or she simply cannot master every one of
them. As such, one of the key skills of leadership is to know when you’re not
the smartest person in the room and letting that person take the limelight with
your encouragement.
This is seen most clearly in military situations. Mrs.
Thatcher in the UK, knew she was not a military expert. So, when the Falklands
War broke out, she set the objectives for what she wanted and then allowed the
military to get on with the job. Likewise, George Bush Senior, did the same when
booting Saddam Hussein out of Kuwait. In comparison, the attempts to rescue the
hostages in Iran under Jimmy Carter was a total disaster.
The entire professional services industry is based on the
principle of getting smart people to do the job. As my favourite liquidator
often says, “We’re hired for our knowledge.” Yes, the client or the main
businessperson has to make final decisions because only he or she knows the overall
business objective, but you as a consultant must provide advice because what
you’re selling is the fact that you’re smarter at that particular aspect of the
job.
Humility beats intelligence in leadership. Here in
Singapore, we are led by highly qualified people (all with excellent
credentials). Unfortunately, during this virus, we got so busy celebrating
being hailed by the international media as the “Gold Standard” in managing the virus
that we forgot about are vast underbelly of migrant workers. Then, there was a
scramble when the infections exploded in the dormitories
A wise person does not need to know everything. He or she needs
to recognize the fact and then look for the best person to do that aspect of
the job. Allowing someone to be the hero is sometimes the most heroic thing to
do. Let’s go back to America’s numbers. You have a president who is not a
medical doctor prescribing unproven medication from the presidential bully
pulpit. According to him, he is doing a fabulous job. At the time of writing,
America has 1,160,774 cases, which is more than next six nations combined and
in five months the virus has killed roughly ten thousand more than the Vietnam
War in 14-years.
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