A ‘magic formula’ for the 4G leadership and beyond

Consider the strengths of collective leadership at a time of complex challenges

- Parag Khanna

In 1968, Dutch political scientist Arend Lijphart considered a puzzle: How is it that countries with ethnic, religious and linguistic divisions remain stable despite the likelihood of undesirable outcomes such as communal violence?

Focusing on his native Netherlands, he concluded that if leaders are cognisant of such negative scenarios, they pre-emptively overcompensate through inclusive policy-making and power-sharing agreements. The process of anticipating worst-case outcomes and taking premeditated steps to avoid them is now known as the “Lijphart effect”.

I was reminded of Singapore’s penchant for this combination of premeditated paranoia and collective leadership as Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong sat together with the People’s Action Party (PAP) fourth-generation (4G) leader Lawrence Wong and former party chairman Khaw Boon Wan at the Istana to discuss the party’s succession process.

At the heart of PM Lee’s comments was not his apparent successor but the process of designing and building a team to grapple with increasingly complex challenges. He spoke of a world that is getting more complicated, and a leader as someone who “maximises the abilities and experiences and instincts of a wide range of backgrounds to get them to work together and deliver an outstanding result that no individual can achieve alone”.