Leadership skills needed for office

Jasper S. Kim, The Korea Herald, Asia News Network/Seoul

The restoration of Cheonggyecheon through downtown Seoul is symbolic of the steadfast determination of a new era of CEO-type leadership in public office both here and around the world.

Prior to this new era of CEOs holding bureaucratic positions (what I refer to as, "CEOcrats"), CEOs normally held positions in the private sector and bureaucrats in the public sector.

The difference in both substance and form between CEOs and bureaucrats is clear and definitive. CEOs are offensive players who see the world in terms of opportunity gained or not gained, within the greater context of a positive (not fixed) sum game.

That is, CEOs look to expand the pie rather than figuring out how to divide it.

Bureaucrats, on the other hand, are often defensive players who generally see the world in terms of positions held constant or lost within the greater context of a fixed (not positive) sum game.

Bureaucrats allocate their time and resources to maintain their fixed slices of pie, and that one person's larger slice is seen as the result of another person's smaller slice (a "my gain is your loss" mentality).

Most bureaucrats therefore play the management game (albeit of a city, province, state, or country) much like one-dimensional chess, spending scarce resources trying to put the opponent's king piece in checkmate to declare so-called "victory," usually relating to a politically-based proposition or initiative.

The problem is that such behavior often ends in stalemate (congressional gridlock, or in extreme cases, the actual shutting down of government, as seen in the U.S. Congress in the mid- 1990s); this is not too different from World War I-type positional trench warfare in which small bits of territory went back and forth, with needless casualties and lost precious resources.

Until recently, the CEO and bureaucratic worlds rarely intersected. The thinking was that the two areas were "apples and oranges," in which the perception was that the skill set of one could not be leveraged to the other.

This is no longer the case in today's globalised world. CEOs have now decided to leverage a successful career in terms of wealth creation beyond the corporate world to make a more meaningful impact on society.

Many CEOs are intelligent, driven, and answer to the ultimate client, their shareholders. If you think about it, these same traits and drive to satisfy the client is not too dissimilar to what's needed to be a successful bureaucrat, especially when one equates answering to shareholders as answering to a political constituency.

Viewed this way, the "apples and oranges" quickly converge to "apples and apples," which allows many CEOs to add value outside the boardroom.

Examples of such "CEOcrats" exist here in South Korea, the United States, and Europe.

Seoul City Mayor Lee Myung-bak is the closest example of Korea's new class of CEOcratic leadership. Lee's advance to CEO of Hyundai Engineering and Construction at a young age, in the midst of the early stages of Korea's rapid growth period, is a story admired by many Koreans of diverse ages and background.

Some see Mayor Lee as strong-handed, others as a leader with vision. But what is clear is that his CEO skill-set and experience helped him to see things from a perspective which non- CEO bureaucrats may have been unable to do.

Specifically, that in the middle of downtown Seoul, a simple stream of water could be converted and repackaged into a stream of commerce, representing both a social and economic revenue generator for the city. And, much of the budget for such a conversion project was from existing budget expenditures for the maintenance of water projects.

Apart from whether the conversion was a net good or bad thing, what is clear is that it represents a classic value-adding effort, which bears all the hallmarks of a CEO's touch -- not from a top-floor boardroom but from the Seoul mayor's office.

Maybe the Seoul City mayor can be more aptly called the Seoul City "manager" for maximizing taxpayer value with a bottomline goal.

Some have also argued that King Sejong, during Korea's Joseon Dynasty (1392-1910), ruled as much as a manager as a monarch, with the use of statistics and double-entry accounting to mitigate corruption and maximize revenue collection; he also took advice from regular citizens relating to policymaking.

Other examples of such "city managers" and/or "CEOcratic" leadership can be seen with New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg (former CEO of Bloomberg, a financial information service provider).

For example, as noted by a leading newspaper, Mayor Bloomberg's management area looks more like an investment bank's trading floor than a large and sleepy office tucked away from his advisers. His desk is surrounded by advisers in "pod-like" structures, where communication is instant and response time is minimized.

This flat "hub-and-spokes" management communication structure at the mayoral level is directly influenced from his days as a member of the leading U.S. investment bank Salomon Brothers (later Salomon Smith Barney, one of my former firms before Ewha Womans University).

Mayor Bloomberg's structure has led to a lower crime, stable unemployment (following 9/11), and a push for educational reform in the city.

Similarly, in Ireland, Dublin's city manager (John Fitzgerald, former CEO of Cork Corp) leveraged his private sector skill-set toward a successful renovation and repackaging of the Liffey River to renovate the downtown Dublin area, which has boomed from the mid-1990s following his appointment.

Such a "make-it-happen" spirit, as seen here in South Korea, the United States, and Europe, typifies the thinking of a new era of "CEOcrats" and "CEOcratic leadership" for the 21st century that is much needed in the public sphere to maximize taxpayer gains in today's globalised society.

If this trend continues, traditional bureaucrats may soon be faced with greater competition from such an emerging new generation of "CEOcrats" in the very near future.

The writer is professor of international law at the Graduate School of International Studies, Ewha Womans University.