Crises demand leaders, not managers

By Andrew Salmon

Their activities have been overshadowed by tragedy, but TV footage of the Sewol disaster provided inspirational viewing for anyone familiar with marine rescue and recovery efforts ― for those engaged displayed real courage.

Two helicopters hovered over the stricken vessel, plucking people to safety. (One sudden gust of wind, one second of decontrol and one helo could have been flung against the other, to the destruction of both.)

Coast guardsmen and fishermen drove their boats against and even onto the hull of the capsizing ship. (A practice carrying with it the danger of the rescue boat being snagged or crushed, as happened with the U.K.’s Mousehole lifeboat in 1981.)

Coast guardsmen actually boarded the foundering vessel in a desperate effort to reach survivors. (The perils of this need no explication.)

Divers braved chilly waters and surging currents to enter an underwater labyrinth where they felt around in darkness for bodies. (I hope psychological help is being prepared for these divers, whose nightmarish task carries with it huge risk of post-traumatic stress.)

Korea should be proud of these men and women, but sadly they have been almost entirely overlooked. Instead, the bereaved families have dominated the discourse; the media has focused on uncovering real and perceived shortcomings in rescue and recovery operations; and the public has indulged its anger with endless critiques of the administration, the civil service and the uniformed services.

Regardless of the bravery of rescue personnel, there was a failure in overall disaster management. Bureaucratic errors and oversights increased the grief of the bereaved families. Different organizations squabbled over priority. Nobody took overall charge. The man who should have ― the hapless prime minister ― proved utterly unequal to the task.

This is hardly surprising. Korea’s prime minister, like many senior positions in the administration and government, is customarily a bureaucrat or an academic. Indeed, Korea’s elites tend to be drawn to these sectors, or to business.

Alas, none of these fields train their personnel in leadership, and few bureaucrats, academics or business executives are required, in their day-to-day careers, to exercise it.

So what is leadership?

It is not management. Most educated people can do management. There are university courses for it, and the only qualification those courses require are academic scores. Management is simply organizing or arranging things and people so tasks are achieved.

Leadership is rarer. Most managers are not leaders, although leaders, by nature, have to manage. Field Marshal Lord Slim, arguably the finest British general of World War II, wrote: “I would define it as the projection of personality … it is that combination of persuasion, compulsion and example that makes other people do what you want them to do.”

Natural leaders do arise in business and politics, but in today’s world, the most reliable incubators of leadership ― the institutions where this mysterious charisma is distilled and instilled ― are military academies.

The U.S. Marine Corps ― perhaps the world’s most effective fighting force ― breaks down the traits of leadership as follows: bearing courage, decisiveness, dependability, endurance, enthusiasm, initiative, integrity, judgment, justice, knowledge, loyalty, tact and unselfishness.

This list provides a blueprint via which to judge those in leadership positions ― political, bureaucratic, managerial and academic. Few persons in these fields tick all the U.S. Marines’ boxes.

And this is natural, for the situations faced by a politician, a civil servant, a corporate manager or a university lecturer, are nowhere near as stressful, demanding or risk-laden as those faced by a Marine officer leading his men into the cannon’s mouth.

Here lies the problem. A disaster demands the traits required in battle leadership ― notably courage, decisiveness and initiative. But an academic may go his entire career without having to demonstrate courage, just as an executive may never have to take a big decision, and it is almost against the nature of a bureaucrat to take the initiative.

The Sewol tragedy shows that Korea needs a crisis manager. By national decree, this manager can be placed above existing hierarchies, establishing a chain-of-command that obviates organizational overlap and infighting.

He (or she) cannot be a bureaucrat or an academic, for what is needed is a doer, not a thinker. He or she needs to be forceful, courageous, cool-headed, risk-tolerant and responsible. He or she needs to be above group-think and able to operate beyond doctrine.

I would suggest, then, that the crisis management czar should come from Korea’s highly capable armed forces. Perhaps one day, the position may even be filled by one of the rank-and-file service personnel who cut their teeth in crisis management on the front lines during the tragedy off Jindo.

Andrew Salmon is a Seoul-based reporter and author. Reach him at andrewcsalmon@yahoo.co.uk.