What can a Portuguese prince from the Age of Exploration teach us about the search for leadership in an Age of Uncertainty?

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz, the author of Great People Decisions and a Senior Adviser of Egon Zehnder International, describes when Prince Henry, born in 1394 as the third son of King John I of Portugal, realised that his country had no coast along the Mediterranean Sea, heavily invested in bringing together some of the leading geographers, cartographers, astronomers, mathematicians and sailors from across Europe and the Arab world to deal with this challenge.

Like Henry the Navigator, Singapore has created an economic miracle by also investing in talent. Its leaders, realising that the only way for Singapore to grow without natural resources or scale was to invest in talent, systematically attracted the best people, both to key political appointments and its civil service. As a result, Singapore’s gross domestic product (GDP) per capita has multiplied by a factor of eight in real terms (constant dollars) since 1965, while GDP per capita in the US, the UK and several other highly developed nations has multiplied by a factor of less than three.

Evidence suggests that an unprecedented war for talent will take place in Asia for at least the next two decades. The public sector in Singapore will increasingly be competing for talent with the private sector, both in its home country and abroad. Indirectly, other governments in the world will also be competing for some of the best talent in the private sector, generating in turn an additional demand over the potential leaders that the Singapore public sector will need.

Claudio Fernández-Aráoz sees 5 priorities to enhancing Singapore’s capacity to find and develop the next wave of public leadership:

-  Adjust the screening process
-  Source more openly
-  Avoid becoming mechanical
-  Make better appointments
-  Educate senior leaders for making great people decisions

Read the complete article in Ethos Issue 7 at the Center for Governance & Leadership.

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