Oon Yeoh has written in his recent column in The Sun about Steve Jobs (SJ), as I did last week.

Knowing that Oon is more ICT-savvy than I will ever be, I take his views and experience about the internetworked world seriously. Therefore, let me quote him and suggest what the public services of Malaysia can learn from the likes of techno-entrepreneurs like SJ.

Oon wrote that SJ’s approach to product development did not follow traditional approaches: ‘He didn’t care for focus groups or consumer market research, believing that when it comes to new products, consumers don’t know what they want!’

I totally agree! MBA teaches focus groups though.

In the field of leadership and learning, which are subjects of deep interest to me, Peter Vaill, the well-known guru of High Performing Systems (HPS), calls this kind of leadership style and behaviour ‘white water rafting’ or WWR

WWR is a framework for leadership under conditions of permanent change. Such change is so paradigmatic that everything in the environment, including the word ‘change’ and its meanings are changing even as we talk about it. Vaill uses the WWR metaphor to talk about this kind of leadership paradigm.

What is WWR leadership? Let us use the Vaill metaphor to understand the issues and his concerns. When one goes WWR, what or who is the leader of the raft? What does leadership of about seven or eight people mean?

Is the leader the captain of the ship, as in the metaphor of the Titanic ? In this model the captain wears a white cap and often blows the whistle or sounds the horn to make himself heard. There is a retinue of sailors who are dressed up and waiting for captain’s orders to do the right things, as they have been drilled to do under all type of conditions and even blindly, if needed and necessary.

Does everyone have the requisite leadership traits for WWR conditions? Is that next boulder that the raft and rafters face, the same as the last boulder they had to deal with?

Can they use the yesterday’s model and template of discipline to simply close their eyes and execute new responses? Is there any heroic-leader available to guarantee all of them will not sink while addressing the next boulder and the concomitant rushing white waters?

\"NONE\"Oon is absolutely right about SJ and his intuitive model for leadership. I had labelled it leadership with organisational integrity. The organising framework for the SJ’s internetworked world of Silicon Valley was the three dimensions of that compound word which also defined his worldview.

Internet is the first word.  It was technology designed by US Army and meant to be ‘uncontrollable’ by design intent. Secondly, it was telecommunications related technology and therefore developed for ‘networking from its inception.

While the original focus was for telecommunications networking enablement, the uses were always intended for people; and even if now for other machines, the original intent was meant for societal applications, and never meant only as an end in itself.

Therefore, is it any surprise that this tool is today enabling the growth and explosion of social networking of the kind and fervour of the Arab Spring?

Thirdly, and most importantly, this technology will change the way in which we work, play, and have our being. That concept of ‘work’ is the third aspect of the compound word, ‘internetworking’ technology. Therefore, while the Internet is only a medium, the applications run into millions of possibilities (now called Apple-apps), as SJ single-handedly demonstrated to the world.

What then are the implications of this leadership model for change in an ever changing world that SJ partly designed, developed and demonstrated as a preferred style to us?

Advice for chief secretary

My advice is for the public services under the current tutelage of my good friend and chief secretary to the government (or KSN in Malay), Mohd Sidek Hassan. The KSN as secretary to the cabinet is of course the most senior public servant for the government of the day.

He is also of ministerial rank and is in fact the only legitimate chief custodian of the government of the day, after a general election is called.

\"azlan\"The prime minister would and should become a non-functionary, other than the leader of his political party.

Therefore, there is no legal basis for the government of the day to use public service functionaries to conduct their election campaigns. I hope that the parliamentary select committee on electoral reform will take this matter up seriously too.

The newer WWR leadership model dismisses the use of power and authority to ‘force decisions on others’. Instead, it deploys various models of influence peddling. In the older days at Intan’s training for senior officers, we used the movie, ‘The Twelve Angry Men’, to make this point.  

Through it we showed how Henry Fonda, the lead actor, slowly but surely convinces and communicates his conviction that the young boy charged of murder was not the real culprit, but only if all the jury reviews the case without natural prejudice. By the end of the movie, the other 11 jurors agree to revise their decision.

The leadership model requires the public services to give up authority and power as the only basis of ‘executive authority’ and instead learn to use the skills of soft power and logic to convince others.

That is a tough call, especially when the public service has been taught to believe the two cardinal rules:

1.    The Boss is always right, period!

2.    When the Boss is ever wrong, always revert to Rule No 1.

There are no other rules in this worldview and logic system. My greatest fear is that after 54 years of one-party rule, this rule has become endemic to the public services and become an acculturation of the psychology of a bureaucracy.

Bureaucrats hide behind rules to justify their actions. Idiocrats twist rules and regulations to say what they want these to say.

Can the public services change, dear KSN? May God bless Malaysia!