LKY on Management

Wisdom distilled from some of the great visionary Lee Kuan Yew's many speeches-

Constantly Innovate

"Standing still is a sure way to extinction."

We have to move upwards to new niches, find a new path to succeed.  If we succeed, others
will later follow our path but first, we must work out that path and be successful. 
We should not brag about our strategies, especially before they have worked...
we must quietly sort our options to test out and implement them.  Some will fail,
but the key ones must succeed if we are to stay ahead and be a beacon for progress.

On Talent

I have learned that one high-calibre mind in charge of a Ministry makes the difference between
success and failure of a major project.  A top mind, given a task, brings together a group
of other able men, organises them into a cohesive team, and away the project goes...

Whenever I had lesser men in charge, the average or slightly above-average, I have had
to keep pushing and probing them, to review problems, to identify roadblocks, to suggest
solutions, to come back and to discover that less than the best has been achieved.  To be
exasperated and, often to be totally frustrated, is the price for not having an able and
talented man in charge.

(English financier) Gresham pointed that bad money drives out good money from circulation.
Well, bad leaders drive out good men from high positions.

Ability can be assessed fairly accurately by a person's academic record and achievements
at work.  Character is not so easily measured.  After some successes but too many failures,
I concluded that it was more important, though more difficult, to assess a person's
character.

On Plateaus

What I fear is complacency.  When things always become better, people tend to want more
for less work.

Deliver What You Promise

What you say, you must mean, and what you mean, you must deliver.  I always understate
what I intend to do and overachieve.

Make Sure Every Button Works

I want to make sure that every button works and even if you are using it only once in a 
while, please make sure every morning that it works.  And if it doesn't when I happen to be
around, then somebody is going to be in for a tough time because I do not want sloppiness.

Free of Ideology

If there was one formula for our success, it was that we were constantly studying how to make
things work, or how to make them work better.  I was never a prisoner of any theory.  What
guided me were reason and reality.  The acid test I applied to every theory or scheme was, 
would it work?  This was the golden thread that ran through my years in office.