“REASONABLE

MEN ADAPT,
UNREASONABLE
MEN CHANGE THE
WORLD.”
Group 3
 If a leader is to develop
‘political will’ to change or
achieve something, they must
have at least some imagination
– some capacity to envision
how things might be different.
It can produce both benign and
unpleasant outcomes. Lincoln
had ‘political will’ in
abundance, but so did Hitler.
We therefore need to avoid
POLITICAL WIL celebrating ‘political will’ for
its own sake, and to ask what
L purpose it is serving.
Singapore has been called the improbable nation. Lee
Kuan Yew, when announcing separation from Malaysia,
said it was, “a moment of anguish because all my life…I
have believed in Malaysian merger and the unity of the
two territories.”
But he had to make independence work.
“I had first to demonstrate that Singapore could survive
without living off the economies of Indonesia and
Malaysia. We are not parasites dependent only on our
neighbours.”
Lee had described himself as very determined. He has
said, “If I decide that something is worth doing, then I’ll
put my heart and soul to it. I’ll give everything to make
it succeed. So I would put my strength, determination
and willingness to see my objective to its conclusion.
PRAGMATIC GOVERNANCE,
PRACTICAL GOVERNMENT
EXPERIMENTATION AND
INNOVATION
Lee Kuan Yew and his staff were most often pragmatic in their
approach to Singapore and while necessary it wasn’t always
enough. Contrary to this pragmatic approach especially when it
came to economic development, they’ve developed a spirit of
experimentation and innovation a risk-taking attitude which
would go on to help them with Housing, the development of
Jurong Industrial Estate, and foreign direct investment Of
course, it is not about taking reckless risks. Many of these
projects could have been stillborn if not for hard work and
persistence.
 EXPERIMENTATIO
N AND
INNOVATION
That willingness to try things out
spawned a generation of state
entrepreneurs who created,
almost out of nothing, national
icons such as Singapore Airlines,
DBS, ST Engineering, Changi
Airport, SingTel and so on. The
national computerization
program, started in the Ministry
of Defense, is another example
of a policy that transformed
Singapore.
 To present our views and win the case, we had
to be thorough in our research and compelling
in our arguments. It created, in my view, a
culture of excellence in the civil service. Never
BUT, NO take short cuts or the intellectually lazy
SHORT argument, for Mr. Lee would sniff out these
weaknesses.
CUTS This culture of analytical rigour, openness to
ideas balanced with realism, induses the
political leadership as much as it does the civil
service.
THINKING AHEAD
This was an attitude taken by Mr. Lee and his staff
in the aftermath of the Separation in August 1965.
He had asked Dr. Winsemius to advise on
economic strategy. It was through his enlistment
that Mr. Lee became open to ideas and not
dogmatic. Aside from learning about the best
practices of others Mr. Lee also said: "If we don't
learn from other people's errors, costly errors, we
would be ruined, wouldn't we? We have got very
little margin to spare.“’
LEARNING FROM OTHERS,
LEARNING FROM THE BEST
He explained: "I learnt from negative
examples.... There are thousands of other cities
and we can see the mistakes they have made.
We can also see what they have done right."
This approach has been embraced by the
government in every sphere - learn from others,
learn from the best.

LEARNING FROM OTHERS,

LEARNING FROM THE BEST
 On making his vision of a garden city, Lee Kuan Yew transformed
the city of concrete and steel to one with shrubs, flowers and parks.
POLICY IS He surveyed the world for ideas and became knowledgeable about
soil, vegetation, tress, climate and fertilisers.
IMPLEMEN Khatib Camp, at the time, was being redeveloped as the Singapore
TATION Armed Forces (SAF) artillery complex, where Lee had noticed that
the open space of the camp was sparsely planted and that the trees
were mere saplings. He then said that we should have planted at the
IMPLEMEN fence line where it struck me that Lee was serious about greening
TATION IS Singapore. And surely enough, Lee’s attention to detail, while
keeping the big picture in mind, has taught in government that
POLICY when making policies, the effective implementation of policies is as
important as their making.
PEOPLE AND LEADERSHIP