Ethos Issue 7, Jan 2010

In Search of the New Public Leader
Claudio Fernández-Aráoz

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

SUCCESSFUL EXPLORATION
While thinking about the exploratory capacity of government, I could not help but recall an extraordinary example of foresighted leadership from centuries ago. At a recent business event in Lisbon, I became familiar with the story of Prince Henry, born in 1394 as the third son of King John I of Portugal. At the age of 24, realising that his country had no coast along the Mediterranean Sea, Prince Henry devoted his passion towards worldwide exploration. This visionary man founded his institute in Sagres on the south-western-most point of Portugal, Cape Saint Vincent—a place ancient geographers referred to as the western edge of the earth. The institute, best described as a fifteenth century research and development facility, included libraries, an astronomical observatory, ship-building facilities, a chapel, and housing for staff.

The institute was designed to teach navigational techniques to Portuguese sailors, to collect and disseminate geographical information about the world, to invent and improve navigational and seafaring equipment, to sponsor expeditions, and to spread Christianity around the world. In order to fulfil his dream, Prince Henry brought together some of the leading geographers, cartographers, astronomers, and mathematicians from across Europe and the Arab world. He invested heavily in them. Likewise, he also brought into the country some of the best sailors, many of whom he found in Italy.

The institute’s primary goal was to explore the western coast of Africa in order to locate a route to Asia. One of its innovations included a new type of ship, called a caravel, faster and much more manoeuvrable than prior types of boats and quite functional despite its small size (two of Christopher Columbus’ ships, the Niña and the Pinta, were caravels).

TALENT AS THE KEY
Although Prince Henry never sailed on any of these expeditions and rarely left Portugal, he became known as "Prince Henry the Navigator". The successful expeditions he sponsored were key to many discoveries in Portugal, which, as a result, became an extremely powerful nation, with an extraordinary impact on the rest of the world. Although some people believe that Portugal’s discoveries happened by chance, as Peter Drucker has put it, "nothing good happens
by accident".¹

The key to these extraordinary feats of exploration was Prince Henry’s investment in talent, which represented not only an enormous financial commitment but also a remarkable degree of openness in bringing on board key scientists from the Arab world, given the conflict between Christians and Muslims at the time.

Like Henry the Navigator, Singapore has created an economic miracle by 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, and have been doing so for well over four decades. 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.²

Singapore’s economic achievements can be credited to the integrity of its leaders and their long-term vision, its ability to reinvent itself, and its global outlook. As Neo Boon Siong has described, Singapore’s unique form of "dynamic governance", based on the principles of incorruptibility, meritocracy, markets, pragmatism, and multi-racialism, has given it an extraordinary capacity to think ahead, to think again, and to think across.³ A continual flow of able, honest people has allowed Singapore to become one of the world’s most competitive nations.

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