[Vnbiz] Future Leaders for Vietnam

[Thu Huong]

Dear anh Hoanh and CACC,

Thank you for the many replies in this thread of
discussion. I have not been really interested in
politics and therefore my understanding in this field
is rather limited. However, I do observe the
interlinked relationship between all areas and the
impact that a political party may have on, for
example, education and the country's economy.

>From my understanding through anh Hoanh's analysis, it
seems that there is a price to pay for democracy.
After all, there is nothing that is absolutely free
and the price democracy ought to pay is inefficiency.
When we have a group of ten people operating in a
democratic manner, we need to ask for opinions from
all ten and decide according to the majority. For a
company operating in a competitive market, I do not
think that democracy is the way to go. Decisions in a
company need to be centralized, or else the company
would be fraught with inefficiency & slow response
especially to the fast-changing & hugely competitive
market. 

I raised the discussion of future leaders for Vietnam
with some intentions in mind. Of course, I do know
that there are Vietnamese youths scattered around the
world wanting to make a difference and wanting to
contribute to the development of Vietnam. The same
goes for countries such as China and India. In fact,
the influx of expatriates back into their home
countries (China, India) has been one of the main
driving forces for the phenomenal economic growth of
China and India over the recent past years. In Silicon
Valley for example, the majority of the most
successful IT entrepreneurs are actually ethnic
Chinese or Indian. Hence, the image of China/India as
the future economic powers has been raised profoundly
on the world stage.

With that in mind, my particular concern lies with
leadership education for the youths in Vietnam, for
those who do not have the chance to go overseas. There
might be activities all over our nation to educate
these qualities. However, we do not have structural
leadership education. With my eight-year experience in
Singapore, the future leaders are groomed and
recognized at a very young age. In secondary schools,
there are extra-cirricular activities whereby students
are trained and given the chance to lead. The
Singapore government has spent a great deal of money
and efforts in providing leadership education &
opportunities for the brightest in the country to
groom them for future economic, political & social
leadership posts. 

I observe the lack of such opportunities in Vietnam.
Or perhaps I have not attended University in Vietnam
to fully understand the changes that are happening in
our country. Please enlighten me in this area. What I
hope to see are more systematic ways & more investment
into education, especially leadership education to
produce the leaders for tomorrow.

These are my thoughts, somewhat scattered, amidst a
group discussion for my research report in this
program. There are certain issues I find of strong
interests to me. And I hope the discussion in CACC
will be more lively, for only with exchange of ideas
and discussion can we find lights to problems that we
are concerned about.

Thank you for sharing, and have a great day!

Warmest,

Thu Huong

--- Tran Dinh Hoanh <tdhoanh at gmail.com> wrote:

> 
> [Vietnam Business Forum]
> 
> 
> 
> Dear CACC,
> 
> There is this thought about this leadership issue I
> would like to
> share with everyone.  This is directly related to
> the issues of
> organizational internal discipline, treatment toward
> citizens, and
> democracy.
> 
> (Well, I've been thinking hard about this subject,
> and ideas keep
> coming out.  My Gosh, every time you get a profound
> question, your
> poor miserable brain won't stop working.  I need
> some Aspirin, for
> God's sake!  In the period of a month, two ladies
> threw out two
> incredible questions that make us (at least, me)
> think and think and
> think non-stop.  The first one was from Le Thuy (How
> to teach
> morality?) and this one is from Thu Huong (Where do
> future Vietnamese
> leaders come from?). Incredible!
> 
> Anyway, each organization, for it to be strong, has
> to have strong
> internal discipline.  So each organization usually
> has its own
> hierarchy of authority; orders from the top have to
> be followed by
> people below, otherwise the organization will weaken
> and collapse.
> The point here is:  There is not much democracy in
> any organization.
> This is true in a soccer team, a company or a
> political party.  The
> NATURE of organization is ANTI-DEMOCRATIC.
> 
> In a free-market economy or a political democracy,
> there is
> competition among many organizations (among
> companies in an economy,
> or among political parties in a country).  The
> competition among these
> anti-democratic organizations operates as a natural
> check against the
> anti-democratic tendency of organizations, and
> forces these
> organizations to act democratically to the public
> outside the
> organization (i.e., acting nicely and politely to
> consumers/citizens).
>  Thus, COMPETITION is really the essence of market
> economy (for
> economics) and democracy (for political science).
> 
> What happens in a one-company or one-party system is
> that we have this
> company/party which is anti-democratic as a natural
> matter (as
> discussed above), but then there is no competition
> from other
> companies/parties to operate as a check against its
> anti-democratic
> organizational behavior.  So the internal
> anti-democratic behavior of
> the company/party simply flows out into the public
> and becomes
> anti-democratic behavior toward the public too.
> 
> So when we have a monopoly (i.e., no competition),
> the economic
> monopolist bosses its consumers around (Consumers
> are beggars and no
> kings), and political monopolist acts arrogantly and
> abusively toward
> its citizens.
> 
> So the leaders' arrogance is the natural result of
> the system that
> they build and maintain.  We will not be able to ask
> leaders to be
> humble; and leaders, at least most of them, won't be
> able to act
> humbly, unless we can reform the system to inject
> competition into it.
> 
> Have a great day!
> 
> Hoanh
>






TH 




 










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