[Vnbiz] Future Leaders for Vietnam

[Tran Dinh Hoanh]

Dear Thu Huong & CACC,

Thu Huong's thoughtful message touches upon some very important
concepts in economic and political analyses, and raises a concern
about developing youth leaders for youth inside Vietnam.  I would like
to address those issues.

First, the important concepts:  Thu Huong mentions of efficiency and
democracy in this sentence: "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."

**  Yes and no.  Many people throughout the world think the same way
and the idea has also been expressed by another expression: "Democracy
is the least imperfect among imperfect human systems."

I used to use these expressions myself.  But after many years of
thinking about these issues, I have realized that all these
expressions, though may sound reasonable on their face, are actually
not very helpful and may be confusing to our mind.

The reason is that they use what I have been calling "the label
thinking" like this:  "There is this thing called "democracy" and it
is the best among the imperfect, or it is the least inefficient among
other inefficient systems."  And of course, statements of the same
style may be spoken of other non-democratic systems, i.e., monarchy,
one-man dictatorship, one-family dictatorship, one-party dictatorship,
whatever dictatorship, etc.   Meaning, we simply talk about different
labels and give a different value to each label.

This kind of thinking, first, creates a lot of unnecessary argument,
because people often disagree on what label (what system) is better
than what label and, second, it is just wrong.  In real life, we NEVER
can say that what system, what method, what tactic, what strategy is
better.  Every method, every system, every strategy is EQUALLY good.
Each works best in a particular set of circumstances, and doesn't work
well in other sets of circumstances.  That's all.

Same thing with management.  No management method is better than
others.  Each set of circumstances, each company, each group of people
requires a different method of management to work well.

**  So we just have to do away with label thinking (although we will
have to use these label terms once in a while in our writing, to
simplify the way we talk). The real important concept (that Thu Huong
mentioned) is EFFICIENCY.

What system, what method is efficient when and where?  I loosely
define "efficient" as "what works."  If this system A works better
than system B in my company, then system A is more efficient FOR MY
COMPANY, NOW  (meaning, it may not be efficient for my company 5 years
from now, or may not be efficient for another company now).

**  Our next step in the analysis is what makes a system efficient?
In this context, let me focus on one major concept: Competition.

Competition makes a system efficient.  This is easy to understand:  If
you compete in a sport, you will be come more efficient than without
competition.  This is true from soccer and volley ball, to economics
and politics.

But for competition to work well,  just like everything else in the
world, it has to be at the right place, at the right time, at the
right dose.  Too much competition or too little competition is bad.
Competition at the wrong time or wrong place can also be bad.  Every
thing has to be JUST RIGHT for a particular set of CIRCUMSTANCES.

Say, when we are at war with another country, a one-party system can
be extremely strong and effective, because the life-and-death
competition from the enemy country is good enough to make us
efficient. Indeed, when a country faces external war, internal
competition among its political parties can weaken its war efforts
(Say, the quarrel between the Republican and the Democrat in the US on
the War on Terror weakens the US administration's position on this
war).  In this case, we have too much competition, i.e, not very good.

Another example, we often see that a country may call itself
"democracy" with a number of political parties, but all these
political parties are in fact just a group of privileged people who
collude to share power and corruption spoils among themselves.  There
is no real competition among them.  This is similar to situation when
a number of companies collude to fix prices in a market.  We have
multi-companies but no competition.  That explains why many
multi-party "democracies" are full of corruption and
inefficiencies--there is no real competition among these parties.  The
parties very much BS on little things while colluding on things that
really matter.

So when we structure our economy or our political environment, we need
to pay attention to real competition. How to inject just enough
competition into the environment to make all systems works very
efficiently.

**  But how do we know how much competition is enough competition?
The answer depends totally on the facts in each case.  We just have to
analyze the facts intensively in each case to know whether competition
is good enough.  (We will visit competition analysis for later day.
For now it suffices to simply mention that we need to analyze each
case separately).

Generally in economics, when the number of competitors come to less
than 10, especially when it is reduced to only 3 or 4 dominant
competitors in the market, the possibility for collusion is high
(because the fewer competitors are around, the easier for them to
collude), and anti-trust enforcers start to get nervous and watch the
industry closely.  The more competitors the better for competition.

But in politics, it is different.  In economics, each company may get
a small piece of the market.  But in politics, the government needs to
be a strong team and, therefore,  the winning party takes all (well,
at least all the major posts).  Thus, most people tend to think that
two parties would be best, because with only two parties, the winner
would generally be voted in by more than 50 percent of the voting
population.  If we have more than two parties, the winner may actually
have a very small number of votes, say, 25 percent of the people's
votes, too little to really say it represents the country.

I am not sure if two parties or three parties are best for
competition,  but I am sure that if there are 6, 7 or more parties, it
is going to be every hard to gain political consensus for the country,
something we don't want to see.

On the other hand, whatever the number of parties is, if they don't
really compete, but collude to share power and privilege over the
population, then we have a number but no competition.

**  The next concept I'd like to introduce is "environment."
Environment is so crucial because environment will determine the state
of health of whatever lives in it.  Say, a warm environment would be
very good for tropical fruits like pineapple and water melon but would
be bad potatoes and lettuce.  In the desert everything dies, but
scorpion and snakes may live.   In Dalat , we don't have to grow pine
trees.  They grow naturally there.  And in Bien Hoa, pine trees don't
grow but grapes grow well.

For competition to grow, we need to  create an environment in which
competition will grow well.  For leadership to grow, we need to create
an environment for leaders to grow.

**  In the Vietnam economy, for the last decade or so, private
enterprises have been on the rise tremendously.  It means, there is a
lot of competition among companies in Vietnam.  The government has
done a relatively good job in opening the economy and creating a
relatively good competitive environment.  That is very good, because
competition produces leaders.  Each owner of a business is a leader,
and he has to be a good leader (not just a passive yes-man).  Then he
has to produce many leaders in his company, otherwise the company will
lose the competitive battle and will die.  So the competitive
environment in the economy is producing and will continue to produce
good leaders as our economy continues to develop.

It is in politics with only one party and no competition that we have
problems.  No competition, no good leaders.  Regardless how the VCP
tries to produce good leaders (through many VCP organizations such as
Thanh Doan or the VCP itself)  it will fail.  It is impossible to
produce good leaders without competition.

And since political leaders have such great power over the education,
economics and everything else, the country will continue to suffer
from bad leaders in may areas, until the root cause is solved:
Competition in politics.

That is how leadership building is and will be happening in our
country at the strategic (or policy or environment) level .  And
within the environment, specific actions to build leadership, such as
leadership training, leadership courses, leadership seminars will
proper, or wither.

Thu Huong, that is an awfully winding way to analyze your question.
Sorry for being long, sister.  At least you should know that you give
me the motivation to write intensively.

That is about policies.  But specifically for you, Thu Huong, I think
young professionals should simply stand up to be leaders, should start
your own projects or your own business to lead, should band together
with other young leaders to give each other mutual support, to share
experience and knowledge, and to combine strength.

In other words, just lead.  And you shall have support and followers.

Have a great day, Thu Huong and all.

Hoanh
__________

On 7/20/06, Thu Huong <meocon24 at yahoo.com> wrote:
>
> [Vietnam Business Forum]
>
>
>
> 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, LLB, JD
Attorney of Law
Washington DC