Blame His Men, Does Pak SBY Learn It from Sun Tzu?

In the last Cabinet meeting, President SBY publicly criticized its Minister for their low performances. He lamented that less than 50% of instructions haven’t been carried out without further accounts of neglected instructions. And he gives them 3 months to shape up.

Some thought this was the blame game covering his own weakness and abdication of responsibility.

However, I guessed Pak SBY learns it from Sun Tzu, the ancient Chinese thinker, who wrote Art of War about 2300 years ago. As the China’s oldest military literature, Art of War was at first to serve military strategy. But somehow now it is widely used in business.

One of Sun Tzu’s philosophy suggests:

“If words of command are not clear and distinct, if orders are not thoroughly understood, the general is to blame. But if his orders are clear, and the soldiers nevertheless disobey, then it is the fault of their officers.”

SBY must have been so sure that his orders are crystal clear and doable, but some ministers were lazy, even they might have been forgetting the instructions. Is this true? Why don’t ministers implement them?

To me, ministers’ capability aside, Indonesia’s problems are so complicated. It might be the instructions are so normative to solve convoluted problems. For instance, problems of law enforcement demands comprehensive actions from different ministers and institutions. This herculean task must be led and orchestrated by president himself.

As for who to blame when failure happens, soccer management offers the best paragon. Given the result of World Cup 2010 failure, Argentine Football Association (AFA) sacked the coach, soccer living legend Maradona, but neither Messi or Higuain, the players. Likewise, in Europe’s world-class clubs, the managers took the brunt of it when the club can’t get a trophy.

It makes sense that the leader must take the responsible. The buck stops here.

Whatever happens, the ministers were the president’s choice. President SBY through prerogative rights selected his own ministers the way club managers have all powers to buy and sell the players. Furthermore, at that time, the process was so unique including inviting the candidates to Cikeas, conducted psycho test and elimination process and widely covered by media reminiscent of Indonesian Idol.

And if it is true that Pak SBY takes Sun Tzu to find scapegoats of his failure, then he should also realize another Sun Tzu’s doctrine, that is:

”A skilled commander seeks victory from the situation and does not demand it of his subordinates.”

My two cents, Pak SBY can learn much about effective and decisive leadership from his senior, the late General Benny Moerdani, Indonesia’s arguably best general.

In Mata Najwa television program, Subagyo HS, former Army Chief and then-member of anti-terrorist squad who stormed the hijacked air plane in 1981 recounted his experience with his superior, Benny Moerdani.

During the last training before action, they asked how if the hijackers covered themselves with hostages as shields. Benny ordered them to “just shoot” and anything happened following the operation was his responsibility. The squads were reliefs to take bold actions including, if necessary, unintentionally hostage shooting and the operation was remarkable success.

Focus on goal, analyze the situation, set priority, act and finally take risk and not to blame subordinates. That’s true leadership.

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