There are four noble truths in Buddhism, five pillars in Islam and ten commandments in Christianity. These religious edicts have a deep resonance with mankind and have remained relatively constant over time.

The laws of physics and mathematics are universal. The law of gravity on an apple is arguably the same whether it is on earth, or any celestial body with a defined mass. The Pythagorean theorem is also irrefutable whether you are in one galaxy or another.

In contrast, one cannot say the same for “leadership”. There is a vast amount of knowledge on leadership — theories, mantras, heuristics, models and creeds. These are neither constant nor universal. Some may be applicable to one culture, but become irrelevant or irreverent in another. Some may be useful for one circumstance, but become counter-productive or destructive when the situation changes. It is against this backdrop, and with trepidation, that I humbly offer a few observations about leadership, gleaned from my personal journey during the COVID-19 pandemic.

In preparing this essay, my research took me to an earlier work entitled “The SAF SARS Diary” published 17 years ago. That diary chronicled the SAF SARS experience scientifically with charts, statistics and flow diagrams. Fast forward to the present day, the information terrain has changed significantly, with much of the science and data freely available in open source literature. What is left then, perhaps, is for me to capture some of the less codifiable but no less important aspects of the crisis, the thoughts and dilemmas, the fears and triumphs, the texture, touch and feel of key decisions. And I shall borrow a few fairy tales to aid me in this delicate endeavour.

Unlike scriptures and scientific expositions, fairy tales are often relegated to the children's section, passed over as frivolous material, something to be grown out of. Yet, they are often translated into numerous languages, and enjoyed across cultures and ages. There is clearly more than meets the eye with old, wrinkly story tellers. The telling and retelling of these seemingly innocuous tales actually transmits gems, tacit and otherwise, across the generations. Much later in my adult life, I was finally able to appreciate the many leadership lessons hiding in plain sight. Perhaps, as the saying goes, “when the student is ready, the teacher will appear”.

THE THREE LITTLE PIGS

This fable is about how the straw and wooden huts were no match for the big bad wolf, and the little pigs were saved only by the brick house. First appearing in a nursery rhyme by James Halliwell-Phillipps, published in 1886, the moral of the story found its way into many aphorisms, including one by Mr Warren Buffet — “Only when the tide goes out do you discover who has been swimming naked”.

Metaphorically, this “brick house” was usually painstakingly erected by a previous generation. One example is the culture of cleanliness, handed down as the practices of “standby bed” and “area cleaning”. While countries have varying success dealing with the virus, large COVID-19 outbreaks within military installations were less common, despite our communal living conditions. We have to thank our sergeant majors for the hygiene standards indoctrinated at basic military training.

Specific to medical policies that put us in a good stead, the SAF started its annual influenza vaccination exercise in 2009, ten years before COVID-19 struck. Every year, we achieve around 85-90% vaccination rate with little fanfare. Hence, when the mission came for the SAF to vaccinate its people against COVID-19, it felt almost like we had already rehearsed for it.

Similarly for logistics. Our quick response in pushing out the surgical masks to Singaporeans during a time of global shortage was made possible by methodical stockpiling over the years, turning over expired stock, replenishing, and quality control, to make sure that when the tide goes out, we are not found naked.

At a time when people around the world were struggling to keep ICU patients alive with improvised ventilators, we were quietly confident because during good times, we had squirrelled away a few hundred transport ventilators. While these do not have the full suite of functions, they will do the job of keeping patients alive if their situation worsens. At the request of the Ministry of Health, we delivered them to the public hospitals. Thankfully, the situation stabilised and the transport ventilators did not see action, but our clinician colleagues were relieved that they need not carry the ethical burden of deciding who lived and who didn't.

The leadership lesson is the preparedness mentality. The man on the street will not worry about black swan events. It is the leader's unpopular job to be paranoid, to save for rainy days, and to delay gratification. Such a mentality is behind many of the things we take for granted. An example is Lim Chu Kang road which is designed as an emergency runway. Why plan for an emergency runway when Singapore already has so many operational civilian and military runways? Why stockpile surgical masks and hundreds of transport ventilators, when there are so many other pressing demands? Why bother with the annual influenza vaccination when the flu is just a mild disease? Why demand hygiene standards in barracks, when we could outsource this “non-core” function to migrant worker cleaners? These measures were put in place by leaders before us, and it behoves us to do the same, so that whether it is to fend against the big bad wolf, the outgoing tide or the next pandemic, we are prepared.

THE EMPEROR'S NEW CLOTHES

This quintessential cautionary tale against hubris speaks of a swindler hoodwinking not just the king, but his entire populace into believing that they had beheld the world's finest robe on parade, when their eyes were clearly showing them just an old man in his birthday suit. Written in 1837 by Hans Christian Andersen, children over the ages enjoyed the spectacle when the lies were finally exposed and the stark naked king was roundly humiliated.

In leadership parlance, this tale warns against “groupthink”, where people avoided conflict, despite knowing better, especially in a setting with an overbearing boss. Vanity and pride are major components, where everybody, the king included, claimed that they could see the invisible woven fabric. One error perpetuates the next, until a full blown disaster is imminent.

An example of averting disaster during COVID-19 was how leaders were agile and humble enough to examine the latest evidence, instead of holding on to previously held positions, fearing embarrassment. At the national level, when new findings on viral transmission surfaced, we changed our position to mandate mask wearing. Another episode was the decisive statements and actions surrounding the TraceTogether contact tracing app debate. These were examples of leaders acknowledging that they indeed could not see the invisible fabric.

I sat in numerous meetings held by JTF(A), which was tasked to look after migrant workers. Seldom was consensus reached without a good dose of disagreement. Examples included the methods for testing, whether it was nasopharyngeal swabs, or oropharyngeal mid-turbinate swabs, or saliva, the indications for using pooled samples to conserve the scarce reagents, the mechanisms and durations for quarantine. The secret sauce is the quality of conversations with people playing the roles of the proponent and the opponent; the former speaks with honesty, and the latter, counters with respect.

At a personal level, I also had to deal with vanity. To prepare for the Pfizer BioNTech vaccine, I directed my team to procure a few ultra low temperature (ULT) freezers, so that the SAF could store our own frozen vaccines, giving us operational flexibility. I had under-estimated the efficiency of the cold chain capabilities in the country, which turned out to be so robust that all vaccines could be held centrally, thawed and delivered to vaccination centres every day. The SAF need not deploy our own ULT freezers. Embarrassed by my earlier decision to buy these freezers, which looked increasingly like white elephants, I continued to try and deploy them at SAF medical centres. After coaxing from my team, I conceded that the ULT freezers would not see much action, and returned them to the main warehouse as back ups. This episode reminded me of the vanity in the fairy tale, except that my team, sensing something amiss, was willing to alert me. All I needed to do was to put aside my pride.

While parading naked in front of his subjects, it took a young child to see past the lies and shout the truth, “The Emperor has no clothes!”. This “young child” is a metaphor for the “ground”, people who know what is going on. Unlike courtiers, young children are not beholden to kings.

Throughout the pandemic, I have witnessed how leaders kept themselves close to the ground. One particular leader at JTF(A) kept copious handwritten field notes, detailing his observations as he spoke with the “young children” on his ground visits. This translated into clarity of thought and good decisions that eventually turned the tide. The lesson is for leaders to be unafraid to re-visit and reverse dated decisions, and listen deeply to the ground in search of the truth.