Time to tweak succession formula?

It was a naive and presumptuous succession formula that could never be acted upon unless conditions are perfect. I still cringed to think that the incumbent PM consider himself fortunate to have twenty years of under study before taking over. GCT ten years was good but LHL had endured too long to take over. As we are humans, spending too much time in preparation or on the job do funny things to your mind. It is more a minus than a plus. The man would have done better if he wasn't the son of his father. All the baggage he had to manage or carry.

Tweak the succession formula? Good luck. We might have to be open minded to more unfamiliar and scary scenarios.

We need great leaders and social political history tells us they must make their own way into office. A very good system cannot do better than finding very good people and often worse. I angst over this hard truth: The very good is the enemy of the great.

Our succession formula risk becoming our millstone. Why tweak it? May be it's better to throw it overboard. But how we go about it is more important that the act itself if we are not to stupidly do ourselves in.

We tried to reduce our risk but I think we only end up transferring them and deceiving ourselves that we are safer.


Update: 9:10pm

Very good leaders are more than enough when we are sailing along a planned route. However what determines success and failure for a small state is not gradually losing competitiveness or relevance, which we can almost always fix. It is the unexpected turning points that are most critical. So what if you have twenty years to train to become PM. It isn't the long journey you have taken especially if it wasn't eventful enough. It is the crises you have to deal with. A long time only offer higher probability that you will face more crises. On the other hand a long time on the job easily make a person become set in their ways and habitual in their thinking not to mention the burden of protecting earlier legacy. Personally invested in policies that was successful a long time ago but now need to change is very difficult. Few people could overcome the Innovator's Dilemma.

By definition there is no such thing as a good succession plan. Corporate histories offer many such cautionary tales. It is impossible to know the ambushes of fate and so how can you ever have a good enough school. We must avoid such false sense of confidence. Instead what is helpful is running a little scared at all times and indulging in constructive worry. Agnosticism will give us a fighting chance but being cocksure will surely kill us off eventually.

I hate it when our leaders excused their mistakes with the "nobody gets fired for buying IBM strategy".

Finally history has shown us again and again that a recognized path to the top is the surest way to attract the people that are wrong for the job. It is terribly hard to root out such people. The PAP is a safe bet for an aspiring politician is the most dangerous idea for recruiting political leaders for Singapore.