June 13, 2011

  • What background makes a good leader?

    It may surprise some that much of the ruling elite of China are from engineering backgrounds.  Whether this is an accident of the educational system, of period, or by design, I think it has many implications for the ethos of government.  By contrast, the US is lead almost exclusively by lawyers, with a very different understanding of how things work.

    http://www.economist.com/node/13517524

    It's difficult to draw conclusions, but I think that, in general, engineers have to operate in an environment where they work with an understanding where certain principles are in fact, inviolable; gravity, the hardness/ductability/conduction/specific heat of a material is fixed.  Learning to work around those constants with innovative techniques is critical to engineering better solutions.  Obviously, you can come up with new materials as well.  The framework within which lawyers work is the framework of people, who operate in relation to principles of behaviour, conscience, ethic and the like, which are much more motivational.  Laws sketch out a proxy for morality, and are or are not immutable depending on one's perspective.  If you believe that laws accurately reflect truth, then good laws are fixed points of principle, a la a Constitution.

    I suspect that the leadership in many countries look at laws as a means to an end, rather than a guiding principle in and of themselves.

    At any rate, one's training generally leaves a rather indelible mark on one's perspective.

    So -

    What ethos drive:

    Economists, financiers, military, medicine, entertainment, journalism... etc?