Flying pigs and failures in leadership

It is a dull, gloomy morning as I write this – one of those days when you’d rather not get out of bed because you feel something’s bound to hit you on the head should you step outside.

Indeed, yesterday, something nearly fell on my head as I was walking from the pool to my apartment. A glass bottle of something or other landed centimeters away from my feet. It came falling out of the air like a projectile out of nowhere and went splat on the ground.

I suspect if I had been a couple of steps ahead, it would have landed on my head. It made me recall a short story I read about a man who got killed when a pig landed on his head.

The pig was being transported on a truck. The truck got into an accident and the poor pig was flung into the air and landed onto the poor man.

I wonder who was more surprised – the pig or the man?

This morning, I open the newspapers to read of death and destruction everywhere. The cyclone in Myanmar, the devastating loss of lives, homes and livelihoods and the appalling lack of response from the military junta.

And then the photo of the general casting a vote in the referendum which went ahead while people lay crying, wailing, dying.

I wonder who’s more insane – Emperor Nero who fiddled while Rome burned or “the generals” who’ve been on the fiddle while Myanmar implodes?

I was talking with a chief executive yesterday about leadership and what makes a good leader and she started a discourse on one of the most common pitfalls of leaders.

“Delusion creep”– a syndrome where the leader genuinely believes he is responsible for everything that’s good and great about the organisation, that every good idea is his and that no one would be anything or anywhere without him.

“It creeps up on you, this delusionary thing. It happens to people who isolate themselves, who surround themselves with people who either don’t dare to speak up or don’t care to because they’ve given up.

“The lucky ones are the ones who will listen. The unlucky people won’t have anyone to tell them anymore,” she said.

I think it’s when you start to believe you are invincible that’s when you become fallible.

Then, there’s the earthquake in Sichuan where the scenes of destruction and death are heart-wrenching. Lives shattered. Hearts broken. Bodies lifeless.

A hotelier friend of mine emailed to tell me he had just left Chengdu the morning before the earthquake struck. Luck was on his side.

Luck – are you born lucky, do you make your own luck or is it all random? To the flying pig, it didn’t matter. It was on its way to the slaughterhouse anyway. Only the timing and method of death changed.

What matters is what any of us do on the way there.

So. I am getting out of here and stepping out into the world, flying projectiles be damned.

Catch more of Yeoh Siew Hoon every week at the transit cafe.

By : Yeoh Siew Hoon