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So today in this our last segment on leadership,
I'd like to explore with you a little bit some of
the instruments that different Secretary Generals,
that different leaders have used over the last decades.
And I'm going to talk about four different types of instrument.
These are ways of creating
that space that we've been talking about in the first two segments.
One instrument which is very well known to you,
I think, is the instrument of convening,
the convening power instrument.
A second one is leadership through goals,
the power of setting goals.
The third instrument is leadership through the power of data,
the amount of space and opportunity you can create by establishing facts,
by establishing data, by establishing science.
And then, the fourth type of leadership,
the fourth instrument for leadership,
I've simply labeled visionary leadership.
And I do that partly to draw the contrast between
constructing space and giving yourself instruments for exercising leadership,
and that occasional moment where
a great figure appears and provides a vision that other people can follow.
And I think it's a bit problematic,
it's a bit discouraging if in the back of your mind you think of leadership as being
just those extraordinary moments of an individual visionary.
There is a much more modest in a way,
there's a much humbler craft to how you create space and how you exercise leadership,
and I'd like to try and give you some of those examples.
The first case is the case of convening power,
of the power of what you can do when you bring people together.
It's the kind of ultimate UN experience, in a way.
The idea of this building and these conferences,
where you bring people together.
But I actually want to start with a little example that comes outside of the UN.
That's the example of Klaus Schwab and the World Economic Forum.
And it's an interesting example of the exercise of convening power.
Because after all here,
you have this small group constituted under Swiss Law,
as an NGO, as a non-governmental organization.
And when Klaus Schwab talks about it,
he talks about seeing
this opportunity with the advent of the acceleration of globalization and liberalization,
the need for space where private sector leaders, government leaders,
and civil society leaders could get together and talk as equals.
And that is the critical part of the sentence; as equals,
to have a dialogue and to reach
understandings that they might not be able to do in other settings.
And the value of that space is reflected in
the extraordinary turnouts that have been occurring now for
decades at Davos around the World Economic Forum,
and the very high level of attendance,
and it's actually reserved for people at the highest levels,
otherwise, you just don't get in.
This experience of being able to convene governments, private sector,
and civil society is, I think,
a very interesting move by Klaus Schwab,
but a very critical moment where there was space for that particular type of convening.
There was a need for that at that moment,
especially with the forces of liberalization.
Let me contrast it actually with what the UN had to offer because the UN in
2000 at the time of The Millennium Summit
decided to launch a major private sector initiative,
the Global Compact that you maybe,
you've come across already in the course.
And I simply raised it for this very particular little detail,
which was the UN was and is still largely an intergovernmental body,
where member states take precedence.
There are a lot of issues around that today.
But at the time of the launch of the Global Compact,
hundreds of CEOs were invited to come to the opening in the General Assembly building.
And at that moment, it was a major initiative by Kofi Annan,
the Secretary General of the time.
Because of the procedures in the UN,
they had to do a seating arrangement by which all of the governments,
190 or whatever it is,
states all have the front seats in the room.
And all of these CEOs were packed into the back of the room and virtually were unable,
with very few exceptions, to speak.
Well, I can assure you that was one of the last times that many of
those CEOs came to the UN General Assembly.
One has to look at very carefully at your ability to create that space and how
do you shape the authorizing environment and
the capacity and everything in a way that enables you to perform that function.
And I think the UN learned a lot of lessons from that and
many things that are done today in a totally different way,
so it's a much more positive picture.
But there still are the constraints which go to the fact of a body,
which is a member state body.
The UN has been deeply involved in convening in the 90s.
There were a whole series of global conferences around food,
around health, around children,
around a lot of different subjects.
And many people have questioned over time whether
actually did these conferences really add value,
were they really a useful contribution.
And my answer to that is,
I think that in many cases the conferences did provide that kind of convening power.
If you look at the incredibly important global conference on gender,
that took place in Beijing in 1995.
This was an extraordinary moment when networks of
activists dealing with issues related to gender and women in development and etcetera,
took great strides in moving forward that agenda.
And for groups within countries,
the existence of that conference and the existence of
that convening power made
a substantial difference to their ability to promote
their own agendas in their own countries.
So, I think that the global conferences is
a good example of the value that convening can bring.
Having said that, there's a limit to what global conferences to do.
And also, there's a limit to how many one can do,
because the appetite can be limited.
And it's arguable today,
we've got to a point where people are getting tired of these large global conferences.
The doubts that have begun to be expressed about the effectiveness and the impact of
global conferences is reflected in the development of
another set of convening power instruments.
And that is the use of different types of panels and senior high level panels and groups,
often very respected former leaders or current politicians or academics.
And the idea is really to try and use the reputation of different groups of
people to move an agenda forward in a way that
strictly into governmental sphere may not be ready for.
Kofi Annan used to say that there was things that panels could do for him,
issues that they could put on the international agenda
which if he tried to do himself personally,
he would probably get into deep trouble.
And we can look at many of these different kinds of panels and commissions.
One of the earlier best known ones was the Brundtland Commission in 1987,
that set a lot of the thinking going on concepts of sustainable development.
The Carnegie Foundation did a lot of work in
the 90s on preventing deadly conflict that led to a lot of
the emerging concepts around prevention and peace resolution.
There was the Canadian Commission on Intervention and State Sovereignty,
which came out in 2002,
I think it was.
And that body was the body that
really put some wind under the sails of the concept of responsibility to protect,
which has become a very important contested,
but a very important instrument today.
There have been a series of more recent panels in 2004,
the one that was launched by the Secretary General, Kofi Annan,
really on the future of the UN focusing not exclusively,
but a lot of the focus on security issues,
human rights, peace making, peace building.
And then, there was, for example,
the Coherence Panel that was created in 2005,
that was looking at the future of the development work of the UN.
Again, we could spend a lot of time on each of these, but that's not the point.
The point of mentioning these is to grasp the idea of using those kinds of communities,
those kinds of high level panel groups to
advance causes that you're not able to do yourself.
So, this is another classic exercise in creating space.
You're creating space and discussion,
which might not otherwise exist.
I think the value of these panels is clear and demonstrable,
at the same time, a bit like the story with global conferences,
and the end panels can only take you so far.
Because in the end,
the recommendations need to be absorbed back into actual decision making processes.
And sometimes that happens and sometimes it's more difficult.
Gilbert ProbstProfessor, Organization and Management
Sebastian BuckupVisiting professor
Bruce JenksVisiting professor
Stephan MergenthalerVisiting professor
Cassandra QuintanillaTeaching and research assistant
Lea StadtlerResearch Fellow
Claudia Gonzalez RomoVisiting professor
Julian FleetVisiting professor
Tina AmbosAcademic Director of the International Organizations MBA
