Jul 15, 2019
The Need for Leadership
After a term characterized by the massive construction of infrastructure across the country, Jokowi is now shifting to the other equally crucial precondition for national development — Human Capital. Jokowi just announced in his national address that “human capital development is the key to our future and, thus, our priority right now”. It is expected to see perhaps controversially huge government spendings for social security benefits such as the JKN (Jaminan Kesehatan Nasional) or Kartu Indonesia Pintar among others.
The bad news is, no one really knows. There exists a fragmented vision of Human Capital in the current administration. The Ministry of Education believes it to mean “character building education” in order to create an “intelligent generation with character”, whatever that is. They rolled out a program called the PPK (Penguatan Pendidikan Karakter/Character Strengthening Education) in 2017, which focuses on teaching basic “Indonesian” values to schoolchildren: religiosity, nationalism, integrity, independence, and gotong royong. On the other hand, the Ministry of National Development Planning understands human capital development as vocational training to create a ready workforce. Meanwhile, the President has spoken a lot about vocational high schools.
There hasn’t been a nationally identified need in terms of developing human capital and that’s why none of the aforementioned efforts have made significant impact. Data from BPS shows that the national unemployment rate is at 5.01%. For comparison, Vietnam is at 2.2% and Malaysia is at 3.4% (for ease of mind, Philippines is at around 8%). But the data unveils a more worrying fundamental problem; the most unemployed type of graduate is vocational high school graduates (at 8.63% of the total unemployed population). Diploma (Associate Degree) graduates rank second at 6.89%, then junior high school at 6.78% and University graduates at 6.24%. Surprisingly, elementary school graduates only make up 2.65% of the total unemployed. And no, it is not because Indonesia‘s educated to uneducated labor ratio is high — in fact, 40.51% of the Indonesian labor force belong to the elementary school or lower education group.
Sadly, Jokowi seems to be unaware of this. Instead, he announced that he will build more vocational schools in this “golden age” of human capital in his speech last night. Therefore, if there is anything that Jokowi needs to get sorted out before beginning his new term, defining the right version of Membangun Manusia would be it.
The term “human capital development” somewhat takes up the role of “big data” for Indonesia’s public sector lately — as an overly-used and abused issue treated as gimmick by and to people that might not even understand what it is. The World Bank Indonesia Economic Quarterly meeting in June 2019 announced it as one of the five key recommendations for extended economic growth without providing specific metrics. Let alone all the consulting group reports that mention the need for quality workforce in facing the almighty 4.0 Industrial Revolution.
The good news is, we now have a blank canvas to imagine what might be the best use of the term. Is it going to be I.T. training? Elementary and secondary schooling? Free tuition? Capacity building?
The 2019 Oxford Business Group business barometer interviewed CEOs — as representatives of the main absorbers of labor — to answer the question: What type of skill is in greatest need in Indonesia? You would think that the answer would be something expected amidst the whole digital craze, like I.T. or basic computing skills. But out of 112 participants, over 30% actually picked Leadership as the most needed skill. Computer technology ranks second, at a little over 20% votes. In Thailand, Engineering gets the top vote with Leadership in second place.
This finding implies that good human capital is identic with a soft skill called leadership. It further implies that despite our obsession to become digital everything (re: Jokowi’s Dilan or “Digital Melayani” tagline), get ahead of the 4th Industrial Revolution (Jokowi has made this very clear), and build 1000 startups, the first thing to do isn’t making everyone learn to code.
Our society has a great affinity towards leadership. However, the kind of leadership that we commonly see is what I call face leadership. The kind that is projected towards other people. The kind that is understood as having a team follow your orders. The kind that is closely related to hierarchy and seniority. It is clearly manifested is Indonesian college life, where it seems that you are known for and labeled by your organizational experiences — being “coordinator” (us Indonesians love this word); being ketua this, ketua that; kepanitiaan A B C… These labels seem to stick on and define you for your entire college life — That’s why I call it face leadership.
Being positively involved in college is a very good thing, yet is not enough. Face leadership isn’t all that leadership is and we might have missed the big picture by having such a narrow understanding. We have enough ketua BEMs, ketua himpunan, and kepanitiaan for various university events. We need to learn more than event organizing or “communicating in a team”. We need a holistic and thorough kind of leadership that is versatile throughout the workplace.
The kind of leadership we need is thought leadership, which I argue to be far more necessary than face leadership.
For me, thought leadership means an attitude of thinking that is independent and evidence-based, rather than a response of an external influence or status quo. I understand it to be the type of thinking closely linked to research. Not research as research per se, but research as a philosophy; a discovery process through collection of evidence. A person with thought leadership is able to argue for, defend, and expand their thinking — be it in front of their colleagues, boss, even the public. They lead their own thought processes, making the resulting ideas inherently theirs.
While the value of face leadership increases directly with the number of people being led but decreases with the number of people leading (a zero-sum game), thought leadership is a plus-sum game where its value increases with the number of users (leaders), consequently expanding the leadership franchise.
Thought leadership need not manifest itself in front of a 100 people student committee. It will manifest itself where it is needed most: the workplace.
Sadly, Jokowi’s government didn’t catch this in executing their Revolusi Mental campaign. Below is the blurb on Revolusi Mental prepared by the Ministry of Communication and Information/Menkominfo;
Revolusi Mental: Membangun Jiwa Merdeka Menuju Bangsa Besar
“Revolusi Mental adalah suatu gerakan untuk menggembleng manusia Indonesia agar menjadi manusia baru, yang berhati putih, berkemauan baja, bersemangat elang rajawali, berjiwa api yang menyala-nyala.”
It was a campaign for hard work (“Kerja, kerja, kerja”). It was not a campaign for smart work. If Jokowi wants Human Capital Development to be his KPI next term, there must exist a new “4.0" version of Revolusi Mental that focuses not merely on hard work but on thought leadership. It should then serve as the identity engrained in every education or labor reform in order to streamline the “Membangun Manusia” vision.
Thought leadership is closely related to the philosophy of research (an insight shared to me by Pak Yanuar Nugroho at work), which is unfortunately not our country’s forte. Our government hasn’t been one to value research-based policymaking nor research activity in Universities. Indonesia’s research budget is only 0.25% of its total GDP (Rp 30.78 T), while the ideal percentage set by UNESCO is 1%. Even more problematically, less than 50% of that budget is used for actual research activity. In contrast, The Philippines’ research budget to GDP is 0.86% while Malaysia’s is 1.3%. These figures suggest that research altogether is under-appreciated in Indonesia.
Therefore, fixing our country’s attitude towards research is the first step towards making thought leadership our culture. Evidence-based decision making should be a common culture in high schools and universities. However, the lack of respect for quality data collection in our country has resulted in incomplete data across many sectors, which further complicates the creation of research.
Fortunately, the government is showing their increasing attention towards research with the launch of the SatuData portal, which is a public single portal containing interoperable data from various sectors and government bodies.
Thought leadership enables everyone to be accountable for their decisions. It will enable us not only to work smarter, but to give merit based on one’s insights and not merely by their title or age. Imagine an Indonesia where people no longer say “Saya cuma ikutin Atasan, Mbak” or “Dari sananya begitu, Mbak.”
Together, we can build a nation that owns it.
PS: Click on the hyperlink to listen to a Podcast discussing the challenges and under-appreciation of research-based policymaking in Indonesia by uTara (Tempo Institute)
