No set of general rules can substitute for the specific, detailed knowledge of a city that a mayor must bring to the job. Nevertheless, there are certain principles of leadership that apply to the challenges any mayor will face:
Start Small With Success
When taking a leadership role, try to achieve a clear, decisive victory as early as possible. Aim to solve a problem small enough that it’s easily understood and yields an unambiguous solution. This gives people hope, and lets one’s constituents, employees and critics know that action and positive change are more than just rhetoric.
When I became mayor of New York, this was particularly important because many New Yorkers felt the city was ungovernable. But I couldn’t immediately cut 2,000 murders a year to 700, nor magically transform people walking the streets in terror to people whistling happy tunes. So I decided to tackle the problem of “squeegee men”–aggressive panhandlers who would confront drivers visiting the city. When we solved the problem quickly and decisively, we changed perceptions about what the city’s leaders could accomplish.
Develop and Communicate Strong Beliefs
Great leaders lead by ideas. Ideology is enormously important when running any large organization. That’s especially true when the organization in question is a big, diverse city that needs a clear vision around which to unite and rally. Developing strong beliefs is more than a simple suggestion–it’s an obligation. The people who work for you, those who look to you for answers, the media, even your rivals have a right to know how you see the world.
Of course, strong beliefs can be risky in politics. That’s because a politician who makes his beliefs known takes two major gambles: that the goals stemming from his beliefs cannot be achieved–in which case he’ll be called a failure–and that many voters will disagree. But leadership isn’t about succeeding on every single initiative, nor about building consensus behind every action.
Prepare Relentlessly
My first boss was a federal judge named Lloyd MacMahon. He would frequently repeat a phrase that his first boss had drilled into him: don’t assume a damn thing. One of the most important aspects of preparation for any mayor concerns disaster readiness. When I was mayor of New York City, my team would rehearse our response to every conceivable disaster, from a plane crash to a biological attack. And we didn’t simply plan our response on paper; we performed trial runs in the streets to test how long the plans took in practice.
I wanted the people around me ready to make decisions when they couldn’t check with me. The more we planned, the more ready we’d be for surprises. Before September 11, there were those who said we were being overly concerned. We didn’t hear that afterward.
The great advantage of relentless preparation is that it prepares you not only for those disasters you anticipate, but for those you don’t. In New York City, we did not imagine that airliners would be commandeered and turned into guided missiles. But the fact that we practiced for other disasters prepared us to handle a catastrophe that nobody envisioned.
These principles by themselves will not solve the complex problems facing Asia’s mayors today. But they may be a good first step in implementing solutions that, with luck, will produce results in Asia as impressive as those achieved in New York City.
