![\"Nombre:](\"http:\/\/www.druckerforum.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/ManuelFerrolEmigracion.jpg\")
<\/a>Autor: Manuel Ferrol
Localizaci\u00f3n: Puerto de A Coru\u00f1a
A\u00f1o: 1957<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n
Last week I visited Finisterre, an ancient Spanish port and fishing village, where my grandfather was born.\u00a0 He, like many others, was forced to emigrate to Argentina at the end of the 19th\u00a0century, leaving land, family, and friends in search of employment, since jobs were increasingly scarce at home.\u00a0 This photograph from the period,\u00a0O home e o neno<\/i>, shows a man and his son crying as some of their dearest relatives board the boat to Buenos Aires.<\/p>\n
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The heart-wrenching scene reminded me of the terrible challenges that today\u2019s job-seekers face thanks to the advance of technologies that make human labor obsolete. In many ways, the situation is even worse than it was in my grandfather\u2019s time. While the men of Finisterre could flee economic conditions in Spain, there is no escaping employment market upheaval in the digital age.<\/p>\n
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Consider the global trends cited by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee in a recent\u00a0interview with HBR<\/a>. In most countries, both developed and developing, private employment and median family income have stopped growing at the same pace as labor productivity and real GDP per capita\u2014mostly due, they argue, to technological advances. In emerging markets, labor\u2019s share of GDP is declining in 42 out of 59 countries, including China, Mexico and India. These are areas with 90% of the\u00a0world\u2019s population, higher birth rates, more young people, and lower education standards. Scarcer jobs and diminishing wages can only lead to greater inequality and global instability.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n So what are we to do? \u00a0Learn from the countries that are bucking the trend. In Singapore, median income, GDP per capita and labor productivity have all grown dramatically and in tandem over the past 30 years; unemployment stands at just 3%; wages account for a larger percentage of GDP than they did in 1980; and middle-income earnings have increased six-fold in the past five decades. With the highest median wage among newly industrialized Asian nations, the city-state also ranks first globally in worker productivity and attitude.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Although it has no natural resources, Singapore has succeeded by investing large portions of its public budget in education, a strong civil service, and the development of great leaders, proactively moving its economy away from basic manufacturing, to higher value, technology-based manufacturing, then to knowledge-based R&D sectors.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Prime Minister Lee Kuan Yew, who passed away earlier this year, set the tone with a speech he gave to senior civil servants, just after his country\u2019s transition to independence from the United Kingdom in 1965:\u00a0 \u201cSingapore must get some of [the] best in each year\u2019s crop of graduates into government,\u201d he said.\u00a0 He added that he wanted leaders with not just stellar academic records but also imagination, dynamism and, especially, character and motivation. His administration followed up by instituting massive public sector scholarship programs; rigorous assessment practices focused on potential; extensive development and training, including exemplary rotations and milestone courses; and outstanding promotion, recognition, and salary benchmarking practices to match private employers. As a result, according to HBS\u2019s Michael Porter, Singapore developed a highly efficient civil service elite that has been able to dynamically shift policies and priorities over time.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Professions-based education \u2013 that which ensures future employability for students \u2013 has also been a key area for investment and innovation in the country. Today, 95% of its young people progress to post-secondary education institutes, but there are also different pathways to work, including German-style an apprenticeship and certification program. Most recently, Singapore launched the\u00a0SkillsFuture<\/a>\u00a0initiative, including a fund where the government provides a yearly stipend to be used for continuing education at all levels. Government expenditure on education remains dramatically higher than it is in other OECD countries.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n Can other countries follow this model?\u00a0 With the right leadership, I think so. On a recent trip to Africa I was greatly impressed by the\u00a0African Leadership Academy<\/a>\u00a0(ALA), an extraordinary institution founded in 2008, which offers a highly selective two-year pan-African pre-university program. (Out of 4,000 applicants per year, only 100 are chosen.)\u00a0Nearly 800\u00a0young people have already studied there, and the goal is to develop 6,000 leaders over the next five decades \u2013 people screened for their\u00a0perserverance, courage, passion and ethics, who will, it\u2019s hoped, go on to transform Africa as country presidents, central bank governors, or CEOs of major corporations.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n This is the sort of institution public and private organizations around the world should be looking to build because, as the title of my latest book notes,\u00a0It\u2019s Not the How or the What but the Who<\/i><\/a>.<\/i>\u00a0We need extraordinary leaders to face the monumental challenge of preserving human dignity in the digital age.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n About the author:<\/strong><\/p>\n Claudio Fern\u00e1ndez-Ar\u00e1oz is a senior adviser at the global executive search firm\u00a0<\/span>Egon Zehnder<\/a>\u00a0<\/span>and the author of\u00a0It\u2019s Not the How or the What but the Who\u00a0<\/span><\/a><\/em>(Harvard Business Review Press, 2014).<\/p>\n <\/p>\n