Issue Topic 008

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Issue Topic 008
Claim: In any field—business, politics, education, government—those in power should step down after five years.
Reason: The surest path to success for any enterprise is revitalization through new leadership.
Many of you may notice that presidents of most European and western countries will be step down after a certain period. In the business and education circle, CEOs and high level leadership will also be exchanged after a certain period. Some people will question: why do we change the leader, principle, CEO, or the whole leader level even they really do a good job and would love to continue in that position? No matter how excellent they are, how hard they work, how willing people are to work with them, we have to change. The president of USA cannot take on successive two terms. The National of People’s Congress of China is elected in the term of five year. Here are some reasons I think may help you to understand.

The exchange of leadership will help to prevent power abuse and corruption. If there is no certain term, that means a chairman can hold the title and power to whenever he wants, there will be no pressure on his work and no threat to his power, which will easily arouse the power abuse. Because he does not need to worry about the term of the position, he may do something for his own benefit and easily overlook the limit of his power. The Water Gate issue fully display the nature of human’s greed for power. Even smart as Nixon, people cannot resist the temptation of power. In order to the persistent power, it is not difficult for human to not to abuse the power in their hand. I shall not say that people are evil. But it is a wise and advisable choice to set a limit for one’s official term to prevent the power abuse.

What’s more, it is also an important way to prevent and snuff the corruption from the very beginning, especially for political leaders. Once a chairman is assigned a position in a region, he may gradually get complicated connection with the local business men and subordinates. The local business and official will probably get to know the way this chairman work and prefer. The more time this chairman stays, more familiar they will get to know each other, the less deterrence effect the leader imposes in the management. In additional, the complicated and tacit connection may lead to corruption and indictment. That is why a mayor will not spend whole his life in the same municipal government. The change will effectively break such political connection and prevent the corruption in the cradle of growth.

Now you may be curious that the examples I quoted are all from the political circle. The nature of power abuse and corruption is the same. Politicians are long for more power, while CEO may be longing for more money. The abuse, embezzlement and corruption across the world are done for more or less the same goal, the individual benefit, but in different way. One example in business may help you fully understand why we change leadership besides the preventive actions I just mentioned above. In 90s, the world famous Apple was face with critical difficulties, shrinking market share, decreasing number of employment, lowering stock price and gloomy future. When everybody including the employee of Apple felt that it may be the end of this company, facing Microsoft this giant rival. The join of Steve Job immediately injected strong vitality into this dying business. The new leadership broke the settled ideology of the former management mechanism. They set up good cooperative relationship with Microsoft and released Ipod, Iphone and creative product, both of which had never been thought of. The new leader group brought new ideas. We shall not say that the former group was not qualified or excellent. But they maybe stuck in some dead cycle. It is normal that we are just human being, who has some limit in the individual wisdom. The change can bring us new hope, new way, new idea and vitality. That is how we grow and progressed.

However, I should remind all of us that the certain limit will not always work its magic. For some long program which requires more than 5 year to see the result. The change of leadership will do no good to our benefit. We need a continuous management to carry on the program in this kind of situation. Besides, we may also have other ways to supervise one’s leadership, such as poll, periodic assessment, impeachment and so on. Once the ways are used properly, the success and progress are not far away to get.