Lee Kuan Yew

“I’ve spent 40 years trying to select men for big jobs – ministers, civil servants, statutory boards’ chairmen. So I’ve gone through many systems, spoken to many CEOs, how did they select. Finally, I decided that Shell had the best system of them all, and the government switched from 40 attributes to three, which they called ‘helicopter qualities’,

This business of seasonal change and your civil servants get rattled. They say, ‘My God! I’ll be in trouble, I’d better succumb. Why not look for something for myself, then whatever happens, I am all right.’ It’s all these creeping doubts, this wavering, this wishing to cushion oneself from trouble, that brings a complete sagging of the whole machi

“Today, the new meaning that capitalism has acquired, which means entrepreneurship, raising capital, putting your ideas into practice, testing the market, if the market accepts your service or your goods, you have created wealth for everybody and for yourself. That was not the way I saw capitalism as a young man.”

Dr Goh gives every officer whom he thinks is promising and whose minutes or papers are deficient in clarity, a paperback edition of Gowers’ Complete Plain Words.