George Yeo: A Matter of Degrees
Yeo: As Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, addressing the UN General Assembly, September 2010.
Photo by UN Photo/Rick Bajornas
When Singapore’s George Yeo (MBA ’85) was a young man, his intellect and achievement made clear to his country’s leaders that he was destined to become an important national resource. Indeed, he has fashioned an impressive career built on civic engagement and public service, most recently as Singapore’s Minister for Foreign Affairs, a post he held until just recently when his People’s Action Party suffered an election defeat in early May.
After Yeo had completed his undergraduate studies in engineering at Cambridge University, he set his sights on Harvard for postgraduate education. The Singapore government, for its part, thought that was a good move too, but felt that Yeo could best serve his country by earning a Master of Public Administration (MPA) degree from Harvard’s Kennedy School, not an MBA from HBS.
“Oh, there was tremendous pressure put on me to do the MPA,” Yeo told Singapore’s Business Times (April 9, 2011). “At that time, the civil service did not want me to do an MBA. There was always the fear that those who do MBAs will end up leaving the service. The system reacted against it; they said: ‘You do the MPA, like everybody else. Why do you want to be different?’ I was kind of undecided. Lam Chuan Leong (MBA ’78), who was my boss in the Air Force, had done his Harvard MBA and told me about his experience.”
Yeo had interests beyond his science and engineering background in school and university, the Times reported. Urged on by one of his brothers — as well as a young army clerk who gave him a book on the Harvard MBA — Yeo did enroll at HBS and earned his MBA with High Distinction.
The MBA has had “great applicability to what I do,” Yeo explained, recalling an example from his days as Trade and Industry Minister. “When we deregulated the energy markets in Singapore, I remember the cases I did on energy deregulation in the U.S., the whole theory of marginal pricing, and so on. It was very helpful.”
Summing up his HBS experience, Yeo told the Times, “I learned a lot about business, finance, and the U.S. economy, and I made lifelong friends, including Professors Michael Porter and Warren McFarlan.” Added Yeo, whose loyal support of HBS over the years includes service on its Visiting Committee from 1998 to 2004, “I feel a strong obligation to the School.”
Your Comments
I was asked for advice on the same question by two bright young Africans. My answer was that things generally work better when people do what they do because they want to do it, rather than when they are forced or mandated to do it. Business is all about helping people WANT to do what you hope they will do; customers have to want to buy your product or service; investors have to want to invest; employees have to want to think about better ways to do help our customers. Lawyers, on the other hand, are taught how to make people do what they may not want to do. The Kennedy School is somewhere in between, but tends to focus on means to regulate rather than encourage desired actions. If my friends want to learn how to solve problems in ways that people will want to do what they do, then an MBA is what they should go for.
I totally agree with both views. However, I always thought of pursuing both. Currently, I have an MBA and working in the private sector but I always want to have enhanced public sector management skills thus, thought that having MBA alone might not cut it. Now, having read this article, I am glad to feel confident on my views of both. I believe that having an MBA and MPA will fulfill my aspiration of serving in the public sector better.