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“Transformational Leadership in a Flat World”

WFP Executive Director Josette Sheeran

Paul H. Nitze School of Advanced International Studies As Prepared

Washington, D.C. May 26, 2011

Hello Class of 2011.

Dean Einhorn, distinguished faculty, proud parents,

grandparents, friends and future leaders. It is an honor

to be chosen to present this commencement address at

SAIS.

As you know I am blessed to be head of the World Food

Program, a remarkable institution created 50 years ago

this year on the foundation of the Marshall Plan, upon

the ashes of a war torn Europe, where many faced

starvation. From that experience, both Presidents

Eisenhower and Kennedy shared the belief that peace

cannot be built on an empty stomach. Today WFP is

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backed by a coalition of 100 nations and delivers more

than 30 billion life-saving meals on the frontlines of

hunger in places like Darfur, Afghanistan and Somalia.

This is no less true today. Peace cannot be built where

the abject frustration of Mohamed Bouazizi, the

vegetable seller whose self-immolation lit a flame across

the world fueled by the frustrations of the hard working

that have been entrapped in abjectly disabling

environments.

As a graduate of SAIS, you inherit the mantle passed

down by founders Paul H. Nitze and Christian Herter

who also recognized that the post-World War II world

would require a new generation of diplomats, policy-

makers and leaders with a new set of political and

economic skills.

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Boy, were they visionaries. And Dean Einhorn, I see

under your leadership, this dream is being fulfilled.

I think even Christian Herder and Paul Nitze would be

astounded by the global reach of this class: you come

from 50 different countries, representing the different

cultural, religious and ethnic fabric of our world. And look

at all these fabulous women. Congratulations.

Just yesterday I was on the hallowed 7th floor of the US

State Department, in the Secretary of State’s office

meeting with her leadership team on Haiti, food security

and hunger. When I mentioned SAIS, hands went up

around the table: I am a SAIS graduate. Me too.

Bologna. What year? What concentration? Washington.

In leadership roles in trade at USTR, and in global

economic diplomacy at State, I came to rely on SAIS

graduates – always distinguished by a very practical

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training in global leadership. Indeed, 14 members of the

WFP leadership staff are SAIS alumni. Your brand –

indeed your tribe - is special. And I am proud that my

daughter, Nicole Shiner, is a SAISer too.

Today I can only imagine your many emotions, but I

think I can feel your anticipation to go from the

classroom back into action; from listener, to leader.

I know that reaching this milestone was not easy. It was

built upon countless nights spent studying rather than

sleeping, weekends writing papers, and 20 years – or

more – of classes, homework, assignments and well,

hard work and financial investment.

It was also built upon the efforts of those in your family

who came before you. In many cases you may be the

first in your family to earn a masters degree – or even a

college degree. Some were denied the opportunity

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because of the color of their skin or because they were a

woman or maybe they were trapped in poverty so severe

that they struggled just to survive.

Yes, you are among the elite – and the luckiest – of all of

human history: even today less than 7 percent of the

people in the world have a college degree of any kind.

There is a story behind each of you: of someone who

believed in you, invested in you. Perhaps a parent or

grandparent (raise your hands) who sacrificed so that

you could help lead. Perhaps some had to leave their

homeland to give you the dream they would have

wanted in their own lives.

Now that you have completed your language proficiency

examination, core exams and are just one (hopefully)

brief speech away from being handed your degree – the

inevitable question for you is, “what comes next”?

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Perhaps no other class since the founding of SAIS has

stepped out into a world of greater change – of even

hyper-change. Just the past 20 weeks has unleashed a

transformative revolution sweeping away old structures,

mindsets, certainties and moorings.

Yes, we have reached a tipping point. The geo-political

puzzle pieces have been thrown up in the air. They are

tumbling back to earth, and will begin to create new

formations. How will they come together? Will the new

formation advance the aspirations, needs and dignity of

our world? Will it be a more equitable world of

opportunity? Will it be a world tapping the talents of us

all – including women, the marginalized, the oppressed,

the hungry?

Who will lead? What does it take to be a leader in a

world where revolution is spread overnight via social

media and risk is the new normal? What are the qualities

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that a leader must possess to guide constructive

transition in a flattened world? You are being launched

into a world of question, not answers.

As Malcolm Gladwell outlined in his book “The Tipping

Point”, ideas can spread like epidemics. Yet today, we

have Tipping Points in search of leadership.

The expectations of leadership are changing as fast as

the Arab Spring is blooming. Many world leaders must

be saying, “who moved my cheese?” as the classic

management book from the 90s put it. What worked in

leadership even months ago is now considered

hopelessly out-of-date, old-style. Many who have yet to

move onto email, are no doubt demanding of their staffs,

or of their 12 year olds: What is this Twitter? Facebook?

You have all studied the traits of leadership and have

been exposed to leaders. I would like to highlight what I

see as the essential, non-negotiable elements of

leadership in this era of flat, hyper connectedness.

Perhaps add a few of these to your backpacks and

briefcases as you go forward.

1. The end of the “boss” Your generation is turning the “leadership pyramid” –

where power is retained in an ever-narrowing, distant top

structure, upside down. Lesson number one is: Do not

wait to be appointed “boss” to be a leader.

For millennia, the world has operated under a leadership

model based on exclusivity: exclusive access to

knowledge, power, bloodlines. One was able to lead –

and indeed control – through exclusive access to

information and exclusive access to power networks. All

of that has changed in an era where information is a

commodity and power networks can be formed virtually

overnight, from the bottom up.

I was struck by this change when I stood on the border

of Libya on March 1 in a sea of 40,000 people. Frankly,

even the humanitarians – usually agile in leadership –

were caught behind the wave. Tens of thousands of

people had poured over the border, and there was no

formal access to food, shelter or water. The leaders of

the Tulip Revolution, using Twitter and Facebook, had

formed one of the most amazing “citizens supply chain:

cars filled with bread, sandwiches and blankets.

BBC wanted an interview since I was the first UN leader

there, and the reporter was working on a tight deadline. I

was about to start the frontline interview when a gentle

hand touched my arm and said, “Do not talk to the world

before you talk to us.”

I stopped and listened and they told me that their

systems were overwhelmed. They asked for help. They

were seizing their own destiny.

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In every aspect of our society we are moving from a

rigid, hierarchical top-down management structure to

one that is more flat, more flexible and more accessible

to everyone. New technology has also given voice to

those who were once voiceless. On that Tunisia-Libya

border I received Twitter messages with people trapped

in ongoing fighting inside Libya who gave me their

coordinates and said they were waiting for food to be

delivered.

My leadership job today is not so much about “telling

people what to do”, but is more about knowing how to

tap into and guide creativity and talent toward a bigger

vision.

Think of the leaders who have impressed you throughout

history: the Rosa Parks, Nelson Mandellas, and

Gandhis. They did not need Twitter or the Tulip

Revolution to teach them this fact. None of them was the

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boss. But they all led right from where they were, without

a title.

2. The second leadership trait is the one of the most critical: Be a problem-solver. The late John Gardner, former Secretary of Health,

Education, and Welfare under President Johnson and

recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom once

said, “We are all faced with a series of great

opportunities – brilliantly disguised as insoluble

problems.”

It is said that in any given situation, 90 percent of people

are followers, 5 percent are detractors and 5 percent are

leaders. Faced with a challenge or obstacle a true

leader will turn the challenge into an opportunity.

Let me give you an example of how one of my leaders at

the World Food Program turned around a chronic

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problem and moved people from food aid dependency to

sustainable solutions.

In the northern regions of Cameroon, smallholder farmers

are faced with the chronic “boom and bust” cycles of

hunger. They eat well after harvest and can get some

cash by selling food. There are virtually no storage

facilities, harvested crops floods markets, fetching the

lowest prices. And with no way to store their food they

starve – or depend on food aid – in the lean season.

WFP has been there year after year, sometimes even

decade after decade providing aid.

I have challenged WFP staff: work with the communities

and present ways to break these cycles of dependency.

From the bottom up came a revolutionary idea in

Cameroon: community granaries. Here is how they work.

We put together a program to build the first true food

storage facilities and filled them with an initial food aid

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donation of 10 metric tons of cereal. We trained women

management groups and farmers in food storage

management and financial accounting. Community

members can withdraw stocks from the granary during

lean season, and later replenish from their own crops

during harvest with a little interest so the granary is self-

sufficient.

Now there are over 500 granaries operating in

Cameroon, and in many villages women comprise 75

percent of the participants. Guess what – I did not have

to bring those villages food aid this year or last year.

3. The third is the ability to act without perfect knowledge Nobel Peace Prize Laureate and early UN Secretary

General Dag Hammarskjold said, “It is when we all play

safe that we create a world of utmost insecurity. It is

when we all play safe that fatality will lead us to our

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doom. It is in the dark shade of courage alone that the

spell can be broken.”

True leaders must act. In this rapidly evolving

information age sometimes it’s as much a problem

dealing with too much information rather than not

enough. A leader must be able to gather information,

filter it, prioritize and then act. Then it’s critical to have a

feedback loop to correct course quickly, and decisively.

In Haiti, WFP supported the international network of

crisis mappers, who leveraged the combined power of

social networks, such as Twitter, mobile phones and

mapping technology to enable citizens to seek help in a

disaster.

4. The fourth leadership quality: Be passionately curious – ask questions, and then more questions.

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I always say there are only three important things to

know: Where are we today? Where do we need to go?

How do we get there? This can apply to your own life as

well as it can apply to ending world hunger.

One of the most dangerous attitudes in life is the attitude

that our main job is to prove to people how smart we are.

I have sat in critical government meetings where there is

more preening than problem solving. I think this is driven

not so much by arrogance as by an almost primordial

fear of asking questions. My background as a journalist

helped my overcome that fear.

I learned this lesson in a powerful way in Jabori, a small

mountainous village in Pakistan that I visited shortly after

the devastating earthquake in 2005. To get there we

had to helicopter in and then cross a raging stream on a

shaky log. When we arrived we were shown a newly

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built clinic with medicines and a storehouse with other

supplies. All of this was untouched.

I asked to then meet with the women of the village.

Gathered in a makeshift tent I asked the women what

they needed. If you had a magic wand, what is the one

wish you’d ask?

They told me that they only needed one thing – a water

buffalo. The villages’ buffalo, which was lost in the

earthquake, had provided milk for pregnant and nursing

mothers. It gave vital nutrition to young children. They

were so frustrated that of all the aid agencies, UN

organizations and government agencies, none had ever

asked them this simple question.

They had very little use for the unfamiliar boxes of

supplies that kept arriving. They just wanted their

buffalo. I told this story to a group of women in

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Washington not long after and they were so moved that

they raised the $1,000 for the water buffalo, which I’m

happy to report is providing milk to the village.

5. The fifth is: question conventional wisdom Admiral H.G. Rickover said, “All new ideas begin in a

non-conforming mind that questions some tenet of

conventional wisdom.”

At WFP I have banned the words: ”That is not the way

we do things.” Well, we have to try new things. This

reminds me on Einstein’s famous quote: “Doing the

same thing over and over is the definition of insanity.”

One of my favorite books is Clayton Christianson’s “The

Innovators Dilemna, When New Technologies Cause

Great Firms to Fail.” He coined the term disruptive

innovation, which talks about how a new product or

service is often launched at the bottom on the market

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and then relentlessly moves up to displace established

competitors. He tells the story of an ice company in New

England that went out of business when it didn’t see

refrigeration coming. This is why IBM didn’t invent the

PC or why Microsoft didn’t launch Facebook or

Facebook didn’t launch Twitter.

Change is hard, so I also reassure my staff, telling them

that our transformation is like IBM in its mainframe days

turning into Google. We’re doing it, but not without

reminding ourselves everyday that just because it was

always done in a certain way before, does not mean that

we can’t continue to innovate.

6. Plan and strategize – but make it flexible and modular Sun Tzu said, “Tactics without strategy are the noise

before defeat.”

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Today we have a lot of “Ready- Fire- Aim.” There are no

shortcuts on strategy. It requires time and planning to

align ends, ways, and means. Some of the most

successful companies – from Apple to Starbucks – are

those that have clearly defined strategies to reach their

vision.

But the days of crafting a 5 year strategic plan and then

executing it are over for everyone as disruptive

technologies make even a 1-year plan soon obsolete.

At WFP, we develop strategic plans that are both

comprehensive and overarching on a global level as well

as specific and relatively short-term for each country and

context. This decentralized and modular strategy allows

us to be nimble in response to unexpected emergencies

and rapidly changing situations on the ground.

Our mandate for 50 years has been to save lives and

livelihoods and everything we do supports that highest

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goal, but what programs we use, foods we deploy and

responses we have come from a flexible toolbox of

responses that allow us to respond as quickly as

possible while being as efficient as possible.

7. Finally, Be opportunistic. Benjamin Disraeli said, “The secret of success in life is

for a man to be ready for his opportunity when it

comes.”

Leaders recognize the unique window of opportunity

before them and respond accordingly. The ancient

Greeks had a word to capture this: kairos, meaning the

opportune moment. The Greeks believed that such an

opportunity had to be grasped otherwise the moment

would be gone forever.

Be proactive in creating your own opportunities. If there

is one single piece of advice I would offer you it is: Don’t

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chose a job. Find mentors. My career has ranged from

journalism to the private sector from government to

international service from diplomacy to Wall Street. And

every move I made was motivated by the opportunity to

learn from someone I admired.

When Paul Nitze was asked in an interview by the

American Academy of Achievement about all the

contributions he had made during his illustrious career,

his laconic reply was the following: “I have been around

at a time when important things needed to be done.”

This was a man who had the foresight to conclude that a

massive aid program would be necessary to avert an

international financial crisis, recognizing the unique

opportunity to structure a new post-war international

order. As one of the principal authors of the Marshall

Plan, Nitze capitalized on this moment in history to help

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shape world affairs for generations of Europeans that

would follow.

Well, you all graduate today at a time when something

important needs to be done. Get in the closest proximity

to a leader you admire as possible. Study them. Take

initiative, lead from the bottom. Treat all with respect,

kindness and as a potential source of brilliance. The rest

I am sure will follow.

Ray Kurzweil, a futurist and inventor of disruptive

technologies from voice recognition to scanning, was

quoted in Time Magazine as saying, “We are the species

that goes beyond our limitations. We didn’t stay on the

ground. We didn't stay on the planet. Our species

always transcends."

Lead, transcend. Graduate, celebrate. I look forward to

collaborating with you on the front lines of the world’s

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challenges – for today, you become, something very

esteemed. Something very valuable. A SAIS graduate!

SAIS Class of 2011, I’m counting on you to be the

generation of leaders that makes hunger history; that

breaks the bounds of poverty and helps our species

transcend.