SMRT CEO Kuek has five leadership tenets for a rapidly changing world

Desmond Kuek, president and CEO of transport operator SMRT Corp, spent over three decades in the military and public sector before joining the private sector in 2012. His past four years at SMRT have been tumultuous as he battled negative public sentiment and weak employee morale.

At the recent Orchestrating Winning Performance programme organised by the Swiss-based IMD Business School, Kuek shared some insights gleaned from crisis management. These are his five tenets of leadership:

Put staff first and central to your mission
In the face of competing interests, companies often face difficulty deciding which stakeholder group to prioritise. But Kuek has no qualms about where his priorities lie. “Of course all [stakeholders] are important, but if I had to start with one, it would be our [employees] — all 10,000 of them that I have to straighten out, and get right and motivated and inspired to do better,” Kuek says. “Before that can happen, there can be no satisfying of the customers and shareholders.”

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