Across the country there is a hunt for such talented people in provinces, corporations, and companies. This need is so urgent that it has been prioritized as a topmost requirement. Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc feels that talented people lying undiscovered in nooks and corners of the country need to be brought into the forefront so as to fulfill the great mission of building a strong nation.
Lack of good organizers
In past years, many provincial governments have laid out the red carpet for talented people with special skills to come forth, but success in this has been extremely limited. Even despite attractive incentives, people have not been drawn to fields of work requiring their talents. The problem was that the country had not prioritized on attracting talented people and identifying the fields of work suitable for their talent. If this factor is not determined clearly, the search for talented people will be futile, laborious, costly and wasteful. Indeed, we do not lack talent in fields such as informatics, mathematics, medicine, music, and sports, but we lack good organizers and managers capable of using the right talented people in the right jobs.
Let's start with two examples in science and sports. Professor Tran Thanh Van is not the best physicist in the world, but in my opinion he is the best scientific organizer in Vietnam today. With his influence, prestige and talent, he successfully organized the world-famous Quy Nhon International Center for Interdisciplinary Science and Education (ICISE) in a 20 hectare area, situated between mountain and sea, and providing a unique inspirational and energizing atmosphere. The Center in Binh Dinh Province has working space for hundreds of scientists with halls, offices, libraries, hotels, parks and cafes. The Center has held 14 meetings, and attracted thousands of world-famous scientists, many of them being Nobel Prize laureates. They cover their own costs during each visit to Quy Nhon, contribute knowledge, offer advice, and help develop projects. They even finance Professor Tran Thanh Van to implement many projects. This would certainly make Professor Van a truly great organizer and a talented leader.
Another example is that of Mr. Park Hangseo, the versatile coach of the Vietnamese football team. When the Vietnamese players began training under Mr. Park, they crossed one milestone to the next, one glorious victory to another, proving that Mr. Park is the most talented organizer of a football team.
It is undoubtedly clear that Vietnam needs people with special talents in various organizational fields. These people should be genuine, real talented organizers, who are professionally competent and experts in their field of work and are able to impart their skills to others around them. These individuals can influence and also attract more excellent people in their fields, both domestically as well as internationally. People attract resources, and Vietnam needs more expertise in various fields, projects, and research work.
A good organizer is someone who can create and innovate with new ideas, show the right direction to others, know how to overcome obstacles and hurdles, and entice and motivate the right people in appropriate tasks. Sometimes a university, a city, or an organization only needs a few such organizers to bring about a radical change in quality of operations and the development of skills.
Motivating talent
Binh Dinh Province was not the first choice of Professor Van. Before settling there, he showed his ideas to officials in Ho Chi Minh City, Da Lat, and some other places, but none seemed interested in developing his ideas. If Ho Chi Minh City can attract just a few people such as Professor Tran Thanh Van in fields of healthcare, education, information technology, and the high-tech industry, a strong and talented network of highly capable people with exceptional creative abilities at different levels will automatically emerge. In the world, talented people in organizational fields are considered experts and there are only a few people with exceptional talents to be found among tens of millions. These people are the treasures of a nation.
Specially talented people like these need only a good environment and a working team that is suitable for their task. The administrative bodies in wards, districts, and departments across provinces need exceptionally talented people. The reality in Da Nang shows that most people who receive a masters or doctorate degree abroad work in some agencies for a while and then quit their jobs and accept compensation for training costs. Such agencies or units do not need people with highly advanced degrees, but rather people who are creative or innovative. A person with an intermediate degree is sufficient to complete a job in a ward or district. Competent people are easily blamed for being disruptive, especially when they try to introduce a new change in the process of functioning.
Places where talented people are recruited first are universities, research institutes, and high-tech zones, while public agencies can offer positions as advisors. In a city, an individual in a department taking on the role of an advisor plays a very important role, because they are involved in research, new policies, decision making, and in general organisational works. A good consultant is not only talented or a visionary, but is a person of integrity and commitment to work. Therefore, in modern society, besides the mayor or the city council, an advisory council acts as an adviser.
Attracting talented people to work in organisations benefits all society. Businesses and social organizations need and appreciate talented people. In Singapore we see how leaders are willing to attract talented people from other countries to work at an advisory level for the government. Almost 60% of the members of Mr. Lee Kuan Yew's general staff are from outside of Singapore. In addition, the government encourages universities, businesses, and companies to attract more talented people in various fields. All sustainable development businesses have good and competent organizers. They are the core of the management that determine the survival of the business, so they are always a rare commodity in the international market and therefore become the target of headhunters from other organisations and countries.
A few years ago, the biggest university in Ho Chi Minh City invited a number of experts who were known as being excellent in their fields of work, but this move was not successful. Although some people are very talented, they are unable to communicate well with other people. Some stay as loners in their field even after receiving a great project, or a huge investment package, and despite all the knowledge they fail to deliver. They usually want to shine by themselves, some even brag a lot about their abilities, offending colleagues around them, so that no one wants to support them in their work.
