By Oh Young-jin
Business Desk editor
There is something special about chief executive officers (CEOs).
That is my conclusion having interviewed a number of corporate leaders.
Of course, one caveat is that they have their own style in executing their “specialness” and sometimes it is hard to pin-point what that is because often it becomes part of their demeanor or attitude and an hour or so of is usually not enough to bring it out for others to see with any level of clarity. But to the advantage of professional interlocutors is the fact that they are bound to drop a hint or two to let them capture the gist of their secret to success.
One such case is Nam Sang-tae, CEO of Daewoo Shipbuilding and Marine Engineering and also chairman of the Korea Shipbuilders’ Association.
The 61-year-old who cut his teeth in the now defunct Daewoo Group kept his cards close to his chest, parrying tricky questions sometimes with the feigned ignorance of an “I haven’t-thought-of-it” attitude or in other times simply offering an answer that either has little to do with the question or nitpicking the question itself.
Before I explain how that interview was conducted, for readers who are impatient, I will give you a heads-up about what I think his management philosophy boils down to: fair-mindedness and a sense of independence.
Let’s get back to a couple of interesting moments in the interview:
After spending a minute or two exchanging pleasantries, the first question thrown at him was on the sale of a controlling stake, or about 50.4 percent, held by the state-run Korea Development Bank and Korea Asset Management Corp.
“Should Daewoo want to get out of creditors’ control?” was the question.
Nam said, “They are not our creditors but stakeholders.” True, since Daewoo, one of Korea’s top shipbuilders, “graduated from a creditors-initiated debt workout program about 10 years ago or shortly after it went into one at the height of the 1997-1998 currency crisis that forced Korea to seek help from the International Monetary Fund (IMF).
Then, Nam threw in an additional disclaimer of sorts.
“It is up to the government,” he said on the sale of its stake. “If it thinks now is the right time to earn maximum profit from the sale, it will sell.
“The problem is a repeated notion that the sale will take place this year or next year, when nothing has been decided,” Nam said. “That distracts us from our work and disturbs customers who place orders with us.”
Although Nam tried to modulate his answer with a dose of caution, he seemed to inadvertently drop a hint about what the odds he think are of the possibility of an immediate stake sale, when he fleetingly said, “It may not draw a great deal of interest (from potential buyers).”
Although there was a chance that he dropped this hint in order to throw inquirers off the track, I dismissed it when he talked about his sense of fair competition.
Asked about advantages of being taken over by big and related businesses like steelmaker POSCO, he said, “I thought about the obvious advantages, when there was a rumor. But now I have come to the conclusion that a level playing field brings out the best in everybody,” he said. “In other words, parents may help hire a tutor for their child but it will come down to whether that child really wants to study.”
Nam added that Daewoo has trodden a corporate path with little attachment, being different from its competitors like Hyundai Heavy and Samsung Heavy, both belonging to conglomerates. “We can go toe to toe with in competition with any company in Japan and China,” he said. “You shouldn’t fix it, if it is not broken.”
His streak of independence was made more conspicuous when he replied to the question of how he keeps his workforce on its toes, when there is a sign of diversion.
“I don’t tell them to go out and steal,” he said. “It is a case where profits will go into the pockets of employees or that of the owners,” he added. “I don’t pass the firm to my children.”
The better the company performs, the more profit there is for stakeholders _ employees and shareholders. “If we want to build a company that is profitable and with a good reputation, that is a common goal that nobody objects to and there would be no need to discipline anyone.”
The beauty of Nam’s view is its simplicity that is in sharp relief in a world that few disagree is complex. And it has worked so far.