Annan as UN Secretary-General:
Annan took office as Secretary-General on January 1, 1997. Immediately drawing on his UN experience, Kofi Annan set out with a broad agenda. First, he wanted to overhaul the very tightly controlled manner in which his predecessor had operated the Executive Office of the Secretary-General. Kofi Annan wanted greater transparency, greater openness and communication among the departments, and the ability of those who knew the most about an issue to be able to report to the Security Council or to the press Spokesman, when needed. He was determined to open up the UN, both in its decision making processes, and in its relations with the people. He created a “cabinet” of the top under-secretaries that met every Wednesday. He also held a lunch with the entire Security Council each month as the presidency of the Council rotates on a monthly basis. He also reached out to the heads of all the UN agencies, funds, and programs, and worked to encourage them to coordinate their activities in a more productive manner. These ideas and actions are demonstrated in his declassified papers even in the first several months of his first term. As we can clearly see, Annan’s leadership management type falls into a collegial model, working as a team effort.
By observing several Secretaries-General, he knew the complex role he would have to play as administrator to the Member States. He saw his role as a moral leader to the peoples of the world, upholder of international law, head of a large bureaucracy, and peace mediator in times of crisis. He also understood the UN needed to reform and he began a reform effort in his first days that lasted throughout his tenure. Annan states that “the biggest impediment to change and reform in the bureaucracy is the restraint bureaucrats put on themselves.”25 This was most profoundly ingrained in him in the days just before the outbreak of the genocide in Rwanda when members of the staff decided not to take critical information to the Security Council, believing (and rightly so) that the members would do nothing. He tried through his more open policy process to empower the staff to speak freely.
When Annan took office in January 1997, he immediately began to restructure the Secretariat under a new paradigm of transparency and communication. One of his first acts, on January 6, was to dramatically change the policy of his predecessor which had been to only allow the Secretary-General, Boutros-Ghali, or his adviser, Chinmaya Gharekhan, to brief the Security Council. In this short note to the under-secretary-general for political affairs, Marrack Goulding, signed by the Secretary-General's chief of staff, Iqbal Riza, Annan completely changes this policy:
Note to Mr. Goulding Briefing to the Security Council on the situation in the Great Lakes region
The Security Council will hold informal consultations on the situation in the Great Lakes region on Wednesday, 8 January.
The Secretary-General would wish you to brief on his behalf the members of the Security Council on this topic.
Thank you.
S. Iqbal Riza
January 199726
On 13 January, he broadened that policy, made very clear by the following inter-office memo which he directed to several under-secretaries, including Chinmaya Gharekhan:
Subject: Briefings and reports to the Security Council
1. As substantive Departments assume enhanced responsibilities and authority for their functional areas, the reporting by your Departments should follow the guidelines below.
2. Where the Security Council is concerned, the Department of Political Affairs retains the primary responsibility for monitoring the deliberations of the Security Council and for providing it with the political information required. In parallel, the Department of Peace-keeping Operations and the Department of Humanitarian Affairs will attend Security Council meetings (both consultations and formal) as required and provide the Council with information relating to their peace-keeping and humanitarian responsibilities. Heads of Departments will determine when it is appropriate for them to brief the Council personally, or through their staff, ensuring consistency in this practice. Of course, it is vital that all three Departments coordinate closely, each acting as the lead Department where it has principal responsibility.27
While other Secretaries-General, and particularly Boutros-Ghali, had been more reclusive and less transparent, Annan set out not only to change the atmosphere to one that was more open, he also began to enhance policy coordination and build teamwork. As an insider, he had the advantage of experiencing the weaknesses of the Organization when there was a lack of policy coordination. He immediately created the Senior Management Group (SMG) which included all the heads of departments, as a kind of cabinet to provide a structure for dialogue, exchange, and policy advice. In addition, he established a Policy Coordination Group: the Executive Committee on Peace and Security (ESPS) which would meet every month, with the three lead departments (political affairs, peacekeeping, and humanitarian affairs) meeting every week. The members of ESPS also included heads of legal affairs, human rights, development, refugees, the executive office of the Secretary-General, and special representatives of the Secretary-General as needed.28
Annan continued to emphasize teamwork as he stated in this speech to a gathering of his special and personal representatives held in 2001, when he gave them this advice:
Keep in constant dialogue with everyone in the United Nations team. Try to hold meetings with your immediate staff every day, and set aside time to thrash out deeper issues. Meet regularly with the larger United Nations team to discuss not only what they can do to help your work, but also how you can help them in theirs. Sit together with them, plan with them, implement with them. Bilateral donors, regional organizations and non-governmental organizations, too, can be rich sources of goodwill if tapped properly -- again, through dialogue.29
Annan's emphasis on team work and open dialogue represents his early exposure to the kind of dialogue he experienced in his home with his father and the local leaders, elders, and the tribal tradition of listening and building consensus. As Gambari stated, this was not just his African experience, but how Kofi absorbed that experience into his own personality. The lesson that he often quotes from the master of his school in Ghana also appears in Annan's own words in explaining his approach to policy. In the following answer to a question posed at a press conference in Israel after having met with the president, Moshe Katsev, Annan demonstrates his insistence on looking at the larger picture:
"But what I would want to see is a clearer definition of the road ahead, with timelines ... so that people do not think the only issue they are dealing with is a ceasefire." The Secretary-General added that people have to see that there are good and positive things ahead to give hope and to encourage them to work for peace.30
This short statement is a complex example of several of Annan's values and personality: the need to see the larger picture, to be optimistic, and the fact that he saw himself as being the giver of hope, that, as a world leader, he had some responsibility as a guide to hope, and to ward off despair. Annan said several times that he would often make declarations on people's human rights, so that those who had been victims and were still vulnerable to retribution could quote him on human rights, and not suffer the consequences, because they were just quoting what he had said. Another lesson that Annan incorporated into his lexicon of personal traits is his experience while at Macalester College in Minnesota when he first encountered the northern winter cold. After nearly freezing his ears, he finally gave in and started wearing earmuffs.
I would put on layers and layers of clothing to get warm. But I was determined not to use earmuffs because I thought they were not elegant. Until one day I almost lost my ears to the cold, so I went and bought the biggest pair of earmuffs I could find. From that day on, I learned that you never walk into a situation and believe that you know better than the natives. You have to listen and look around.31
In a speech to the Foreign Policy Association, he reveals how that lesson shaped the way he looked at policy formation:
We start from the observation that our prevention efforts can only be effective if they are undertaken with the cooperation of Member States. In each case, we need to start by looking at the society we are trying to help. We cannot impose models or behaviours on the people we are working to support, but instead should look to them to guide what we do, and how we should do it. Conflict prevention must be a home-grown process.32
As Kent Kille discusses in his book From Manager to Visionary, Kofi Annan approached decision making in a strategic manner. He would carefully lay the groundwork, build consensus, cultivate a grassroots understanding of the issues, but he also paid very close attention to timing. In an interview, Annan explains his strategy:
Timing is very important in this Organization. You can kill a brilliant idea by moving too soon. And once they've shot it down, it can become very difficult to revive it. And I know it is difficult because we have a tendency to want to act, and it's much more difficult sometimes to sit back. But I believe that there is a time to sit and let things happen because whatever you do will not make a difference. And there comes a time when you need to move to make things happen because the timing is right.33
At an off-the-cuff encounter with the press after having met with the Security Council, Annan explains his decision-making process as he applied it to the Middle East question:
I wouldn't call the discussions or the process I went through to decide "indecision". I think it was assessing the situation, analysing the situation, working with our partners for peace, and determining the right timing to go to the region, and when I thought it would be most opportune and helpful to go. So it was a question of analysis, a question of coordinating with others, and a question of timing. And so I am going at the precise moment that I think I should go. The other things, the previous discussions and all were part of the process.34
Notes:
22. Annan, pages 46-59.
23. Fred Eckhard, Draft Manuscript, 31 October 2008, page 12.
24. Report of the Secretary-General Pursuant to Paragraph 11 of the Resolution 986 (1995), Security Council document: S/1997/206, March 10, 1997, paragraphs 24 and 25; in the Collected Papers of Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), page 48.
25. Interview with Kofi Annan by Thomas Weiss on April 29, 2002, in The Collected Papers of Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages xiii-xxv.
26. Note to Mr. Goulding of January 6, 1997, released from UN Archives, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), page 4.
27. Interoffice Memo from Kofi Annan to several heads of Departments on January 13, 1997, from UN Archives, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno(editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 8-9.
28. Note to the Secretary-General from Marrack Goulding on February 5, 1997, from UN Archives, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 32-33.
29. Speech by the Secretary-General on March 30, 2001, at the Seminar for Special and Personal Representatives and Envoys of the Secretary-General at Mont Pèlerin, Switzerland, document number SG/SM/7760, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 1437-1439.
30. Noon Briefing by the deputy spokesman for the Secretary-General, Manoel Almeida e Silva, on June 18,2001, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 1527-1528.
31. This interview with young people was published in the May 2001 issue of Nickelodeon Magazine, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), page 1467.
32. Speech delivered to the Foreign Policy Association in New York on March 21, 2001, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 1422-1424.
33. Interview with former UN Secretary-General Kofi Annan by Jean Krasno, on Friday, March 21, 2008, in New York City.
34. Off-the-cuff comments by Kofi Annan outside the Security Council on June 8, 2001, in The Collected Papers of Secretary-General Kofi Annan: UN Secretary-General, 1997-2006, by Jean Krasno (editor), (Boulder, CO: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2012), pages 1515-1516.