(Illustration: President Ho Chi Minh working as a kitchen assistant on the ship Amiral Latouche Tréville when he left the country to find a path to national liberation in June 1911. Source: Government News, published June 4, 2021).
In my previous post, I mentioned that one of our long-term OKRs must be producing a high number of senior state and political leaders from the Hanoi-Amsterdam (Ams) alumni network. That post received quite a bit of criticism from some who labeled the idea as unrealistic and wishful thinking. Therefore, I want to share a few concrete pathways to turn this OKR into reality.
To successfully produce Ams alumni who hold senior leadership positions (such as Politburo members, Central Committee members, and Ministers), we can deploy the following strategic approaches:
1. Attracting Legitimate Political Capital
The most effective route is to aggressively recruit and enroll the children and grandchildren of current national leaders into Hanoi-Amsterdam.
Global statistics consistently show that major politicians often come from political families; the phenomenon of “generational leadership” is a reality. This is no different from how children of doctors or athletes have a much higher probability of entering those respective fields. Raised in political households, these children are exposed to governance, the dynamics of power, elite networks, and strategic social relations from a very young age. Naturally, their probability of continuing along that path is significantly higher than average.
Why can Ams pull this off when most other schools fail? It is not a matter of being a wealthy or elite private school. The most critical and irreplaceable asset Ams possesses is its prestigious reputation, combined with the fact that it is a public institution.
No matter how excellent a private school is, senior officials are often hesitant to enroll their children there due to potential public backlash over high tuition fees. A public school eliminates this risk completely; it is a state institution with negligible tuition.
Furthermore, only a school like Ams possesses the historical reputation, symbolic weight, and “elite legitimacy” required for the children of leaders to attend with absolute pride—far exceeding that of any private school. This is a form of institutional branding that money simply cannot buy. (In Ho Chi Minh City, we own international school systems like CIS and SSV, which boast world-class facilities and curricula. Yet, we openly admit we cannot compete with a top-tier public school like Hanoi-Amsterdam when it comes to attracting students from political backgrounds).
This type of institutional equity takes decades, even centuries, to build. It is the cumulative product of history, tradition, outstanding alumni, academic excellence, social standing, and public perception.
2. Upgrading the Political Curriculum and Mindset
There is a common hypothesis that Ams alumni rarely rise above the rank of Deputy Minister to become full Ministers because they “do not know how to flatter and refuse to flatter.” Consequently, they choose to remain technocrats—highly skilled experts.
According to this theory, because Ams teachers carry the traditional, rigid pride of Northern intellectuals (kẻ sĩ Bắc Hà), they do not pass down the art of corporate or political diplomacy to their students.
Even if this assumption is true, it stems from a flawed mindset. Individuals who excel at diplomacy and managing up are actually possessing incredibly high soft skills and EQ. They understand human psychology. They know how to leverage strengths, manage weaknesses, and swallow their ego to achieve a grander strategic objective. Often, this is not “flattery”—it is political acumen and the mastery of relationship management.
Therefore, we must upgrade both the faculty and the teaching methods. We need to teach the practical realities of politics, power dynamics, and institutional systems. If we continue to teach a rigid intellectual mindset focused on hollow pride and oversized egos (a trait I confess I share), our graduates will only ever be fit to be high-paid employees or senior advisors.
We must train students to harbor grand ambitions, possess high EQ, master the discipline of patience, wait for the optimal timing, build powerful networks, and pursue ultra-long-term goals. Look at President Ho Chi Minh as the ultimate benchmark: he worked as a kitchen hand, a waiter, a manual laborer, and a merchant, and he was completely willing to write humble, strategic letters to global leaders to save his country. The curriculum must change to reflect this pragmatism.
3. Fostering Debate and Early Political Engagement
If Hanoi-Amsterdam actively funds powerful debate clubs and invests heavily in courses covering politics, philosophy, and state governance, the results will follow. By regularly inviting current and retired statesmen to lecture and share insights on the importance of public service, the school will inspire students and drastically increase the probability of producing future political figures.
This initiative is entirely within the capability of the school’s leadership. I am confident that many retired leaders and politicians would be more than willing to support Ams in this endeavor.
4. Institutionalizing the Power of the Alumni Network
Many elite schools worldwide are dominant not just because of their academic training, but because they possess an incredibly powerful alumni network. Predecessors pull up successors; successful graduates mentor the next generation.
If the Ams alumni network is sufficiently robust, unified, and influential, the emergence of major figures in politics, business, and society will accelerate.
Currently, the Ams alumni network is already quite strong through HAO (Hanoi-Amsterdam Alumni Organization). Wherever you go, meeting a fellow alumnus means receiving dedicated support. However, for years, this network has operated purely on a voluntary basis and has not been systematically developed by the school administration. If the school leadership resolves to institutionalize this, it is an entirely straightforward task.
This piece is intended to be exploratory. Implementing these strategies does not guarantee the immediate achievement of our OKRs, but it will significantly increase the statistical probability of producing senior political leaders from our alumni base.
Naturally, this requires a much more detailed and long-term action plan. I firmly believe that Hanoi-Amsterdam can achieve this by leveraging its existing social capital and brand equity, backed by the immense political will currently demonstrated by our state leaders.
