It will be easy to remember Nelson Mandela the iconic, larger-than-life activist and freedom crusader. Reflections on Mandela will, naturally, focus on the human rights advocate aspect of his life: from years unjustly locked in an apartheid-era prison to his obsession with racial reconciliation in a country that seemed irreversibly distant from it.

While Mandela’s personal biography certainly stirs the soul, often serving as a recipe for inspirational social change, it’s not the only chip he brought to the table. There is a tendency to either overlook or underestimate his executive acumen and leadership style. It took considerable skill and political trade craft to pull off what many deemed impossible: somehow peacefully guiding Africa’s largest and most powerful economy through a period of radical political transformation.

But, even during his one-term as President of South Africa, the rest of the world seemed to give little thought to exactly how he was doing as a head of state. We seem satisfied with knowing nothing more beyond the legends and tales that have molded him into a sort of metaphysical or mystical being. Yet, Mandela the governor or chief executive was probably much more consequential and transcendent than Mandela the activist and revolutionary....