Where Content Is King And Language Is Queen: Management Lessons From The Crown

The choice of words, the pauses and overall richness of the language will delight connoisseurs of English. Watching the series will also do no harm to your vocabulary. At various points, there are words that will inspire you to refer the lexicon and enrich your understanding of placement of words.

Watching The Crown is indeed like viewing moving words of exemplary literature.

 I watched with great fascination all the four seasons of The Crown on Netflix. This brilliantly made web series provides us with great insights of the world’s most famous and talked about royal family, anchored for generations at London’s Buckingham Palace.

The crown, amongst other things, is the story of Queen Elizabeth II who ascends the throne after her father’s untimely demise. The Crown brings alive her journey since she took over in 1952 till Prince Charles and Lady Diana are on the verge of separation.

The Queen still reigns. The Crown shows how deftly she handles the affairs of being a Sovereign – sometimes with tempered compassion and at times with ruthless admonition. No one who needs it is spared her admonition – be it her husband Prince Philip, children, sister, prime ministers, or even her uncle the legendary Lord Mountbatten.

Being a Royal might look like the ultimate privilege for us common people, but as The Crown highlights, it is quite lonely inside Buckingham Palace. Constitutionally, the monarch has little powers, but the Queen is often called upon to exercise her influence in tricky matters of state and even bring the prime minister of the day on his / her knees if need be. The prime minister, after all, as Head Of Government, is armed with vast constitutional authority.

The web series implanted in me many ideas about life and management. The Queen has to not only do her duty, but also keep her huge family and history together. Many voices and individualities are suppressed and many compromises made. The Queen needs to ensure the monarch survives in a world where there is little patience for such regal opulence. It is a delicate balancing act.

Here are few management lessons we can savour from The Crown:

1. Content Is King, Language is Queen

Watch The Crown and you will fall in love all over again with the English language. ‘A confederacy of elected quitters’ is how a young queen admonishes the prime minister who wants to step down due to ill health. She laments the fact that ten years into her role none of the three prime ministers thus far could last the course.

The choice of words, the pauses and overall richness of the language will delight connoisseurs of English. Watching the series will also do no harm to your vocabulary. At various points, there are words that will inspire you to refer the lexicon and enrich your understanding of placement of words. Watching The Crown is indeed like viewing moving words of exemplary literature.

2. A Case For Complicated Happiness

Being a Royal is a kind of out-of the-world experience, but it is complicated too. The Queen has to navigate through complicated family relationships, including with her husband Prince Philip. 

A sense of loneliness grips the royals as The Queen is the supremo and the essence of everything that happens in their lives. Each royal is expected to play by the rules, even if that means sacrificing one’s own happiness for the ‘larger good’ of protecting the royalty and its position.

Be it the queen’s younger sister Princess Margaret, their mother, or her own son Prince Charles, they are all bound by the codes that typify royalty and which keep the traditions alive. Everyone needs to find happiness in a world of high visibility with low freedom.

The Crown thus drives home the point that often happiness needs to be found and may not come naturally. Just having the riches of the world does not guarantee happiness. In fact, as with the royals, the riches – material, moral and of legacy - could create complexities unique to a set of people, incomprehensible to common folks who revere Her Majesty and her folks.

3. Duty Over Love

The Queen is a natural successor, but Princess Margaret is a natural seeker for the throne. However, due to a chronological ‘mismatch’, Margaret is destined to follow, not to rule. Both she and Prince Charles cannot marry the person they love as laws and norms forbid. Here, the choice is clear for the royals - they cannot step over the line. Edward VIII, who abdicated the throne, as he chose love over duty, fell out of favour with the royal family.

Life may present similar situations to many commoners too. How overpowering will our call of duty be if we are put in such a situation? Can that turn out to be moment of decisiveness or become a basis for lifelong bitterness? It is a complex question indeed. Sometimes life, no matter what each individual’s context may be, presents no answers, but poses complicated questions. We still need to breathe and find our way through.

4. Do Nothing, Say Nothing

The Queen tells her son Prince Charles: “Not having a voice is something all of us have to live with. We have all made sacrifices and suppressed who we are. Some portion of our natural selves is always lost……….it is not a choice, it is a duty. I was a similar age to you when your great- grandmother Queen Mary told me that to do nothing, to say nothing, is the hardest job of all. It requires every ounce of energy that we have.”

This conversation is symbolic of the culture, beliefs and traditions of the royal family. Recent events within the family reveal just how hard it is to simply acquiesce and shut out any opinions of your own. After all, the royal family’s influence as well as relevance probably flows from the ‘grand imagery’ of greatness, the mystery, and not from revealing the vulnerabilities of simply being human.

Some people believe do nothing and the problem will sort itself out, eventually. For decades, maybe centuries, the royal family has been practicing this as a fine art. Imagine, how will life be if we have to move from karma to ‘no-karma’? It seems like we just thought an improbable thought.

5. Quest To Survive And Stay Relevant

Survival may not be a bad word, but it is definitely an uncomfortable one. People like to sail smooth and many at best reluctantly accept the stumbling blocks. But survival and relevance are not just we, the commoners’ problems. The family that resides in Buckingham Palace has for decades been trying to stay relevant and afloat. It’s news even if anyone from the family sneezes. Being constantly in the spotlight is a pressure of a different kind.

‘Outsiders’ like Lady Diana could not cope with the suffocation that comes from preserving tradition and adhering to protocol. Chasms within the family are being played out in full international view. The royals are being watched constantly. Amidst all this, to keep the glory, survive and stay relevant are monumental challenges for a titular head of state with limited constitutional powers.

In Conclusion

The Crown on Netflix is a raconteur’s delight. Presentation of stories within stories, portrayal of intense yet supplicated emotions, personality characterisations, scripting, communication dynamics and screenplay make for great viewing as well as learning.