"Why are we doing this?"
Good leadership is essentially about three things - setting a clear vision for your organisation, working alongside your team and being accountable for the culture. These may seem like fairly straightforward things to do, but their simplicity is deceptive. Over the next three posts I'm going to discuss some of the issues pertinent to these three necessities of modern leadership. As ever, I welcome feedback and will try to respond to it.
Setting a Clear Vision
For thousands of years we have looked to our leaders to give us direction and tell us where we are going. A combination of rigid hierarchy determining access to knowledge and education, and the exceptional Visionary who comes from nowhere has meant that this reliance has served the human race pretty well. If your King is the only person allowed to access the secret books that capture all the reactions to tax rises over the previous two hundred years then there is a good chance that he will be in a good position to forecast how much to charge his people next year.
However, Knowledge is now available to all and there are no limits to what any of us can learn if we are determined enough. The democratisation of Knowledge that the internet has delivered over the last twenty years will radically change our education models and our working patterns. It will also make it far harder for Leaders to deliver a clear Vision without being criticised - and let's note forget that the communication opportunities to brief against a Leader have increased exponentially as well. It's this vulnerability that makes Leaders seek solace in market research and focus groups.
Of course, chasing consensus across large groups of stakeholders can lead to bland and lifeless Visions that struggle to motivate individuals.
At the same time, we hear political leaders talking about everybody having had enough of 'experts'. Far from being stupid, this kind of statement is instead promoting the idea that there are multiple truths and that the old idea of a 'single version of the truth' is little more than a fairy story. Post-truth indeed.
To come up with a clear Vision that is motivating and gives true purpose to those in your organisation is therefore no mean feat. As well as the danger of descending into blandness, there is also the temptation of popular polemics to be avoided. A Leader needs to have their ethical core and consummate communication skills working perfectly in sync.
Better get busy.
Member at PMC & Director at Guttersoul Ltd
8 年I like your thinking Steve - especially the bit about experts not thinking through their analysis. I believe there is a responsibility for all to consider how the message is received - we can no longer pronounce without thinking about educating the receivers of our news. Science and academia has responsibility.
Hon FCILT, Secretary to the Board at Bisham Consulting, Hon Treasurer Worshipful Company of Carmen Benevolent Trust CIO
8 年Thanks for the article; very thought provoking. Maybe the anti-expert feeling was driven by three aspects: 1) the people did not like the message so lets ignore it by trashing it 2) experts have given analysis and expressed the outcomes without thinking through the effects on real people and without that thinking some of the solutions have not been thought through again and have been taken to be immutable 3) experts give no feeling of the variability likely in outcomes and they certainly do not educate the press in that respect. Further more during the last 10 years it has been all about austerity, when the outcomes required by local and central government needed more cash and therefore reducing (in real terms and absolutely for some) the tax take, I think has been wrong. I did not think 20 years ago I would say that, but.....