Now that we’ve all read enough about Margaret Thatcher and her leadership capabilities I want to go back to the Liberal Leadership race. If you remember my blog on Monday, I said something about how there are three dimensions upon which a leader can be identified. Those are Policy, Politics, and Personality. Today, I want to look at Policy.
Marc Garneau tried to make his campaign about policy, going so far as to criticize Justin Trudeau for his lack of policy ideas. “Federal Liberal Leadership frontrunner Justin Trudeau has a responsibility to tell Canadians where he stands and where he intends to lead now, not after the leadership race is over,”
Garneau was a policy wonk’s dream. A doctorate in engineering who had flown in space and designed space flight simulators for fun. But he was dry and dense and for all his love of policy, it was hard to figure out what he stood for (gender equality, high-speed internet access, student-assistance reform, expansion of Pacific-directed trade, and telecom liberalization.)
The liberals’ had picked two very smart leaders in the recent past and look where it got them. They twice turned down the chance for a political expert with a likeable personality in favour of two intellectuals who couldn’t connect with people.
Sometimes you get leaders who are good at policy and have a personality. Rare but people like Pierre Trudeau and Clinton come to mind.
The thing about leadership is that it doesn’t matter how smart you are or how good your policies are, if you can’t connect with people, you won’t get anywhere. In fact of the three dimensions upon which a leader can excel, (policy, politics, and personality), policy is the one that matters least.
Never forget that this is why A and B students work for C students.
I got a few emails last night about how I should comment on Margaret Thatcher’s death and her qualities as a leader. I was reluctant to do so as there is little I can add to such a well covered topic. My first thought was that I would rather write a piece on the leadership qualities of Annette Funicello who also died yesterday. But I figured I could make her story a cautionary tail for those who aspire to leadership positions.
The press have gone out of their way to characterize Margaret Thatcher as a great leader. Words like conviction, tough, disciplined, focused, determined, strong are used all over the place to describe her. There is a lot about Margaret that would characterize her a great leader.
Her lack of leadership capabilities in one major area was her downfall though. She was great at setting a vision, getting results, inspiring people (although she did not earn their love and affection). She was very skilled at managing down as her personal staff will attest.
But she was lousy at managing out. Her role in the British system was “Primus Inter Pares” Unlike tother political systems where the party elects the leader, in Britain, it is the caucus and tradition holds that the Prime Minister is, “First Among Equals.” (At least this is how the other cabinet members see it.)
She had a habit of running roughshod over cabinet members, the caucus and civil servants. As John O’Sullivan describes in the Globe today, she Kicked Up and Kissed Down. This is what eventually ended her reign, her inability to manage out.
Your followers will put up with rough leadership as long as you are producing results but the minute that ends, you’re toast if you’re no good at managing out.
The Liberal party’s selection of a new leader is a fascinating look into what people want to see in a leader and this campaign in particular provides an interesting laboratory to study leadership.
In business, academia, etc leaders are not selected by their followers but by their predecessors so there is nothing really to study about leadership selection as it relates to followers. In past Liberal leadership races it was often predecessors who tried to influence leadership selection and this is one factor that got the party into trouble. In this campaign though, the waring factions of the party have been silenced so the winner won’t be selected by predecessors.
In actual elections, there are many other forces that come into play when selecting a prime minister or a president. Real elections are often about competing visions but in this leadership race you have a group of people who share a very similar vision or passion. While there may be minor differences in vision, it is harder to make this a major point of differentiation when there are more fundamental agreements than differences.
Real elections are often fought on a record of results so studying leadership selection here is confusing as well. In this campaign, it is difficult to differentiate based upon results. No one has screwed up royally in the past, and none of the candidates has a record of results that would provide a substantial differentiating factor.
That leaves it to three dimensions upon which a leader can be identified. Those are Policy, Politics, and Personality. Over this week, I’m gong to try and look at each of these areas and see how each has influenced the race. ( I should warn you in advance that I actually watched all candidate speeches on Saturday to try and figure this stuff out.)
So what are you? Are you neurotic, always taking on too much responsibility? Or is your character flawed and you tend to assume that the world is at fault? In either case, you’ll need the following six ways to avoid responsibility.
Be the CEO – lots of other people you can blame. (Tony Hayward – BP)
If you can’t be the CEO, work in a team – it allows you to blame someone else. (Lance Armstrong)
Deny there’s a problem – nothing to be responsible for. (Nero)
Invent a higher responsibility – you’ll be too busy to assume other ones. (Silvio Berlusconi)
Mess up just enough – but not enough to get fired. (Leafs management, like forever)
Hide – did it work in school when you lowered your eyes to avoid a question from the prof? (All of us)
A number of years ago I was talking with the president of a small company that was owned by a much larger entity. The president’s job was to produce healthy profits which would then be dividended up to the parent company. The parent company held him accountable for profits and based his bonus on those profits.
So far no problem in theory. The president though, was completely demotivated and while he was accountable for profits, he didn’t feel responsible for them. (Are you thinking perhaps that these two words are interchangeable? Well they’re not.)
The problem was that the finance team at the parent company took the liberty of charging the subsidiary company for all sorts of things over which the president had no control. They charged him arbitrary management fees, transaction fees, interest charges etc and the president had no input on what these fees were. (For those of you who are accountants we’re talking here about allocated costs. This is my inner accounting nerd coming out. The rest of you can fall asleep here.)
So the thing was that the president was accountable but had no control. As a result, he didn’t feel responsible for the numbers. He was made accountable but didn’t feel responsible so was demotivated.
If you don’t have control over your work you may be accountable for results without feeling responsible.
Accountability is about being liable, answerable.
Accountability is based on logic, responsibility is based on emotions.
You can be given accountability but you cannot be given responsibility, it can only be taken.
Now that we’ve all read enough about Margaret Thatcher and her leadership capabilities I want to go back to the Liberal Leadership race. If you remember my blog on Monday, I said something about how there are three dimensions upon which a leader can be identified. Those are Policy, Politics, and Personality. Today, I want to look at Policy.
