On Leadership
Statecraft, A Journey, My Life Our Times, For The Record, Ten Years To Save The West.
Five of the UK prime ministerial memoir titles over the past three decades.
None of them to be ever read by me. Although that most recent last one might be worth a doomscroll chuckle.
The author of the second on that mini-list above has a new tome out. An instructional, no less. Title as per this blog's.
I once got wrapped in a lunchtime pub bet with a compadre at Uni. Our latest assignment being to write a book review. The wager became that I could attain at least the same mark, at worst in the 2:1 range, as them. In significantly less time spent. I would do so though only from reading published journal reviews. As opposed to actually, y'know, reading the set text.
The book was (the genre flagstone classic) Limits To Growth.
I won the bet. Yet I then went and read the book anyway. Only to wish I could re-write the whole submission.
I felt so much was missed in the supposed 'pro' reviewer ranks. Questions you're meant to go way with, problems (sometimes mischievously) ill-defined, angles of remedy wildly ignored. Perhaps worst of all, I recall the feeling of utterly misplaced Call To Arms opportunity.
As exercise in an 'as much as necessary, as little as possible' kind of way, it stays with me. Amazing what you can achieve to cut a corner. In this case of time. Yet the ultimately hollow result shows that, as with Sales of worth in general, there are often no shortcuts.
So with zero intention of reading the Davos multi-millionaire's blueprint for leadership (according to the author, that ought be capital L), I wondered what I might glean from parsing the various reviews. Currently flooding the chattering classes feeds by those seeking to themselves 'lead' opinion.
Overall, universal was the criticism that no apologies for decisions made when in power flow forth. With a frustration at the smaller than wished for personal examples. Then there was writing style. From a well of 'deepism', it seems, to the extent of writing like a "fortune cookie".
It appears pitched as instruction manual for political leaders, in same style as 'secrets of my success' airport business books. What I've always disparaged as The Big I Am. There's so few of note as to render the genre fairly vapid. This treatise aims to buck that trend from the government-running arena. In short, so that you become someone who makes a difference.
From the balance sheet required of an actual review, none of these ought concern us. As hazardous a pursuit as I experienced this to be, is there anything third-hand we can take into our Sales roles from how a man whose fortune it is alleged comes in part comes from propping up various hues of undesirable -crats. From Auto through Pluto to Klepto and all around and between? Let's see. Here's five angles erstwhile reviewers of the day pick out as useful.
Definition
Leadership is defined as being;
“of advancing and not just being; of action and not mere analysis; to resolve the problem and not simply articulate it”.
He cites an “uplifting spirit” as essential to great leadership.
Note that 'change' is essential, lest a kind of soft corruption sets in [peerless commentator Andrew Neil speaks of this aspect, ie, the new blood's turn as one of the two disinfectants of democracy, the other being transparency']. Plenty there which a Sales endeavour near you may well heed.
Delivery
One of the chapter titles – Democracy or Not, It’s All About Delivery – easily transfers onto Sales;
“Everything in this book is designed to explain why delivery, making the change which works, is the only real test of government. But it is also the only way to protect democracy.”
Indeed, there's an element of my recent blog on deliverism, here with added reminder passed to tyros when given controls of the machine, 'remember to write the business'.
In this vein he advises structures like “delivery units”, which really do only focus on the top priorities.
Cycle
Much of his advice can be summarised by his alliterative four Ps: priorities, policy, people and performance management.
As well as the central insight, these 4 Ps remind us what's the point of pitching a solution if you can't turn your view of it into IP?
He argues that leadership follows three stages. The first is when the new leader is listening eagerly; the second comes when they think they know everything, and finally, there’s a third stage of maturity when “once again, with more humility, they listen and learn”. The book’s purpose, he says, is to shorten the learning curve and get leaders to the third stage more quickly.
Themes
He values making the much harder, more complex structural changes, as opposed to decrees of what shall be done.
He perhaps seems especially concerned with leaving a 'legacy'. At the time of his ousting this was very much the scathing buzzword of satirists and critics alike. Coupled with what he now advises to avoid; hubris. As likely giving rise to his tip of knowing when to leave the stage.
One reviewer noted; Easy decisions are made down the food chain. Political leaders are left with all those 50/50 decisions pushed up because the choice is not obvious.
On AI technology: “Such things, once invented by human ingenuity, are never disinvented by human anxiety.”
On feuds: “People fall out with you, but you should always be prepared to let them fall back in.”
On decision-taking: “Calculate too much, and you miscalculate.”
On law and order: “The characteristic people value most in any society is stability.”
Future
The opener of that above quartet brings us here.
AI is the future, and any capital-L Leader should get in on the ground floor.
One columnist-turned-reviewer entertainingly began with what the AI prompt might have been to produce this tome. Given it's a (the?) major topic the resultant text is in thrall to. This also happens to be an interesting idea to spark a meeting. Can you run through with a tech-minded prospect what their 'superprompt' for their future plans might entail?
Are you defining your role then resolving a problem with uplifting spirit? Alongside a prime focus on delivery? Signposting your own '4 Ps' style framework the prospect can own?
Avoiding his version of paralysis through analysis? And finally, I particularly like that superprompt idea. These are angles I'll be adapting for selling. Which are yours?
Reviewers included above; George Osborne, Isabel Hardman, Andrew Marr, Nicola Sturgeon, Eoin O'Malley, & Tim Stanley.