The Coalition’s leadership dilemma
In its critique of Labour’s record, the Coalition is in danger of reinforcing a model of authority which undermines a core principle of the Big Society…..
I hope he’s having fun but otherwise, to be honest, I don’t give a damn about Andrew Rawnsley’s holidays. It’s not always been like this. Until quite recently I was on the list of people The Observer would approach to fill in when their esteemed columnist had a well-deserved rest. I played this super sub role for other papers too; The Times, FT and Standard all had my number. But the ‘phone stopped ringing some time ago.
Maybe I just wasn’t good enough; the world is full of discarded newspaper columnists. Perhaps comment editors have forgotten me. A complaint to the Charity Commissioners led my Trustees to err on the side of caution and ask me some time ago to avoid blog posts that could be construed as political advice. Or is it just that – five years after leaving Downing Street – I am too much of a mouldy old has been.
Anyway, being a mature, magnanimous and deep thinking person I let such thoughts detain me for no more than a couple of hours before deciding to read the Observer piece today by the new holder of the ‘Andrew Rawnsley is away’ crown; Rafael Behr. The well-made argument of the piece is captured in its last paragraph:
“The coalition will work hard in 2011 to pin the blame for all the bad things happening on Labour. Some of that blame will stick, especially if Ed Miliband makes himself an easy target, standing on too many barricades. But the strategy relies on the public dwelling on the worst bits of Britain before the coalition and forgetting the best bits. It relies on people thinking of the New Labour era as the bad old days. I suspect that goes against the grain of popular memory. And while memory is a bad historian, it is the stuff that political loyalty is made of.”
I leave readers to judge whether Behr is right about either Labour’s record or the Coalition’s tactics. My concern is with the model of leadership implied by an account of the Labour years that focus almost entirely on failings by Government.
As part of my general immersion in thinking about organisations (and as part of my new year’s resolution to be a better CEO in 2011), I am reading a fascinating book called ‘Leadership without Easy Answers’. Here is its author, Ronald A Heifetz writing about what he calls ‘adaptive leadership’:
“Making progress on these [complex] problems demands not someone who provides answers from on high but changes in our attitudes, behaviour and values. To meet challenges such as these, we need a different idea of leadership and a new social contract that promote our adaptive capacities, rather than inappropriate expectations of authority. We need to reconceive and revitalise our civic life and the meaning of citizenship.”
The creation of a Big Society – relying as it does on citizens stepping up to the plate – needs this kind of leadership. At his best David Cameron gives the sense that this is the leadership of which he is capable of and which he wants to offer. The problem is that our political culture (a toxic mixture of elitism, adversarialism and populism) constantly drives politicians towards more conventional, and superficially easier, models of hierarchical, bureaucratic and charismatic leadership.
The last few weeks have seen the Coalition emphasise its determination to drive radical and comprehensive change in areas as diverse as welfare and health care. There has even been talk of a ‘Maoist’ revolution being driven from Whitehall. At the same time there is the constant assertion that everything which went wrong under New Labour was the result of the failings of its leaders. Indeed, the idea that the public was carrying on in sublime ignorance of the irresponsible, venal and incompetent behaviour of Labour’s leaders speak to the idea that ordinary citizens can – and perhaps should – wash their hands of any responsibility for what Government does and what it achieves.
The trouble for the Prime Minister is that a Big Society isn’t a cynical society but an active and open-minded one – and in his critique of the previous government, perhaps he has to be careful not to unleash a public mood that will corrode the very possibility of change he seeks.
Here is Heifetz again:
“In part, democracy requires that average citizens become aware that they are indeed the principals and that those upon whom they confer power are their agents. They have also to bear the risks, the costs, and the fruits of shared responsibility and civic participation.”
There are now two fundamentally different ideas of leadership jostling at the heart of the Coalition’s self-perception and public projection. The first has the confidence to have a nuanced account of what Labour got right and wrong, it emphasises the importance of people being engaged and taking responsibility in policy and social change and it promotes an open and experimental political culture. The second says citizens were the passive victims of Labour’s leadership but can now sit back and be saved by the reforming zeal of a new more dynamic cadre of leaders. The credibility of the Big Society relies on the first model, but just recently the second seems to be prevailing.
Comments
8 Comments on The Coalition’s leadership dilemma
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Charles on
Mon, 3rd Jan 2011 12:14 am
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Chris Cook on
Mon, 3rd Jan 2011 1:34 am
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David Andrew on
Mon, 3rd Jan 2011 9:19 am
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Tom Brookes on
Mon, 3rd Jan 2011 1:38 pm
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Frances Zammit on
Mon, 3rd Jan 2011 4:56 pm
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the condition of conditionality « The 2020 Public Services Trust Blog on
Wed, 5th Jan 2011 9:33 am
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Matthew Kalman on
Wed, 5th Jan 2011 12:28 pm
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Alliance, Daisy, Laureates, Nobel, Peace | nuclearwar2012.com on
Tue, 11th Jan 2011 7:32 am
Dear Matthew Taylor,
first I have to say that I am not sure where to put this comment. I know that it is surely not the right place for it, but what I want to say concerns more the political day-to-day-business than a theoretical topic .
Further I have to say that I discovered RSA no more than a week (or two) ago and it seems to me (so far) as a nice new form of learning and of offering opportunities to articulate complex thinking in a new (animated) way. I thank you for that.
But as I am clicking to your blog here there is something I miss: I am wondering that I cannot find something about the last Nobel Peace Prize Laureate Liu Xiaobo.
Is there any reason for that?
(I do not want to talk about this old thing, this separation or better: this process of dissociation of (philosophical, sociological, ethical, etc.) theory and practice, because in my opinion this separation itself is actually only heuristic.) Anyway, I am not familiar with this blog, but my first impression is – if you will excuse me – that there could be more posts that combine theoretical and practical aspects. Political topics are predestined for that, for example unconditional basic income.
I know that it is not really up to me to criticize because I am new here. But I am sure you will understand. Because in my opinion it is to avoid to theorize `in the air´; science and scientific thinking is not an end in itself, it is for a better living.
Best regards,
Charles
In Scotland we have not just the two absolute verdicts of Guilty and Not Guilty but an indeterminate third verdict of Not Proven.
In a similar way, I believe that the opposing polarities of Principal/Agency above are imperfect, possibly through being based on ‘Anglo’ contractual relationships which are ‘one-way’ and imposed either by statute or judges.
More consensual societies, typically East of Suez, recognise the need for other, consensual, and reciprocal ‘two way’ legal relations. French jurisprudence distinguishes – and some say that Napoleon borrowed from Islam – between one way ‘contrats de mandat’ and two way ‘contrats de societe’ or associative contracts.
What I am getting to is that it is quite possible for there to be no agency at all, and for a leader to operate within a mutual and reciprocal framework agreement – written or unwritten – with the consent of his/her peers for as long as they collectively see fit to follow him, and he /she to lead them.
Interestingly I read this just after watching a video of Lakoff and the importance of his ideas in political change – http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vm0R1du1GqA&feature=player_embedded#!
Worth watching in this context – a different view on hegemony.
Perhaps the problem with Politics is all the Politicians…
I can’t help but chuckle at this picture of government & society as two distinct things- surely there should be more a symbiosis than a struggle- but I agree that this certainly seems to be the way things have developed. No one who has ever watched BBC Parliament for any length of time could suggest the tactic of blaming the previous government isn’t still wheeled out frequently. After a decade in power I recall Blair still blaming Thatcher, which may be fair given the broader reach of New Right doctrine, but it speaks volumes about the style of leadership this country has.
I think it’s an extension of the national ‘blame culture’ which has led to the PM becoming more a miniature president- a figurehead’s better placed to soak up both adulation and vitriol than a cabinet with a ‘first among equals’. Meanwhile parliament looks more like an argument in an aviary than an old institution of reasoned democracy- really it’s quite embarrassing to watch MP’s squabbling like washerwomen over issues as important as health & education.
It’s hard to escape the fact that most MP’s and ministers have broadly the same educational and social background- which surely impacts the way the business of government is conducted; and how it’s ideology is formed. A Big Society needs leaders not motivated by personal power- it’s an old axiom that the best leaders are those who didn’t want to be in charge in the first place- or leaders who’s only understanding of progress is infinitely increasing GDP.
I may have meandered a bit (Flu, lots of day nurse, I apologise), but I think the overall point I’m trying to make is that the type of leadership we have is dictated by both the system we live in and the small group in charge of it- changing the toxic elements of our political system requires a broader shift in what it is that government as an organisation is actually there for. Iain Duncan Smith recently put this best, in relation to the fee increases saying something along the lines of: “All that matters is that the government’s agenda gets through Parliament”.
In a Democracy? Surely not.
Heifetz’s book sounds good but it really time we stopped using words like ‘Civic’ and ‘Citizenship’ . These are words that hark back to Roman and pre-Roman times, and to Roman Law, the basis of which is that some people will always be slaves – hence the term Citizen, as opposed to – non citizen, – or slave. Since the coming into being of the Labour Party, a sort of Party of the People when everyone – every person – is a free human being entitled to all the ‘Human’ rights (not ‘Citizen Rights’) that everyone else in the World is entitled to, words like Civic and Citizen are just wrong. In fact they have always been wrong in England which managed to bypass most of Roman Law and where men were always ‘free’ (that bold statement may need some explanation – but in essence it is true). There is enormous power in ‘the word’ so it is so important to use those words that really bear the meaning meant.
An excellent book that touches on these things while writing about the Financial Crisis is:
‘Finance at the Threshold
Rethinking the Real and Financial Economies’
(the following is taken directly from Gower Publishers web site)
Imprint: Gower
Illustrations: includes 24 figures
Published: February 2011
Format: 244 x 172 mm
Extent: 258 pages
Binding: Hardback
ISBN: 978-0-566-09211-4
Price : £65.00 » Website price: £58.50
BL Reference: 338.5’43-dc22
LoC Control No: 2010940026 PCN
Dr Christopher Houghton Budd, Centre for Associative Economics, Canterbury, UK
Series : Transformation and Innovation
Every banking crisis, whatever its particular circumstances, has two features in common with every previous one. Each has been preceded by a period of excessive monetary ease, and by ill thought out regulatory changes. For many the recent hiatus in inter-bank lending has been seen as a blip – enormous in size and global in scope, but, nonetheless, a blip. Finance at the Threshold offers a unique perspective from an English economic and monetary historian. In it the author asks: Why did the banks stop lending to one another, and why now? Was it merely a matter of over-loose credit due to the relaxation of traditional prudence, or did global finance find itself at its limits? Have government bail-outs saved the day or merely postponed the problem?
Christopher Houghton Budd offers a radical view of the global financial crisis, spanning a wide gamut of current thinking. He argues that we need, above all, to overcome the left-right divide so much taken for granted today, and promote financial literacy to young people.
His contribution to the Transformation and Innovation Series claims that global finance has brought us to the limits of what mechanistic economic explanations can capture. New ideas and above all new instruments are needed so that innovation can shift from its dexterous exploitation of inefficiencies and turn its attention instead to fresh initiative.
Finance at the Threshold is essential reading for academics and practitioners concerned with financial and economic policy and needing to develop a sense of the history thus understanding the forward prospects for global finance.
Contents: Foreword; Prologue; Part I: Why nobody saw it coming; When the banks stopped lending to one another; 2007 – a threshold in financial evolution; It’s the epistemology, stupid. Part II: Rudolf Steiner’s conception of society; Rudolf Steiner’s monetary analysis. Part III: The 20th century; Keynes vs. Friedman – a false debate; The flattened economy. Part IV: Beyond banking; Deep accounting; Banking on youth and trade; From threshold to bridge; Bibliography; Index.
Enjoy
[...] conditionality in their own behavior and spending. Sometimes this is a good thing, too. But as Matthew Taylor alluded to recently, (and an Economist piece supports), citizens seeing themselves as the ‘passive victims of [...]
Hi Matthew,
A key distinction that Ronald Heifetz makes is between ‘technical problems’ and ‘adaptive problems’.
Too many leaders try to re-use simple, trusted technical solutions for deeper, ‘adaptive’ problems.
As Heifetz begins to explain in one of the quotes you included, succeeding with the more complex ‘adaptive problems’ often requires deeper, psychological changes in the leader – even changes in the leader’s whole ‘way of knowing’
In Heifetz’s Adaptive Leadership workbook, he even guides his readers through how to do Kegan’s simple and quick ‘immunity to change’ exercise – something that should be in every adaptive leader’s armoury! (As well as the rest of us; indeed we all play an adaptive leader role at times).
You can use Kegan’s immunity exercise to look at the key personal goals/commitments that you somehow just aren’t getting anywhere with.
Or at the goals/commitments of your organisation!
(And then all work together to overcome the immunity by testing the hidden ‘big assumptions’ that have kept the immunity dynamic in place.)
It would be *great* if the RSA began to make widespread use of this exercise, and if Fellows began to use it in their own lives and organsations too.
Perhaps you could think of one (not too) personal goal that is currently frustrating you – and run through the process and share with your blog readers how it goes, and also share the resulting 4-column immunity map you come up with?
You could probably do it in about the time it takes to have a coffee…
Or do the same with an ongoing organisational challenge, with a group of RSA colleagues?
I suspect the success of active citizenship in the Big Society represents an adaptive problem. Must tell Dave… 
Forget technical*, let’s get adaptive!
Matthew K
PS I’ve been looking at some possible applications relating to Kegan/Heifetz et al with your RSA colleague Jonathan Rowson. If anything useful – from an RSA point of view – emerges from it all, I’m sure you’ll be the first to hear
* Except in instances where technical solutions are appropriate! (Apologies for boring caveat).
[...] Make sure to also read: http://50.116.84.209/~thersa/matthewtaylor/politics/the-coalitions-leadership-dilemma/ [...]
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