Reflections 31st March

Leading Outside the Walls

Photo by Morgana Bartolomei on Unsplash

I’m sensing a strange quality in our political, public and private organisations at the moment. In conditions of undoubted uncertainty, when we would expect innovations and for leaders to, well, lead, we see no such thing.

Instead, we see those who can cut costs and create huge personal and corporate piles of cash into which they burrow down like hibernating hedgehogs, waiting for warmer economic weather. As for those who thought they were being led, well, sayonara baby.

Perhaps we need a new word. “Leadership” has become a stock phrase for those using it or claiming it. They pay about as much attention to its essence as to the mass-produced prints on the meeting room walls selected by interior designers they will never meet. “Leadership” has increasingly become a course to be completed as a necessary part of HR ritual and then put away so they can get on with the real work.

If you sense a hint of anger here, you‘d be right. It's not the “hot” sort…