The limitations of text books?

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Boris Johnson observed this week that "there was no text book for how to deal with Covid". What a truth that short observation conveys. Of course there was no text book. Text books have a goal of making the complicated understandable. The situation we are in is both emergent and complex. It needs leadership, not just management.

Treating something complex as though it's complicated is a sure road to disaster. We ignore difficult linkages, areas we just don't understand, and those areas that on ancient maps used to be labelled "here be dragons". In a world where we are desperate to be right, where wrong is seen as failure, very few political or business leaders have the courage and integrity to step into the unknown with candour. It's much easier to blame someone innocent and hide in the surrounding noise.

That's not to say text books do not have their place. They are static repositories of what the author(s) believe at a particular point in time and space…