Leadership Rant

I lament the lack of leadership displayed in upper echelons of management. So often there is a lack of courage and a lack of demonstrative conviction. The rush to please those above stifles creativity, ingenuity and destroys engagement across the business.

It is forever someone else’s fault and ensuring the ability to deflect responsibility seems all too often to be the default position. Is it any wonder so much reform in business takes place only after a major problem becomes public and then everyone becomes a zealous reformer?

Should we expect better?

I am not sure.

Let’s look at our Political Leaders, throughout the World.

We have a President in America who is seemingly obsessed with simplistic rhetoric and playing the person and not the policy.

We have a British Prime Minister who appears to be the proverbial deer in the spotlight.

Locally, our Prime Minister is forever looking over his shoulder, at everyone. And at our State level, it is not much better. Collectively, we seem to be all over the place with our National Broadband Network, National and State energy policy, offshore detainees, climate, environment, Adani and infrastructure. Our politicians don’t even know if they are eligible to run for election to Federal Office, well at least 8 didn’t (so far).

What we see and hear out of Canada and Germany is arguably an encouraging example of leadership. After a hopeful start, there have been a few hiccups in France but again, there is a reason for optimism.

I am not debating the pros and cons of the following examples; I just put them forward as examples of conviction based decision making by Leaders who were prepared to lead, make decisions they believed in an stand on the merits of their stated reasons for doing so. Everyone will have their own opinions.

• Can you imagine a Leader of today putting in place a wages and income accord?
• Can you envisage a comprehensive industry policy being devised and executed?
• Would a leader today be prepared to take a GST to an election, particularly after it had been previously rejected?
• Would a Government today privatise the Commonwealth Bank or Qantas?

I am not even sure our Federal Politicians of today would be able to execute the Firearm restrictions implemented in the 1990’s.

Our Political Leaders specialise in inertia. They fail to set the agenda for business to set their own investment plans meaning everyone, political, business and ultimately us, operate only with the here and now in mind.

In closing………..

I lament the lack of leadership displayed by our Politicians. So often there is a lack of courage and a lack of demonstrative conviction. The rush to please in the short term stifles creativity, ingenuity and destroys engagement across the community.

What hope do our Business leaders have?