Leadership in a post-Brexit world
“For every complex problem there is an answer that is clear simple and wrong” — wrote H L Menken, today he could have added “but is very attractive to voters.”
It seems to me that 51.9% of UK voters have just been sold an illusion of a simple solution — an attractive one perhaps but an illusion nevertheless. A few slogans about “taking back control” and the promise of future national celebrations on the anniversary of our “independence day” — but the reality is that no country is ‘independent’ in the 21st century — and whilst in a Brexit vision we may be able to have some more control over our own actions and decisions the consequences of those will always cross national boundaries.
We live in an interconnected world, with a globalised economy and a complex ecosystem of natural resources. In Great Britain our geography as an island and our history as a colonial power may lead some people to believe that we can isolate ourselves from the struggles and problems of the world — but that is an illusion. We are not an island economy. We are a trading nation and we rely on the free movement of goods and services to create wealth. We rely on inward investment to fund our deficit and that investment relies in turn on international trust in the stability of our institutions and the treaties they sign. And we rely on allies across the world to jointly tackle problems like terrorism, health epidemics, and climate change that respect no borders.
If not the EU then what?
Some might say that what we don’t need now is costly membership the EU club in order to tackle this tangled knot of cross-border relationships and critical international challenges. But if not the EU then what?
Are we to build a whole set of 1-to-1 deals on each of these issues to replace the treaties and agreements we have now — or is there some other deal we can strike with our former EU partners that is more distant, more transactional perhaps, but still allows us to function and work together? It’s not impossible but it will be an immensely expensive and time consuming task — and above it will need great leadership.
Which brings me back to my opening quote. The British public have voted for a simple slogan — sold to them by a loose grouping of politicians who were united only by their desire to defeat the status quo in the EU — and we need a lot more than that now. I’ve got no special insight into who should be the next PM or leader of the Labour party but I have spent most of my working life advising business leaders how to build collaborative relationships, deliver results across boundaries, and manage change in complex multi-party systems. And from that perspective the leadership qualities that underpin success in the sort of situation that faces us are pretty clear.
Leadership in an inter-connected world
First and foremost, we need to rely on the qualities of many leaders not one — a team of leaders with different perspectives who are united by a common cause and can work together effectively. They need to understand the full implications of my extended Menken quote — to be comfortable in handling the complexity of interconnected problems and then be trusted by the public to manage that complexity without resorting to simplistic sloganeering.
They need to build relationships with others, people who are not like them and who may come from different backgrounds — and so they need great abilities to connect, to empathise and to seek out the common ground. They need to be able to handle conflict, constructively — this is not a time for ducking the dilemmas and the conflicting objectives of different groups who feel they have been disenfranchised — but we need leaders who can mediate in and resolve conflict not inflame it. And finally we need leaders who are prepared for and skilled in sharing control. This perhaps is the hardest ask of all. But in an interconnected world you can’t lead on your own. In this world successful leaders are pragmatic dealmakers, and they recognise that for a plan to be sustainable those we are trying to strike a deal with need to see is as being in their self-interest to make it work too.
Inter-dependence day
In 1962 President JF Kennedy made a speech in which he said “As the worldwide effort for independence inspired by the American declaration of independence now approaches a successful close, a great new effort — for inter-dependence — is transforming the world about us.” He saw that however strong the desire for independence might be, the prosperity and the security of one country (even the most powerful and wealthiest on earth) was dependent on the well-being of all its trading partners and neighbours and their complex interconnected relationships.
He made that speech on July 4th — would that some of our leaders could have made a similar one on June 24th 2016. But we are where we are — and we need leaders from across the spectrum of political, business and community interests to come together and to start building new solutions to the complex problems around us that may not be simple but are sustainable.
David Archer is co-author of the book Collaborative Leadership — pub Routledge 2013
