Brown and The Sun: How We Get ‘The Leaders We Deserve’

Over the last two days we have had an illustration of how leaders rise and fall by public opinion mediated through powerful pressure groups. The upshot is a process which may be studied to understand how we get ‘the leaders we deserve’

Gordon Brown has been increasingly seen as a leader who has failed to win the approval of the electorate. Within six months the electorate will exercise its democratic right and probably vote for a new government with a different leader. In that sense the voters will appoint the leader they deserve. It might be argued that a private limited company also acquires the leader it deserves through a whole series of decisions by which shares are acquired. At a stretch, the argument could even be extended to hostile takeovers.

Returning to Mr Brown, the current critical incident concerns the death of a serviceman, Guardsman Janes, and a letter written to his mother Jacqui by The Prime Minister. In a short period of time the feelings of the mother were revealed as being amplified by what she regarded as a scribbled and disrespectful note which misspelled her surname. The story (unsurprisingly) became public. The media have enough interest and resources to monitor stories of grieving relatives of military casualties. Mr Brown is cast as a leader going through the motions of sharing a mother’s grief.

Act two: Press interest persists and it becomes public knowledge that Mr Brown is to have a conversation with Mrs Janes.

Act three: the call takes place and is recorded on a Blackberry by a neighbour. The recording finds its way in a rapid timeframe to The Sun newspaper which turns it into a front page exclusive. The interview reveals the hurt of a bereaved mother who also went on to comment on wide issues of political mismanagement of the war. I just heard a snippet which sounded both heart-tugging and at the same time written down and read out.

Not far behind the headlines

Not far behind the headlines can be found the recent stories of Gordon Brown and The Sun newspaper. The declaration by the Sun that the paper was withdrawing its support for Labour at the next election was timed for maximum impact during the Labour Party Conference. That was a month ago. This story has its own ghastly timing after the death of Guardsman Janes.

Leaders We Deserve

Act four: The story gains momentum. An unpopular leader has added to the grief of a mother of a fallen soldier. The Sun has played its rightful role in bringing the story into public view. That’s what happens in a democratic open society. In so doing, the public has extra information regarding the bungling way in which Gordon Brown deals with matters of public concern. But my own suspicion is that The Sun has achieved a short-term win with publicity and sales of the paper. But I also rather think that it will not lead to enough voters switching away from Gordon Brown and his party in six months time. It may even help blunt any future attacks made in the Newspaper against the Government.

Reactions from BBC phone in callers were largely sympathetic both to Mrs Janes and to Gordon Brown, and unsympathetic to The Sun. One thought that occurred to me was how we may also be ensuring that in future the leaders we deserve will rely more on carefully-crafted printed notes under such circumstances. Which would not seem to be a good thing at all.

England v Australia: The Limits to a Rugby Dream

England versus Australia at Twickenham promised to be a long-awaited dream, the return of super-hero Johnny Wilkinson. In the end it revealed both the power and the limit of dreams and visions

Listening to the match warm-up, I was struck by the power that the dream held over the English commentators. The programme began with film reminding everyone of the glorious history of JW culminating in the drop goal that won a world cup, and launched a thousand dreams of England rugby supremacy.

It was not to be. Ah, but in the lean years JW had been injured. The extent of the injuries somehow promised more for the time when he would come back. And in the true style of heroes he went to a foreign land to recover. Now he was returned. Australia had lost five out of six of their last internationals. All seemed to signal an opportunity for the dream to come true.

The dream start

In the movies, the game would start badly and England would fight back to snatch victory. In fact England had a dream start. JW oozed confidence and competence. Every touch was cheered by the crowd. Yes, the team collectively also seemed to draw confidence from somewhere. The mistakes which marred England’s performances in recent matches were near eliminated, and it was Australia who gave away penalties. And it was Wilkinson who stepped up to take his first kick and the old magic was still there. So team, crowd, and commentators were at one. This game was destined to be won.

Unnoticed signals

As a neutral observer I was less influenced by the dream. England were playing better, but there was a familiar ponderousness in attack. In contrast Australia were quicker in defence and attack. Only those unexpected mistakes were keeping England in the game. Meanwhile the commentators continued to be on Wilco watch. And he was playing well. England held on to their lead (all penalties). But Australia cut through for the only try, and created and spilled more chances.

Into the second half and Australia seemed more and more likely to score tries, England less likely. When Australia were still behind I noted ‘Final score: Aust by at least 4 points’. Thirty seconds later another incisive break and it was 18-9 a scoreline which Australia defended rather comfortably.

Leadership lessons?

The iinfluence processes of a charismatic leader remains a bit of a mystery. Current theories suggest a symbolic process through which a social group simplifies reality into a belief system. That is part of what is also called sense-making. The result can help the group overcome fears and anxieties. The cost is that of holding unrealistic beliefs of the leader’s capabilities to be a saviour.

I rather think JW had a positive effect on team performance which lasted through the game. England did not wilt. They did not lapse into recent error-prone ways. Individuals played to their potential. It just wasn’t quite good enough. The dream helped. But there was a limit beyond which the dream could not survive.

Guy Fawkes Wrecked my Dinner

Dinner was nearly wrecked last light. I set off to procure an essential missing ingredient from The Bottle Shop in downtown Woodford. Shock horror. Traffic was at a complete standstill. In Woodford. At eight o clock in the evening. Unprecedented

What had happened was a community firework display which had brought families out in numbers that had exceeded expectations. Our one main road could not take the sheer weight of traffic. Eventually I did a Uie and returned home much later with requisite provisions.

Grumpy Old Rant

So why was I cursing Guy Fawkes for wrecking my dinner? In defence of my aging childishness, here’s the explanation. The firework display was, as most readers will have guessed, to celebrate the foiling of the plot to blow up Parliament by that national hero villain Guy Fawkes, many years ago. No Guy Fawkes, no fireworks in Woodford. Simples. It’s all that guy’s fault.

A more rational explanation

But there is a less petulant thought emerging from this grumpy old rant. I set off noting to my surprise that there was far less evidence of individual little celebrations. No fireworks going off, lighting the sky from streets and gardens. Why was that? It seemed the unexpected quiet had been noted from Waikiti to Woodford. Yes, half a globe away New Zealand had reported the quietest Guy Fawkes night in years.

The obvious idea is that there just isn’t as much money around to spend on fireworks. But that alone doesn’t quite stack up. When times are tough there is often a special effort to hold on to a much-loved ritual (let’s see what happens to incidence of drunk-driving accidents over Christmas). The other idea is that Halloween is replacing bonfire night as a marketing opportunity in the UK anyway. That may have been strengthened by public awareness that being tricked or treated is a lot less dangerous and disruptive that having half the nation’s young people tooled up and ready to let off improvised explosive devices where they cause the most inconvenience. Parents, shop-keepers, marketing executives find common cause in the switch.

So there we have it. A neat economic explanation of why there were people other than Guy Fawkes contributing to my delayed dinner.

The Morning After

Some things don’t change. The morning after Guy Fawkes night is usually foggy and damp. It was fog as usual in Woodford, as the photograph shows.

Horst Geschka: ‘Mr Creativity’ of Germany

DarmstadtTR 029

Originally uploaded by t.rickards

Horst Geschka is known as ‘Mr Creativity of Germany’. His fifty years of involvement with technological innovation and creativity were celebrated recently at his home town of Darmstadt

The event took place at the Maritim Hotel, [28th October 2009]. The workshop on creativity and innovation was accompanied by presentation of a 600 page book, a festschrift, acknowledging his lifetime achievements in the field. The event and book shared the title Immer eine Idee voraus (Always one idea ahead).

The first pages of the book list Horst’s achievements including his role as co-founder of significant European networks and as a great supporter and board member of the journal Creativity and Innovation Management, and the associated conferences. The University of Darmstadt pointed out his 50 year association since his student days. This surely is a record likely to remain unbroken for a long time. Another title was conferred on Horst by long-time friend Sid Parnes, who described him as Germany’s Mr Creativity (Herr Kreativität) of Germany.

His technical contributions to the study of creativity applications are numerous. His publications reveal his efforts to classify, apply and evaluate the impact of creativity techniques, particularly in German industrial organizations.

Hot off the press

On my arrival in Darmstadt, the day before the event, co-editor of the book, Martina Schwartz-Geschka (with Peter Harland) explained that it was still with the publishers. However, she assured me the first run would be delivered an hour before the workshop cheduled to start time. This all seemed a bit too ‘just in Time’ for me. But Martina was correct, and the books arrived as promised. They were almost literally hot off the press, and their pages had hardly settled down. (It takes a couple of weeks after binding a new book for its pages to become nicely compacted).

The event, like the book, had its contributions either in English or German. Some speakers reached back to the foundations of systematic studies of creativity and its applications in Europe for economic ends. Other contributors came from younger emerging leaders in the field. Among the former, Professor Jan Buijs spoke amusingly and movingly of the chance incident which put him in contact with Horst in 1974, at the Battelle Institute, Frankfurt. The meeting was to shape Jan’s future career. Jan and his colleague Dr Frido Smulders were making a remarkable trip from Delft to Brussels. Their drive to Darmstadt was quite a diversion (about 1000 km.) This trip was necessary so that they would be able to participate in the event and then make presentations at a creativity conference in Belgium the following day.

A long diversion

There should have been a team of two presenters from the UK. However, my co-presenter Susan Moger had executive education duties to deal with in Manchester. She had entrusted me to convey both our respect to Horst, and to summarize our Festschrift article. Our theme was the relationships between creativity, group leadership and effectiveness. We believe that successful project teams have leaders help team members fulfil their individual potential for contributions. This work in Manchester can be traced to our earlier collaboration with Horst Geschka and his team at Darmstadt going back to an Anglo-German Foundation grant in the 1970s in my case.

A historical perspective into creativity was provided by Professor Dr Heiner Muller-Merbach. He touched on the theories of Kant, Hegel, Schopenhauer as well as West Churchman, and other management scientists. He also drew on his own contributions to the Operations Research field.

A rewarding experience

A new generation of researchers into applied creativity was also well-represented. Professor Martin Mohrle outlined his work integrating two important bodies of work for idea generation, namely Morphological Analysis, and TRIZ. As he expressed it, this permits the building of a bridge between Morpholand and Trizland.

Dr Wolfgang Kneijski outlined applied successes in innovation projects in today’s knowledge society. And in an appropriate counterpoint, Dr Karin Eggert outlined approaches for approaching risk management necessary, but often inadequately treated by many innovation researchers, particularly those concerned with the exploratory aspects of innovation.

Overall, the day was an excellent celebration of “50 years of engagement with innovation work” a triumph for the organizing team, and a rewarding experience for the participants.