On Leadership

Introduction

Leadership and the Science of Governing

No Leader I ever met, who succeeded, did so just by being a “LEADER.” They did it by hard work, by application, by poring over the detail, by agonising before deciding, by harnessing their self-doubt as well as their self-confidence.

And by curiosity. By a willingness to learn. By a relentless pursuit of the right answer, burrowing all the way down to the core, if necessary, to get it.

I was for ten years head of the British government and have spent almost twenty afterwards, through my institute, helping governments and Leaders in around forty different countries all over the world. I learnt a lot doing it and I have learnt a lot watching others do it.

Leadership is always a journey. Over time, I have deciphered a pattern in that journey broken into three stages. In the first flush of taking power, Leaders are all ears. They know they know nothing or little of what governing truly means. They listen eagerly.

In the second stage, when they have become acclimatised to the rhythm of it all, they know enough to think they know everything. They’re impatient with listening. They’re the boss. Who can know more than them?

The third stage is that of maturity when they come to the realisation that what they know is not the sum total of political knowledge; that there are t hings—many of t hem—that they don’t know. Once again, with more humility, they listen and learn.

That sweet arrival at discernment is unfortunately usually achieved by bitter experience.

The distance between the three stages can be long or short.

Many Leaders never get past stage two. And this is most often where the mistakes are made.

This book is about how, by studying the lessons and science of governing, Leaders can shorten the learning curve, steepen it and get to stage three faster and in better shape.

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Governments have been around forever, of course. But the twentieth century saw an unprecedented expansion in what they do and in what the public expects of them.

In early-nineteenth-century Britain, the role of the state was very circumscribed. Governments raised taxes to pay for a limited set of duties that revolved mainly around defence. There was little or no public education system; no government-mandated healthcare system; no pensions and little welfare. The administration of law and order was rudimentary. The concept of social care was unknown. During the course of the nineteenth century state provision developed, but even in 1900, government expenditure accounted for only about 12 per cent of GDP.

Since then, as government has progressively taken on more and more duties and responsibilities, that figure has risen to over 40 per cent. Most modern developed nations have built their public realm in much the same way. And developing nations are following suit.

People now rely on their government to organise—and often fund—the education of their children, to provide care when they’re sick, and financial support when they’re old or unemployed. They expect their government to keep the streets safe and the nation protected. They look to it to pass laws to administer an ever-more complex business environment, and to regulate everything from food production to waste management to the promotion of products to environmental and climate issues.

As a result, government today is a vast, sprawling, intrusive, all-encompassing behemoth in our lives. We may fiercely debate its size and purpose, but the reality is that it is here to stay, and at a level which makes how it functions a significant part of how our lives are led.

Yet, even though that truth is inescapable, the odd thing is how confined and rarefied is the debate about what we might call the science of governing: how the machine works and how it might be made to work better.

I don’t mean we don’t debate the competence or otherwise of particular governments or debate their policies. We do. But we don’t focus much on the principles of what good governance looks like, what works and what doesn’t, whether there are common rules or lessons we could learn. In other words, we don’t pause to consider how to extract the best from this behemoth.

It is true that every country’s circumstances are different. 

And I find a very common belief among political Leaders, at least at the beginning of their mandate, is that their nation is sui generis and that there is a limit to what they can learn from others.

But the processes of government are firmly similar across nations. The challenges are often the same. The manner of governing—effective or ineffective—has the same characteristics. Governments also have decades of experience to draw on. It is therefore possible, and from the point of view of success essential, to be aware of—to under stand—the various elements of government before taking on the burden of responsibility for the nation.

The way government functions, how it creates the right structures for decision-making, how it organises itself, how the leadership spends its time and uses its bandwidth for governing as opposed to politicking, is its own science.

Mastering this science is quite literally the difference between governments—and, therefore, often countries—that succeed and governments—and countries—that fail.

I do an exercise when talking to new Leaders whereby I invite them to consider countries which are next to each other and similar in terms of population, natural resources and opportunities, and then compare them.

Poland and Ukraine (before the war). Rwanda and Burundi. Myanmar and Malaysia. For all Colombia’s problems, compare it with Venezuela. Or compare Kuwait with the most successful Gulf States. And then there’s the greatest governing laboratory experiment available to humankind, the Korean peninsula—North and South Korea.

For each successful country, there will have been a turning point, a moment when they moved ahead, developed, liberated potential and expanded.

How were the turning-point decisions formulated? How were they translated from vision to reality? Each step didn’t just involve a thought but a way of proceeding: there was a policy, a framework for implementation, an executive process of delivery. Of course, there was also leadership.

So you would be unwise as a Leader to embark upon a major reform without closely studying how other Leaders facing similar problems and challenges have handled them. Governing offers lessons; it has attributes applicable as generalities. Even its idiosyncrasies have common elements. It repays study.

In a democracy we elect the head of government. There are, however, no other qualifications required for governing: I became prime minister without any prior experience of government. Leaders don’t work their way up, learning as they go, with objective assessment of capacity; they just arrive and get on with it. The same is true of many, if not most, ministers, even though they run big departments and control large budgets. It’s also true of countries which are not democratic: the new leadership takes office with the same discordance between power and experience; and their ministers are in the same boat.

In any other walk of life, most of which are of significantly less importance to the average citizen than government, no one would dream of such a thing. We would think it irresponsible, unwise and highly hazardous.

In fairness to the electorate, they can’t really be expected to have a precise view of the fitness to govern of those they elect. They have a general opinion, of course, and in a democracy they choose on that basis.

But even though, when a new Leader comes to office, they may well be lacking in experience—their team likewise—they can compensate for the inherent irrationality of the system that got them there. There is a playbook they can examine; there are clear lessons which they can learn. Even if the journey is one which they have never made before, others have; there are route maps which can be followed, warning signs which can be read, and lived experience which can illuminate what governing really entails.

Such study can’t compensate for the absence of leadership. But it is surely better if Leaders are educated by the available learning of how others have fared carrying the burden of leadership.