Gunning for the President

The recent storming of Capitol Hill in Washington DC has caused widespread outrage.  However, amidst the condemnations of violence and shock that this could have happened in America, very little thought has been given to the relationships between leadership and motivation that give rise to such behaviour. 

Trump supporters, just like the Brexit voters, support for LePenn in France and the AfD in Germany are united by a rejection of the global village, its multicultural values and liberal metropolitan leadership.  For many the convergence of technology and globalisation has outsourced their jobs and, through e-commerce, hollowed out their communities.  This is not to excuse violent behaviour, but simply labeling such views as crazy because of how they are expressed is to confuse the message with the medium and will not end well.

The social and economic problems of both a digital economy and the pandemic have much in common.  Digital disruption challenges the laws of economics, the sovereignty of states, and the social systems within them.  The pandemic has turned questions of economic and social liberty upside down. Both present complex problems for decision-makers.  Digital disruption has created opportunity for an educated entrepreneurial elite.  However, for the many left behind  there is a desire for simple solutions to what appears as an elitist system that has broken free of its local and national anchors.  For these people there is a perceived need to act now and analyse later.  Whilst the attempts by Western decision-makers to make sense of the Pandemic as a complicated problem that experts can devise best practices for, has resulted in a complex problem becoming a chaotic problem, where the need to act first and analyse later becomes legitimate.  

Inevitably the motivational shift towards action based solutions resulting from digital disruption and the mess that is pandemic governance will feed off each other.  Our complete failure to identify and manage complexity is legitimising leadership that offers simple action-based solutions to our problems.   In both the case of digital disruption and the pandemic our failure to manage emergence is damaging the foundations of our own societies.

As we emerge from this pandemic we will require companies to lead the way.  However, the economy will never look the same again.  Shattered balance sheets, staff working from home, soaring public debt and rising competitors in Asia will require business leaders to also become complexity experts. They will need to abandon traditional notions of good management, such as efficiency and optimisation and focus upon innovating for a new world, based upon leveraging existing core competencies into new products/services and markets.  At this point there is little evidence that Western business leaders are up to the job.

Make no mistake though, if we fail to rise to these leadership challenges Western societies will face a storm very similar to that which took place in the 1930's.  The convergence of internal political and economic failure will lead to serious challenges between states for control of international order.  Never, in recent times, did good leadership and questioning management have such importance.