A new Prime Minister is not enough to fix Britain's problems |
Britain doesn’t suffer from a shortage of leaders.
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It suffers from a shortage of listeners.
As the by-election approaches, the debate is focusing on who would make the best leader. That’s understandable. Elections matter. Leadership matters. But elections encourage the belief that challenges can be solved simply by replacing one leader with another. I do not believe this is true.
After more than 50 years in business, and the last 30 trying to understand why institutions struggle to solve difficult problems and make good decisions, I have developed strong views about what makes organisations work.
If Britain were an organisation, I would not say it has a leadership crisis. I would say it has a governance crisis. Its decision-making does not encourage listening, it rewards certainty over challenge and it does not properly reflect the interests of all stakeholders.
I learned the consequences of failing to listen to stakeholders the hard way. In 2007, I led the acquisition of EMI. The investment became a very public failure.
Many assumed that my mistake had been analytical - a misunderstanding of the music industry. But the thesis behind the investment was right. I believed music would move from physical distribution to digital consumption. There would........