Wet Lettuce or Revolutionary Radical? - Dr Richard Claydon.

Liz Truss is on course to be perhaps the shortest-lived Prime Minister in British history. Her first six weeks in power have been little short of a complete disaster.

What went wrong?

In this DD, we’ll be sensemaking some of Truss’s leadership actions through some different theoretical frames.

• Frame One: Change Management and Nemawashi | In this part of the dialogue, we’ll be asking whether Western leaders are capable of enabling the slow decisions followed by rapid execution common to the Japanese concept of nemawashi, or whether they are locked into a model of fast decisions followed by chaotic or snail-paced execution. Is governing different? Has Truss just discovered that Western-style executive decision-making doesn't work in the complex and messy work of governing?
• Frame Two: Complexity and Style | As the world gets more and more complex, and solutions need to be more and more emergent, traditional leadership styles are increasingly falling down. The autocratic style produces bullying, scapegoating, passivity and submission, plus the sabotaging of work. The laissez-faire produces societal-wide toxicity plus the sabotaging work. In democratic societies that are tending towards laissez-faire processes, then autocracy begins to look like a good option. Are we seeing this unfold in real-time? The laissez-faire method of Johnson producing a wish for autocratic leadership, followed by, hopefully, a democratic reawakening?
• Frame Three: Radical Paralysis | In The Spectator, the ex-Labour politician Peter Mandelson writes about all radical ideas in government being rejected by the antibodies of the central system. What happened to Liz Truss previously happened to Tony Benn’s supporters in Labour. His pain was just less visible as he wasn’t Prime Minister. Are modern governments locked into belief systems that prevent any radical policy, no matter which side it is on from reaching the light of day? Is that a good thing, disabling extremism, or a bad thing, preventing progress?

Note that this is not about whether Liz Truss’s policy ideas were good or not, so please don’t turn up expecting a political debate. This is purely a discussion about her leadership practice as reported by the British media and examined through established leadership frames.

Dr Richard Claydon is the co-founder of EQ Lab, and the designer of the Future of Leadership module at Macquarie Business School’s Global MBA Program (ranked #6 globally by CEO Magazine).

He was awarded the highest achievable marks for a Ph.D in behavioural science. A Harvard Top-200 Management expert and business columnists for the Guardian newspaper have described this research as “a touchstone for the future work in management and organisation”, “outstanding in daring imagination” and “at the forefront of modern discussion and debate.”

Richard is a tier one tennis player, have coached tennis professionally, and also designed the tactics creator for the multi award-winning and world-leading management simulation, Football Manager.