A vision realized
Observer December 6th, 2013
As the world stops for a moment to reflect and be grateful for the remarkable life of Nelson Mandela, it provides again that real test of leadership: Finding the right words to express what we all feel at the moment of loss. Kennedy, John Lennon, the Princess of Wales, 9/11. While there’s less shock in the death of a 95 year old man, paying tribute to such a towering figure of world statesmanship is a humbling challenge. Not least because he stood head and shoulders above any other political leader of the past 50 years in both his bearing and achievement. Mandela was the embodiment of nobility in its inborn sense. He was an understated, active, natural leader with a teachable point of view, and his lesson was forgiveness. He was an integrator, across the races, and also the generations. He pulled people together through the affability of his charismatic personality, and so much more. His essence, his soul was open to us, in his vision of freedom, doggedness, serenity, and most of all through that winning smile.
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If you can keep your head..
admin June 28th, 2012
..when all around are losing theirs and blaming it on you. Kipling’s verse had a military battle inspiration but may still be apt for Angela Merkel as she draws the heat and enters yet another European summit today. Lagarde, Soros, Monti, Hollande. The roll call of urging has drummed a steady beat this past week. “Restore confidence and growth”. “Relieve market panic!” “Protect virtuous reformers”. “Do something”. “Do it now!!” There seems very little poetic or other kind of justice in the expectation that workers in Mrs Merkel’s well managed economy subsidize the tax shy and early retiring of other European project nations. The Eurozone is a governance mess with no leadership formally and very little otherwise, and with no easy or early fix. She has to insist on reform. And it will take a while. But let’s hope that Mervyn King is wrong on it needing another 5 years.
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Havel and his cause
Observer December 20th, 2011
First Gorbachev, then Walesa, then Havel. First a trickle, then a contagious flood of protest, leading finally to the collapse of the Berlin Wall in 1989. The world has a lot to thank these men for. Havel suffered persecution and imprisonment for his convictions and still found the fire to sustain and mobilize dissent. A writer of clarity, and wry with it, he laid out the systemic trickeries for all to see. A cogent voice. And as the international following grew, he saw how that could help from the outside, to forge change inside his country. Many presidents who are loved abroad, are a little less loved at home, and this applied at times in his case too. But still, and despite some controversies, he remained a quietly powerful, deep-thinking, widely respected leader. He and his Charter 77 and Civic Forum colleagues set the model for a peaceful transition of power from communism to democracy. The Arab spring and Russian autumn may still glean and build from the peaceful Velvet Revolution that he led.
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Slow news weeks, not
Observer July 13th, 2011
July/ August was in past times the ’silly season’, when improbable stories got through the copy taster and into print. This time, in the UK, the establishment, including past and present governments, the media, the police, the regulators, are all caught up in a story that will run and run. The phone hacking scandal gets worse and worse, having reached a new, deplorable low with allegations relating to the hacking of missing Milly Dowler’s telephone in 2002. The story is now gaining also a global traction with US shareholders mobilizing. At the heart of it, the concentration of power in the UK media in the hands of News Corp., the dubious panderings, promoted by this over many years, and an alleged coverup of criminal activity in hacking telephone messages and paying the police for tipoffs. Reputations are dissolving fast, and what, for a former communication chief himself, was David Cameron thinking when he forged ahead, against many contrarians, in hiring Andy Coulson? As to the heroes of the piece so far? The Guardian for tenacity, Vanity Fair for a June in-depth, pulling the story through, and the New York Times. If journalism and its ethics are in the dock, some beacons of good practice must also be credited with bringing the broader and deeper story to light, disheartening as the detailing of it may turn out to be.
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Overreaching
Observer March 18th, 2009
If Barack Obama is, in his own words, the blank canvas onto which a global following now projects hopes and expectations – especially that he messiah-like, deliver us from the pain of the economic crisis – then Sir Fred Goodwin has made himself a vessel for the collective frustrations, anxieties, anger, and possibly even guilt of the times, at least in the British environment. Knighted he may be, but it’s hard to see any honor in the greed and his dinner invitations must be as shrunk as his pension inflated. But there are others too, highflyers in banking before the crisis, with reputations diluted or destroyed by the public outrage at what has come to pass. They may reach out and form a kinship group, a ‘laughing all the way to the bank’ group perhaps. Assuming that we still do have banks in the future. While he and others are visible and targetable as significantly accountable for the chaos, there are others who contributed as well. Parties like the rating agencies, executive pay consultants, regulators, and all the people that forwent the IKEA urging to make a house a home, chosing more of a get rich quick approach of make a house a punt.
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Derisking
Observer December 23rd, 2008
…Judging by the full page call-to-job-hunters in The Economist this week from McKinsey, the pendulum swing is well under way to build defences for the future against the financial market and wider economic mess of the year now closing, with risk management front and center. Missing from the ad’s menu of risks to be managed are reputational risk, governance risk and psychological risk. Assuming that the mistakes that were made are first understood, and secondly, not repeated, reputational risk may be managed and mitigated in due time through fundamentals, though many of the worse impacted banks will likely be in reputation rehab for a long time yet. Governance risk may be harder to manage as the CEOs that decide on significant consulting mandates are at the same time uniquely pivotal to most corporate governance systems. As for psychological risk, old Europe seems often discomfited by what is perceived as the pathological optimism of the US mindset, but in the delusion that domestic property values were a one way bet, many Europeans proved over optimistic as well.. And how to manage for that emotional thing of fear of missing out? In the future we’ll still likely have lemmings chasing bounties. Something even the men and women from McKinsey cannot guard against.
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Swallows of some remorse
Observer November 30th, 2008
In the past month or so, some regrets expressed in the midst of the newsflow on the ongoing global financial and economic crisis. Alan Greenspan put it on record that he had been mistaken in assuming that banks could properly self-regulate. More recently some of the excesses of executive pay for poor governance and performance is being partly paid back or forgone, at UBS and AIG. And this past week Sir Tom McKillop, apologised to shareholders, customers and former and present employees of the Royal Bank of Scotland, for the state the bank has gotten into, now majority owned by the British taxpayer. Genuine and public apologies are of course rare, and possibly even rarer are public acceptance and forgiveness. Nothing can now cancel or make much redress for the coming global economic downturn. Though such contrition wins attention, the players that more likely deserve recognition are those banks that held firm during the boom times, that did not succumb to the seduction of easy money and the pressure to pursue it, but held steadily to a conservatism that by today appears to have served them well indeed.
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Leadership of the free world
Observer October 22nd, 2008
On the day when Britain’s shadow chancellor fought allegations of having sought donation funds from a foreign tycoon, into the email from a loose connection pops what seems like a friendly directive/ solicitation to cast a foreign vote in the US presidential campaign: Delicately worded and urging the checking out of virtual votes from all over the world. If it’s a campaigning ruse, it’s a clever one to measure, evidence and magnify grass roots preferences on a global scale. The map today, no surprise, strongly favours Obama. One can’t but feel sorry for the McCain campaign’s being left standing on this. And a little uneasy at the scope creep. The US election is for US citizens, but we do now have, and more so than ever before, a global politic. While the US may not be the largest or even the greatest democracy, it certainly remains for now the one with the greater latitude of power. And for that, citizens everywhere will want to have confidence in the choice of America on 4th November.
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Insider tack on corporate culture
Observer August 24th, 2008
First Tony Hayward, now Andrew Witty. Two new CEOs to FOOTSIE 100 companies in the past months declaring culture change a top priority. Even while in their prior senior roles they must have contributed to and owned to an extent the prevailing norms. But this nods also to culture perhaps being less about ‘the people’ collectively than the CEO individually. The tone, look and feel of a firm are to a great extent set from the mindset and world view at the top. The rest may align or conform to a greater or lesser extent due to bounded rationality and allied factors. The leadership bias, be it to a theory x or theory y view of people, can make a big difference to an organization’s available energy as well as potentially, the performance. Let’s see what upside can be orchestrated at the respective firms. And whether internal talent is more successful at forging culture change than new blood from outside.
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Buffet in Europe
Observer May 20th, 2008
Warren Buffet is touring Europe this week, redressing (overdue) a perceived lack of prominence for Berkshire Hathaway in the European arena. IMD must be cock-a-hoop to have secured him for a 45 minutes’ broadcast to alumni and corporate clients, as well as a session with student MBAs. But then IMD does the business of business schools better than anyone else. At least on this side of the pond. At 77, the famous Buffet wisdom just keeps on flowing. And the wit as well (he’ll have a go at succeeding himself..). He gets close to Mother Teresa in terms of the venerability in which he’s held. All the more remarkable that he appears not ever to have fallen into the trap of believing his own public relations. With all the noise and urgings around about ‘authenticity’, Mr Buffet comes across as the most original, real deal. So much talk of love and passion, the ‘right’ parents, and choice of spouse, and not a curling toe in sight. While he evenhandedly has backed both Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton in the current Democratic nomination process, I’d vote for Buffet himself to lead the charge to rehabilitate the US in the eyes of the world. He travels well.
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