Friday 24 June 2016

David Cameron - a flawed leader

So the nation has decided and we're leaving the European Union.  David Cameron took the biggest gamble of his life, it didn't pay off and now he's paying the price.  What does that say about Cameron as a leader?

He's always been known as 'lucky Dave' or 'the Teflon Tory' as he's managed to smoothly charm his way through the party machinery to become their Leader and in effect the CEO of UK plc.  The question is now, was he up to the job, with all the complexity it entailed?

The reality is that a great CEO has to be a master tactician and strategist - or to have the insight, intelligence and wisdom to have the people around him who are. In this instance his strategy was flawed.

He had the referendum in the party manifesto - the corporate aims and objectives if you like, as a means of controlling a difficult batch of people below him.  Whilst compiling this, he bargained on not being able to put it into practice because there would be another coalition.  Could a good CEO have read the runes more correctly?  A good tactician would have had a back-up plan just in case the umbrella view of the environment hadn't been accurate.

Then he gave out a corporate message, as he'd done successfully so many times before, that there would be negotiations within the global corporation of Europe which would win the day.  Again he underestimated his influence and negotiating ability in an arena that was vastly more complicated than the one in which he'd been used to dealing.

And then the referendum campaign significantly failed, not only in the result but also it's running which merely served to distort and divide UK plc so that he had no option other than to step down.

The reality is that a failed strategy is the graveyard of many a CEO.  UK plc requires not just a good CEO but a great one. Cameron had a year where he was leading without the support of a deputy CEO in the guise of Nick Clegg.  That year has cruelly shown the level of his talents and he now joins the list of those corporate CEOs who got it wrong and were not up to the job.

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