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06 July 2016 -
We have just witnessed probably the biggest political revolution of my lifetime - and I have been around for a long time! We have lost not just the Prime Minister but a bunch of former likely successors have exploded before our eyes, while our chief Opposition party is engaged in a bitter civil war between the members and elected representatives.
And we just lost the England football team manager!
The causes of the revolution are being pored over by many commentators. I shall not add to these except to say that how and why this happened is the product of multiple causes: discontents, aspirations, impulses, accidents, populist sloganeering, and fanciful narratives about the future.
The role of leaders in all of this does not cover them in glory. They create situations and then are chased by them - sometimes the other way around, something unexpected happens and then they play it by ear, often badly. So what now? What is needed and what will happen?
The leadership text books are no help at this point. The last thing that is needed is some left or right field "transformational" leader to pump everyone up with new or even old dreams.
Rather we should attend to what has been called "The Law of the Situation". It is astonishing how time and again leaders are blind to this law.
They are the last people to awaken to how the world has changed beyond the limits of their adaptive capability. They think they are men and women for all seasons, but they are not, sadly. PM Cameron, did, to his credit see this after the vote by promptly resigning, and disappointed leader-in-waiting Johnson also did, belatedly and exited the race. A dispassionate observer looking at how things have unfolded could have predicted both. Neither man fits the post-Brexit landscape.
The Law of the Situation, as I have reformulated it, says the following:
This revolution has real costs - not just material, but transaction costs of tempo, time, and emotions. Already some soothing of the latter is happening, but a lot of anger will stay in the air for a long time. Negative energy can be transformed into positive energy, and that is a prime task of leadership.
All these thoughts apply equally to the Conservative Party, de facto the leadership of the UK Parliament, and to the hapless Labour Party, fighting history as well as the present. European institutions and governments also need to face up to the Law of the Situation. It is time to look and move forward.
As for the England football team. Words and analysis fail me at this point.
Nigel Nicholson is a professor at London Business School and a CMI companion
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