What is the UK’s future vision?

A lack of leadership is resulting in a lack of purpose

MPs are gathering in the UK parliament today to debate and vote on Brexit Plan B. As we watch the lack of leadership in the UK parliament play out in practice, it’s difficult to see the sense of vision or purpose in this ongoing debate.

Where is the sense of why we are a great country, what we are most proud of, how we can play our part in the world in the most effective and responsible way? Where is the vision for a nation that contributes to the 21^st century world by being a hotbed for innovation, improving life for people across the globe?

Reporting from Davos in The Times, Callum Jones wrote that, ‘Angela Merkel has urged world leaders to defy populism and save the established order, calling in nations to “hold together” and halt the fragmentation of the multilateral system’. Merkel added: “A global architecture will only be successful if we’re open to compromise.”

If our political leaders spent time working to understand and articulate the side of the British spirit of which we can be most proud, we could perhaps unite around a vision which others would respect and want to be associated with. Our sense of why we exist as a nation could be based on a new purpose in the world, as we move on from our history of empire, domination and cruelty. We could reinvent ourselves as a nation that other nations want to work with, a nation of collaboration and mutual respect – one that focuses energy and resources on creating better solutions to problems like energy, food, water, and peace.

We need visionary political leadership right now. Leadership that can recreate our sense of purpose in the world. Leadership that builds connections, not partitions.

Bridge of Spies and the importance of values

I watched the hit film Bridge of Spies recently and it made me think a lot about the power of purpose and values.

In the film, we see the tension in 1960 America between the overwhelming national sense of purpose in maintaining US security and the national values of justice and freedom as a lawyer fights to ensure a fair trial for a suspected Russian spy.  The national paranoia about the Soviet threat triggers a witch hunt mentality when Rudolf Abel is charged as a Soviet spy in New York. His appointed lawyer, James B Donovan, previously an insurance lawyer, who begrudgingly takes the case, gets pilloried on the subway and his house is attacked.

Donovan starts by, in his mind, simply doing his job as a lawyer by seeking a fair trial, but gradually he gets drawn into defying public sentiment and appealing to the Supreme Court in order to see that justice is done.  Abel’s case becomes linked to that of Gary Powers, a US spy pilot who was captured after his plane was shot down over Soviet territory.  Donovan ends up going to east Berlin with the CIA to negotiate a prisoner swap at great personal risk.  He pulls it off and Abel is exchanged for Powers on Glienicke Bridge in which connects East and West Berlin. Donovan also manages to secure the release of Frederic Pryor, a graduate student who has been arrested in East Berlin, at the same time.

Back in the US, Donovan is finally hailed as a national hero, having endured public hostility since the trial began.  He came to realise that when your purpose is at odds with your values, trust your values. He did what he believed was right, in spite of pressure from many sides to serve the national interest first.

In business, leaders can also benefit from trusting their values, especially in times of turmoil. Communicating a very clear sense of purpose enables people across the organisation to develop a shared view of why they exist as an entity and an understanding of what they are trying to achieve together. There is a shared mission around which people can unite and flourish. It is up to leaders to help people make sense of this and how their roles relate to the purpose of the business. After all, people typically want to know that what they do at work has value, and is something of which they can be proud.  

Perfume and obsessive purpose

I watched the film, Perfume: The Story of a Murderer, recently. The film, based on Patrick Süskind's novel Perfume, is dark and a little disturbing. It tells the story of Jean-Baptiste, an orphan in 18th century Paris with a unique sense of smell which as he grows up causes him to seek and bottle the smell or essence of life.

Driven in by this sense of purpose he kills beautiful young women in order to extract their essence. In the end he does find the essence of life, after a series of murders and macabre experiments. But it also destroys him and he returns to his birth place to die.

It is a story about the obsessive pursuit of what seems to Jean-Baptiste to be a noble goal.  He seeks something he believes to be ultimately important, worth the sacrifices (both his and those of his victims) along the way. And yet it brings only cruelty and suffering to others. 

In our working lives, a sense of purpose gives our work value and meaning and can help us feel proud about the things we do. But sometimes, a sense of purpose can become too overwhelming, those who share it too zealous, and the results too destructive to justify the means.

Making sense

We are all making sense of what’s going around us all of the time.  Some of it is retrospective. As the American organisational theorist Karl Weick has said, sensemaking is, at least in part, grounded in what has already happened. People pay attention to things in the past to help make sense of the present, so as leaders it is helpful to recognise the importance of feeling that the past is important.  We can do this by demonstrating our respect for the history of our organisation, and by identifying how it helps to tell our collective story of our value and role in the world. 

We may need to over-simplify history to help the process, but that's okay if it helps our people feel comfortable with the present.  In one large bank I worked with, for example, we drew on the proud history of the founding fathers (and how they had taken personal risks in times of war to protect the money and records of their customers) in order to reconnect leaders with their underlying sense of purpose beyond making money.  

The power of why at Three

I like the new 'Make It Right' advertising campaign from Three UK, the mobile operator. Three wants to be known for making mobile better, and I like the way they have put that into practice for the benefit of customers.  As an organisation, they develop leaders to be explorers, seeking opportunities to reinvent ways to achieve a better deal for customers and to ‘Make It Right.  They challenge the rules – that’s their ‘why’.  If it sucks, make it right, says purple puppet Jackson.  I like that, because the promise is played out in practice.  Three has gone from being the most complained about mobile operator to the least complained about in the last few years. Quite an achievement.

A time for reflection and resolution

It feels natural to think about our purpose perhaps a little more than normal at new year.  It is the time for reflections and resolutions, and I for one like to think about what I’m doing with my life at this time. 

It’s a time for questions such as what have I achieved in the last year, and why was it of any significance?  How do I want to change my life in 2015, and why? How well am I progressing my career and what will it mean when I get to the end of it?

As leaders, we can use similar questions to reconnect ourselves and our people with our collective purpose and to review our direction at this time.  New year can be a great time to reset our sense of shared clarity about what we do, and why it is important.  We can engage our teams in the same process of reflection and resolution, checking we share the same sense of purpose and direction, setting us up for a year of collaboration and learning as we work together on a ‘shared agenda’.