Wednesday 22 November 2017

Leadership? You must be MAD.


What the world needs now is more mad leaders, a worrying proposition in the age of Donald Trump and Kim Jong-Un. Thankfully in this instance it stands for ‘make a difference'.

On a chilly Thursday evening Professor Rune Todnem explained in a public lecture held as part of Staffordshire University’s popular ‘Profs in the Pav' series how everything we think we know about leadership is wrong.

Todnem is an academic from the funkier end of the spectrum, a balding Norwegian with a hipster beard and a taste for waistcoats and red Doc Martens. Throughout the forty-five-minute lecture he works the room with the easy charm of an alternative comedian.

This trendiness shouldn’t distract from his academic credentials, he holds professorial posts at Staffordshire and Stavanger universities and is the co-editor of a respected journal. More to the point he has something genuinely important to say.

What we think about leadership is, Todnem argues, limited by stereotypes and an attachment to the idea that it is an activity practiced by a special elite cadre. The ‘great man’ is still on his throne even though his legitimacy has been in question for decades while the rest of us grumble away in the language of ‘us’ and ‘them’.

We need, he says, a more modern and humane conception of what leadership means, one that encourages us to moan less and ask more questions instead. To emphasise the ‘ship’ in leadership, seeing it as an enterprise involving collaboration.

This requires ‘decoupling’ leadership from power, since the latter is all too often politicised or misused. Ending our obsession with targets would be a good idea too, music to the ears of anyone who has been involved with business, or worse yet politics and knows just how many things get done just because they’re what we always do.

Leadership on both an individual and organisational level needs to be more linked to purpose, this has to go beyond just making a profit and add real value to the community. What counts, Todnem argues is how much of a difference our actions make, this releases energy and creativity that gets lasting results.

For all his quirky image and a delivery style peppered with self- deprecating humour Rune Tundem has a serious point to make. Leadership is in crisis in almost every field, the people, usually men, who get to the top lack conviction in every area apart from their own entitlement.

Change is certainly needed; quite how likely it is to come any time soon isn’t at all clear. Leaders of the old school are remarkably tenacious when it comes to clinging on to power.

Those of us lower down on the hierarchical totem pole are often complicit in helping them to do so. Complaining about the people who lead us is easier than taking on the collective responsibility necessitated by this new style of leadership.

Keep a tight hold of nurse for fear of finding something worse, is an old saying that neatly encapsulates our modern curse. We all feel that something should be done, we just don’t want to take the risks involved in doing it.

Rune Todnem is an important thinker and he has suggested a better and more rewarding way of leading ourselves to a better future.

Wednesday 15 November 2017

The UKs proud record for reducing child poverty is unravelling.

The Institute for Fiscal Studies (IFS) has released its latest projections for poverty levels and they make for cold reading.

Despite predicted growth in median income of 5.1% by 2022 levels of absolute poverty in the UK are likely to remain unchanged, child poverty could rise by 4.1% over the same period.

The South East, Yorkshire and Scotland will, the IFS say, see poverty levels fall, in the North East, North West, Wales, Northern Ireland and the Midlands will see levels rise. The Joseph Rowntree Foundation estimates that by 2021 there could be half a million more-people living in poverty.

The predicted rise in poverty levels is linked, the IFS research suggests, to government cuts to working age benefits. Those regions where people where low-income families are less reliant on earnings than benefits will see the largest rise in poverty levels.

The Joseph Rowntree Foundation is calling on the government to use the autumn budget to end the freeze on income related benefits, uprate the child related elements of Universal Credit and to increase the Local Housing Allowance. They argue the latter two measures would, respectively, lift 100,000 people out of poverty and help 4.5 million people currently struggling to pay their rent.

Speaking to the Independent chief executive Campbell Robb said the projected rise in poverty levels showed that the UKs “proud record of reducing child poverty was at risk of unravelling. “

Opposition politicians have also been critical of government benefits policy, with Labour Leader Jeremy Corbyn, as quoted on the Welfare Weekly website, saying Universal Credit had caused “terrible hardship” to many people.

Green Party joint leader Jonathan Bartley described it as an “ill-conceived, counterproductive assault on Britain’s most vulnerable people”, adding that the government had shown, “a complete disregard” for the pain it had caused.

In a blog post on the Joseph Rowntree Foundation website head of analysis for the charity Helen Barnard writes that the main drivers of the rise in child poverty are changes to tax credits and the government’s four year long benefits freeze.

In the article, she calls on the chancellor to use the new industrial strategy he is to unveil in his budget this autumn budget to empower local areas to act to drive growth and for spending on technology and infrastructure to be rebalanced to help struggling regions.

She also calls for the troubled universal credit scheme to be reformed, writing that the budget gives the government an opportunity to prove they are truly on the side of people who are struggling.

Chancellor Phillip Hammond will deliver his autumn budget on Wednesday 22nd November.