We’ve Stopped Leading

13 Feb

All of us know what good leadership looks like, we should demand it.

The Minerva Agenda at its heart is all about leadership. It invites the reader to consider not only what leadership is about but how it is conducted. People reading the book will see different aspects of leadership from different characters. Some of the characters in the book we’ll admire, others we’ll detest, just like the leaders in real life today – if you can find them.

And there in lies the anathema towards formal leadership in many parts of our societies today. And you can understand why. I mean, well, where is it? I’m old enough to remember a time when leaders held positions of power because they stood for something, and nations citizens voted these leaders into power because what they stood for resonated and gave impetus to seize the future. Similarly we’ve seen leaders that we abhorred for their beliefs and conduct, but they had followers too, often in large numbers, which only showed how fragile humanity can be.

I heard a former prominent politician of this country decrying the current lot of leaders. He described them as leading by polls – take a poll, what’s popular, do that. He challenged that none had the stomach, backbone, or any other appropriate body parts – to do the right thing, as opposed to the thing that will keep them in power. And by the way, our corporations and businesses are run the same way.

It's little wonder that organisations like Minerva really do exist, because they do. A good friend of mine read the Minerva Agenda. When he finished it he said – ‘It’s probably very true, when you look around, you have to ask yourself who’s running the world? Because it just couldn’t be the one’s we see, I mean just look at them!’

I think it was Mark Twain said – “If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it.”