Fortune favours the bold
Oops we did it again...
There is one outstanding reason Trump beat traditional politicians again - and the opposition has still not learned its lesson. It's the same reason the Brexit vote won.
He is bold.
He uses common nouns and simple verbs rather than abstract nouns and complex concepts. Children can understand him. His language includes people who would traditionally have had little political interest.
"Dogs", "babies" and "garbage" - even the photos of him driving a garbage truck - connected to a wider range of people on a level most Harvard graduates could not stoop to.
Common nouns trigger emotion.
The Democrat fight was lacklustre. There was a lot of eye-rolling at what Democrats believed to be 'stupid'.
Every time they did this, they fed Trump's campaign. In the same way in 2016, the Remain campaign's disbelief of Leave's 'absurd' comments threw petrol on the media fire and led Leave to win. The criticism was an advert for the opposition - and the BBC kept the bonfire alive.
The lesson here is to stop dismissing this agenda as stupid. It's a dangerous approach that will ensure the Populist movement owns the category of bold leadership and decisive action.
Political parties need to reset their assumptions of what people tune into and the language they are prepared to engage with. This is no longer an intellectual game. It's more like X-Factor.
This is a challenge when leaders are focused on not losing as opposed to winning. It causes doubt, delay and arse-covering language to get through tough media challenges. They have forgotten how to be decisive and bold.
Those who challenge, however, have nothing to fear from doing so.
Not Bold Enough
Tollejo's latest CXO Dynamics research shines a light on what UK execs think about leadership today - not bold enough:
- 61% of leaders cite excessive regulations as a major barrier to effective leadership
- 76% report decisions are predominantly influenced by compliance
- 71% agree leaders are overly cautious
- 49% agree that committee-leadership styles are slowing down decision making
Out of 153 executive leaders surveyed, many felt that it was harder today to take bold decisions for fear of getting it wrong.
"In the 90's, I used to meet a CEO, they would make a decision and the deal was done. Today, after the meeting, they want me to meet an entire committee of other people to vet the sale. These days it takes forever because everyone is scared of getting it wrong."
A Wall Street veteran who was in the City on a sales mission.
Forging Future Leaders - Thank you...
A massive thank you to all who came to The Executive Summary's Forging Future Leaders event on Wednesday last night.
We released Tollejo's CXO Dynamics Research on leadership attitudes to risk.
We heard the C-level acknowledge that recruitment systems and overreliance on LinkedIn are failing our younger generation - while the younger generation are not being coached to know what to expect from the world of work.
Thanks to Mach49 for sponsoring the event.
We will be doing more on Future Leaders next year with a calendar of events, leadership training and connections to opportunity.
As part of next year's events, we're hosting two other drinks evenings this year to establish the agenda for 2025.
1 - DeFi on the Buy Side - DeFi Drinks. Weds 20 Nov
2 - Greenbang Drinks - Sustainable compute vs energy innovation. Small Modular Nuclear Reactors. Drinks. No agenda. Weds 4th Dec
If you can contribute to the discussion, please sign up. These events are deliberately small so please sign up fast if you'd like to come.
