The Common Purpose blog

The weather has been gorgeous here in London the last few days. In fact, for Britain it has been down right hot!

Listening to everyone talk about the weather has made me laugh. I had a Canadian friend tell me ages ago that Americans (those of us from the United States) loved to talk about the weather. In fact a Japanese friend reinforced that a few years later. I felt that was quite true. But, and I think most of my British friends agree – talking about the weather in the UK is a favourite pastime for most people.

Its nice, you almost always something interesting to talk or complain about. Where I am from  we talk about the weather a lot but it can get boring for 100 days in the summer it is pretty much the same – HOT. You can talk about the weather, but its often a conversation about the difference between hot and hotter, trust me it can get boring. So as a result here in  the UK I always know how to start a conversation with someone new (especially as I am still learning to follow the football) because the weather is always changing. As a result of it always changing I am always looking to find out what it is doing next.

Believe it or not, and you may find it a stretch, thinking about the weather today has given me a new perspective on leadership. That special thing about British weather, that it is always changing, provides a nice back drop for leadership!

Since moving here, more than any other place I have lived, I have learned to be prepared for the weather changing unexpectedly. I now know to anticipate dramatic shifts in the weather on any given day and plan accordingly or deal with what comes my way. I’ve learned to plan for just about anything, and when the one thing I could not anticipate happens I deal with it.

As a leader it can be easy to become complacent about something that feels good and assume it will not change. It is also easy to become complacent when things don’t change fast enough. But leaders need to be prepared for changes, in fact they need to embrace changes and anticipate them.

It is too easy to become lulled into a false sense of security when the economy is running strongly, or when the government feels like an institution that is unlikely to change, or when an organisation is never quite bad enough. But nothing that I know of lasts forever and seasons change, winds shift, the tide goes out and when that happens leaders need to be ready for the shift, in fact they need to be talking about the change before it happens.

Maybe that is what went wrong when the economy was growing so quickly, maybe we didn’t have any leaders who were honest, willing to recognise that things change. In fact maybe they weren’t even leading, but were letting the winds of economic good fortune lead them?

I’ve heard a lot of people blame the media for talking the public into the recession, but couldn’t we also say that our leaders failed to talk us out of one. From what I saw most of our leaders were unprepared for what happened. During the height of our good fortune Greenspan and others talked us into it as well thinking they had solved the problems around economic bubbles and boom and bust. Their lack of vision (or excess of it) kept them blind, and as a result they failed to anticipate and possibly to even discuss what could be just over the horizon. Granted they have worked to deal with it, but how could leaders not expect some change?

Its too easy to sit back an analyse something that has already happened, but I hope we have learned our lesson. I know that in the next few days this heat wave will end, so my rain coat is with my umbrella still on the hook next to the door rather than packed away at the back of my closet. I’ll keep my shorts and sunscreen at the ready just in case the forecast changes and I’ll make sure to keep talking about the possibilities with others so that I can develop my own opinion of what will happen, whether I am right or wrong at least I will have made a decision based on a wide range of facts, conversations and information.