The Post-Hudak PCs and Lessons for #onpoli

On the way home from a chat with some public servants and allies about behavioural economics, employee engagement and how to really motivate innovation in the public sector, I read this:

       

Rob Ferguson @robferguson1  ·  1h

BREAKING for #onpoli fans Hudak to quit July 2 amid Tory revolt | Toronto Star http://www.thestar.com/news/queenspark/2014/06/19/tim_hudak_to_quit_july_2_amid_tory_revolt.bb.html …

The one and only time Hudak budges; sadly, it has to come at the end.

Some reflections on the Star piece and lessons to be learned by the future PC leader, and their team, and all Political Parties:

Tim Hudak was never going to win.  If it hadn't been his promised job cuts, faulty math or whatnot, it would have been something else.  Good for him for being true to what he believed in, but what he had to offer was never going to be what Ontarians wanted.  Keep that in mind as you vote for your next leader.

Now, from the article itself:

Tory sources said the brain-trust was so excited about the pledge to reduce the size of government they actually considered naming some of those being fired if they took power.  For example, they campaign thought seriously about having Hudak provide "pink slips" for more than 200 employees at the Ontario Power Authority.

Really?  I can't even begin to count how catastrophically bad an idea that was.

Just joking - of course I can.

Number one - have the Ontario Tories not read up on the Federal Tories' national occupational mental health standard?  Considered the whole OHRC respect for dignity thing?  What about basic behavioural economics and presenteeism?

If you promise to fire a bunch of public servants if you get elected, you send a massive chill throughout the entire public sector.  That's probably what the Tories wanted, but in terms of actual management, they would have killed what little morale was left, crushed what little innovation is already being ignored internally and reduced service quality to minimum.

Why?

It's simple - people who are afraid don't perform well, especially when it comes to customer service. They freeze up, they turn bitter and what they feel gets passed on to the end-user.  This is why smart leaders are taking employee engagement seriously.

Number two - Ontarians would never have thought handing out a swath of pink slips to people for just doing their job was a good thing.  We might want justice when a couple of CEOs expense muffins, but it's an affront to our ethics to cut the livelihood of 200 people and make it a photo-op.  

Especially as a campaign tactic.  The message that gets sent is that with that guy in charge, nobody is safe - and he'll be happily dancing on the grave of each person who gets culled.

I could go on, but we've other pieces to cover.  The key question is - how did Hudak's brain trust ever think stuff like this was a good idea?

They aren't dumb.  This isn't their first kick at the can.  It's not that they don't care, either.  Clearly, they thought such moves were a good idea for a reason.

My guess is that they did one of two things, or possibly a combination of both:

1) they misjudged public opinion because they hadn't really consulted enough.

They wouldn't be alone in this.  Politics isn't about real consultation, after all - it's #DecideSellDefend, not #DiscussDecideDo.  Partisans message, do fundraisers with friendly audiences and above all, gravitate to the opinions that agree with their own.  Then they pick fights with those who disagree with them.

The problem is that when you only read the Sun because you agree with what it says, you start to think everyone else must feel the same way, except for a smattering of partisan opponent die-hards.  When you think most people agree with you, it's easy to dismiss opposition.  

Which is a grave mistake.  We'll come back to this later.

2) Hudak's braintrust built a campaign plan that was reflective of their leader.

This is a variation on the same theme.  Hudak is the poster-child of the audience the Sun wants to appeal to; by creating a campaign that works for him, they were digging their own grave.

Honestly, though, this isn't a bad thing.  Hudak ran a solid campaign that was reflective of his values. We'd all be better off if more political leaders followed his example.  

Call it the political free market - by honestly presenting their authentic vision, leaders and Parties provide voters with a choice.  If the voters don't like one choice, they don't have to pick it.  It's easy.

This is how democracy is supposed to work.

When leaders and Parties put the win before the policy, they bake in poison pills, issue platitudes or make commitments they not only can't deliver on, but aren't reflective of their priorities.  The result is the downward spiral of policy and civic engagement we're just really starting to twig on to now.

Take a look at @TalentCulture and #TChat on twitter for some conversation on why authenticity, engagement and actual communication (which implies listening and empathizing) matter.

With us or against us isn't leadership.  It leads to employees who are more committed to keeping the boss (or shareholders) happy than actually serving the end-users, which is all around a dumb idea.

"What we've seen is a very confrontational approach over the last little while and I think we need to have a softer approach, a more collaborative approach," said Smith.

I couldn't agree more.  This is why I like Wynne; it's why I also feel the time might be right for some of the structural changes that can only be achieved through collaboration.

Hillier, who has no leadership aspirations and isn't backing any challenger, said he and his caucus mates were "completely astonished and bewildered" at Hudak's stubbornness.

Good lord, why?  This is one of those times I wonder if I'm watching the same movie as everyone else is.  Hudak has always been stubborn; he's always acted in a delusionally confident, boss-like manner.  

If the PC caucus was astonished and bewildered, they shouldn't have been.  Hudak's been remarkably consistent.  

The question, again, is why?  Why did the PC caucus miss the obvious - and how can they avoid doing so again?

There is a way forward for the PCs, which is a good thing - we want as many perspectives in policy-making as possible.  They don't even need to stray from their core values of fiscal responsibility and conservation of resources.  

In fact, by promoting initiatives like open government and, say, district energy systems, they can even be innovative and progressively conservative.

Folks like me can present options and provide advice, but it's up to them to listen.  If they don't, well - they won't be able to blame Hudak any more, will they?

Leadership is about taking ownership - which, ultimately, is a lesson for all of us.

Hudak Whack-A-Mole: Priorities Need Context

I woke this morning to the voice of Tim Hudak talking up his Million Jobs plan.  

You have to give Hudak this - he's got a wicked voice for radio.

As part of his spiel, Hudak dropped that well-worn phrase "if you have a hundred priorities, you don't have any."  There is logic in this; bouncing around from one hot-button issue to the next is like throwing starfish back into the ocean one at a time.  It wastes time, energy and resources without addressing structural problems.

This is why plans are so important; a solid plan identifies a problem and lays out a path to solve it systematically, with reference to all the potential road bumps along the way.  A good plan starts with a SWOT analysis to get the lay of the land.

This is basic Sun-tzu; know yourself, your enemy and the terrain, you will never be defeated.

Of course, Hudak has been defeated, repeatedly, which suggests he has continuously failed to understand one or more elements of these pillars to success.

I have written at length about what I think Hudak's key weaknesses are - in a nutshell he's stubborn, functionally-fixed and over-confident in himself, which means less able to accept advice from others.

Which is too bad, because there's a nugget of advice I used to hear regularly from one of his key advisers that he would do well to consider now:

If you haven't identified the right problem, all your efforts will be pointed in the wrong direction.

An example of this would be Rob Ford's fixation on "the war on cars" and "subways, subways, subways."

What problem is he trying to solve?  By the look of things, he wants to get people off the roads so that more cars can ride on them.  He also wants suburbs to have easier, car-free access to the downtown core via subway.

You can see the problem inherent in this - if more people from the 'burbs are taking the subway downtown, that means more, not less people on the streets, competing with cars throughout the day.  

It would also mean an even higher number of new passengers transiting through main stations like Union, which is taxed to the max to manage capacity as it is.  

But I doubt Rob Ford has ever tried to commute into town and move onto The Path in the morning.  The Path, of course, is the underground artery for Bay Street and Toronto's business sector.  Making that portion of town harder to reach makes no sense.

And that's before considering the fact that Toronto isn't just a business hub - it's tourism, livability, conventions, art, so on and so forth.  People want to live downtown because it's a fun, accessible place to be.  

If you remove the pedestrian accessibility, you start to starve off pedestrian traffic.  And if there's no major solution for parking, you're going to end up with a ridiculously crowded subway system and cars driving in circles looking for places to park - meaning, more people will just give up and stay away.  

But back to Tim Hudak.  He's identified a million jobs as what Ontario needs, although we actually have 588,000 unemployed.  Does this mean he's anticipating Ontario's unemployed population to grow by a half-million under his watch?  Does he want to import more labour, perhaps through the Temporary Foreign Worker Program?  Or would some of these jobs be taken up by chain gangs?

A million jobs sounds great, but scratch the surface a little bit, and the problems start to emerge.  What problem, exactly, is he trying to solve?

Well, his priority is jobs, period; his rationale for this is that Ontario's economy isn't in great shape, but given all our advantages, working together we should be far better off than we are.  Fair enough.  We do have lots to offer here and we have the capacity to be stronger than we are.

Part of why Ontario's economy has been so rocky of late, however, has to do with the global economy; corporations that are looking to reduce costs are looking for the cheapest, most regulation-free regions to settle in.  Especially when we're talking traditional manufacturing positions that require little training, you can pretty much settle anywhere.

So they're going to Bangladesh, where they don't need to invest in their human resources or safety infrastructure.  But they're still selling to us - cheap products, cheaply made by abused labour.  There's a problematic picture emerging here that will impact those corporations in the long-run, but in the short-run their goal is to make as much money as quickly as they can, regardless of consequences to others, and move on.

Hudak backed away from Right to Work for the election, but there's no reason he couldn't revisit it should he win.  Whether intentionally or not, he's trying to make Ontario competitive for low-pay, low-skilled jobs with some of the worst labour-condition jurisdictions in the world.  Does he think that's good for Ontario's best interests?

This is also a one-note plan; he tells us each of his candidates has a plan in their back-pockets; are they tailored?  What will work in, say, Timmins-James Bay won't function in Kitchener-Waterloo or Trinity-Spadina.  How does his plan support diversified growth in fields ranging from advanced manufacturing to agriculture?  Where's he at in terms of nurturing all the new industries emerging courtesy of the Knowledge Economy?

Beyond that, he seems to have an expectation that once you have jobs, people will fill them and all will be well.  This is naive, like assuming that a horse brought to water will drink.  Particularly when it comes to Ontario's under-employed populations; New Canadians, First Nations, youth, people with various physical and mental illnesses - there are all kinds of hurdles that need to be overcome from both sides for sustainable employment to happen.

Where does Hudak stand on occupational mental health?  Where does he stand on the emerging management revolution as new leaders find better ways to motivate and compensate employees doing knowledge work?  

All of his policies seem geared to the behavioural economics of a bygone age, that of the Industrial Economy.  How does he think he can move us back that way successfully as the rest of the world marches forward?

Hudak has a plan and he's prepared to stick to it - but it's the wrong plan with the wrong goals. 

 Since he doesn't understand himself, his opponent or the terrain that is Ontario's opportunities in the global economy, he would inevitably spend much of his tenure as Premier playing whack-a-mole, picking fights to score wins while our economy failed to improve and the population became increasingly restless.

Under these circumstances and having finally won the centre seat, what would Hudak do?  Whatever it takes to win, of course.  And he'd have all the resources of government at his disposal to do so.  

Expect, of course, for this whole Open Government thing.  The call for transparency and the growing, international movement towards holding government to account is taking root here just as much as it is anywhere else.  As transparency of decision-making processes would run as contrary to Hudak's partisan interests as it does to Stephen Harper's, one could expect him to move away from Open Government and focus on restricting data access.

Otherwise, people might start questioning his rationale and as we've seen, he doesn't respond well to being called out on irrational choices.

Unfortunately, the genie's out of the bottle on this one.  It's beyond Hudak's control to go back to a time he may be more comfortable with.  Trying to reverse the course of history would only inflame our structural crises, which may be a good thing - sometimes it does take a brushfire to clear away yesterday's detritus and allow for new growth.

Which, when you think about it, actually fits perfectly with Hudak's personal philosophy.  He doesn't believe in corporate welfare, social welfare or state involvement in pretty much anything.  Hudak's all about survival of the fittest - that which is best able to succeed on its own should be allowed to do so, laissez-faire style, with that which can't fading away.

This may prove a fitting analogy for Hudak's political career.  After all, it's that which is best able to adapt that survives.  

Know Thyself: Warren Kinsella, Sun-tzu and Ender Wiggin

When it comes to modern politics, the left and right know less about each other now than ever before. That’s a huge tactical error. As Sun Tzu wrote in “The Art of War,” “If you know your enemies and know yourself, you will not be imperiled in a hundred battles; if you do not know your enemies but know yourself, you will win one and lose one; if you do not know your enemies nor yourself, you will be imperiled in every single battle."

Hence, it’s important to learn how the members of an opposing political ideology think, act and strategize. It will provide some insight in advising candidates, conducting efficient campaigns – and, with hard work and good fortune, winning elections. It will also ensure that good electoral strategies and solid ground games are in place to combat different political parties and candidates.

Warren Kinsella is an artist; he's got a keen eye for detail and knows how to build emotional resonance in his audience with whatever his message is.  He's a progressive; he knows that we can do a better job of empowering people to harness their maximum potential, resulting in a stronger society.  Kinsella's also got something of an empath in him; issues aren't just wedges for propping up platforms, he gets that there are real consequences for the people impacted by them.

More than anything, though, Kinsella has branded himself as a happy warrior, someone who loves a fight and doesn't mind getting his knuckles (or his opponent's face) bloody to win.  He willingly wades in to some of the the tougher battles facing society fully knowing he's going to take some hits along the way.  Politics does tend to be a blood sport; those who survive in the political arena in the long term tend to have some fight in 'em.  Over time, as the collaborators fall off, it's the fighters that remain - which might explain the state of politics today a bit.

Which is why I find the Sun-tzu comparison interesting.  Sun-tzu's name gets bounced around a lot, as does the quote mentioned above about knowing one's enemy and never losing.  This reflects only a fraction of Sun-tzu's thinking; like Machiavelli from a different time and a different place, Sun-tzu understood that conflict is resource-wasteful (wink wink Spring election) and impacts negatively on all participants.  The wise general creates the conditions for victory before a single shot is fired - therefore, no shot is required. 

The story for which Sun-tzu is most famous is when he was called to train the concubines of the Emperor.  In that contest, the enemy to be dominated was the Emperor himself.  He didn't win by vanquishing his enemy, but by altering the power dynamic so that he ended up on top.  This didn't require breaking the established rules of engagement, but rather by using them effectively and with a deep understanding of what made the Emperor tick.

Military strategists love Sun-tzu.  They tend to be fond of Ender Wiggin, too: 

In the moment when I truly understand my enemy, understand him well enough to defeat him, then in that very moment I also love him. I think it’s impossible to really understand somebody, what they want, what they believe, and not love them the way they love themselves. And then, in that very moment when I love them.... I destroy them.

Again, "destroy" is a concept that can be viewed in different ways.  To me, there are no endings - just rebirths in a never-ending cycle of slow progress.  One could be said that Paul was destroyed on the road to Damascus, but that was hardly the last anyone heard from him, was it?  The most effective use of resources isn't to eliminate an opponent, but rather to convert them.  As a man of faith, Kinsella will understand the principle of conversion, too.

While there is a rational division between the functions of the church and the function of the state, both religion and politics rely heavily on conversion as a tool for growth.  There's a tendency to start with the low-hanging fruit, at least in politics - look for those that have obvious common ground and try to woo them with charm, some policy nuggets or hearts-and-minds campaigns.  Not only is this an easier sell, but it requires less effort on the part of the seller, too.  Political alchemy (converting the staunchest of conservatives into progressives) is a tougher challenge requiring a greater dedication of self - but it is possible.

It has to start with the removal of all barriers to knowing the "enemy" in question - including self-imposed ones.

Kinsella suggests that Conservatives are good at “masking their intentions … it’s hard to pin them down; it’s hard to see who they truly are.”  This could be messaging or it could be a held belief; either way, I would suggest it's not correct.  Conservatives, like all people, aren't entirely aware of what makes them tick.  The issue is less a matter of conservatives hiding an agenda from non-conservatives as it is subconscious motivations leading staunch conservatives in a particular direction.  Just as subconscious motivations move progressives in a certain direction, too.

Which leads us back to the opening quote - it's not enough to know your enemy; you need to know yourself as well.  the tough part of this equation is accepting that you don't really get your own motivations right now, which is kinda like the approach most religions take.


The corollary of this introspective process is that when you deconstruct your own consciousness, you scale back to the same building blocks of cognition that shape everyone's world view.  From this common centre-point, it's possible to reconstruct those shared foundation stones from the ground-up and figure out how they shape the thought processes of others.  No opponent is inscrutible if you're willing to dig down deep enough to a point of commonality.


To truly understand your enemy, well enough to beat them, you need to pull back the veils of your own bias.  It's through that process you find that there really is no other and that we really do all start from the same place. 

Which is when you realize the way forward isn't the illusion of isolation, but the acceptance that the whole is more than the sum of its parts.  To achieve great things, don't waste resources, including opponents - learn how to harness them.  When the whole works together, consciously, it can move mountains.

If you don't trust people,
you make them untrustworthy.


The Master doesn't talk, he acts.
When his work is done,
the people say, "Amazing:
we did it, all by ourselves!”


People like Warren Kinsella who have the willingness to know the other and who understand the tools of communication are ideally positioned to be leaders in bridging this gap and expanding the progressive tent. 


They just need to have faith that it's possible.

UPDATE: "If you corner desperate men, and if you give them no way out, they'll do everything they can to kill you."

Absolutely true - which is why you want to design a backdoor that allows desperate folk to back out gracefully and then commend them for doing so in the most respectful way possible.  This way, they get a win about of doing things your way.  They might even come to enjoy the accolades for doing so and want to do so again.

UPDATIER:   Some Liberals (and some New Democrats) have adopted the worst tendency of the Harper era: Never apologize, never admit a mistake, and attack every critic.  Even when they know the critics are right.

Can't disagree with that!

Tianxia - China's Strategic Objective

While Mitt Romney targets Russia as the US' Public Enemy #1, China is slowly expanding its influence north of its border with the world's largest country:

"China's widening sphere of economic influence is already being felt on a local level in Russia, especially in areas close to the frontier, far from Moscow, where Chinese-made goods stock the shelves at local grocery stores and Russians make shopping trips to China for clothes and consumer goods."

Upset that the US wouldn't play his game his way, Stephen Harper has rushed into the comforting arms of China, who's starting with oil and through panda diplomacy, starting to look at our telecoms and water.

"Li Changchun is ranked No. 5 in the Chinese hierarchy, one of the nine members of the Standing Committee of the Politburo of the Communist Party of China, and the party’s propaganda chief. When he arrived in Ottawa Thursday, he met with Prime Minister Stephen Harper.

The government of Canada had never announced the powerful official was coming."

While our leaders turn inwards, focusing in internecine national fighting, they seem to be looking at foreign players through the opaque lens of their domestic political fortunes in the frame of four-year cycles.  China, on the other hand, is playing a much broader game.

So, what are they up to?

In the last few decades, this hybrid strategy has coalesced into a "calculative" strategy--that is, a strategy calculated to protect China from external threats as it pursues its geopolitical ascent. The purpose of the calculative strategy is to allow China to continue to reform its economy and thereby acquire comprehensive national power without having to deal with the impediments and distractions of security competition.

China's strategy has fundamentally never wavered since the Zhou Dynasty.  To understand China's mind, understand the concept of Tianxia.  Then, read Sun-tzu.

Of course, China is one step behind where they need to be.  But that's a post for another day.