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Tuesday 7th July 2020

Time for a sense of perspective: Tell your leaders to take a break

By Simon Marshall, CEO at TBD Marketing.

Over recent years, as a household, we’ve taken to paying tour guides rather than dashing through some cultural gem only to emerge into a bar quicker and none the wiser. It has transformed our experience of art and history and I wish I could awaken my younger self to listening to the experience of a genuine expert in order to make more sense of what was in front of me.

A few years ago, I was lucky enough to be in the company of one of Madrid’s finest Velázquez scholars as she walked us through the might of his masterpiece, Las Meninas. For over two centuries, this work of art has drawn scholars and admirers from far and wide to gaze upon its beauty.

For twenty minutes, we stood within ten of so feet of the painting, admiring its use of light and its funny set of characters. But then our professor asked us to take a walk back to the centre of the room it is housed in.

There’s a magical moment that takes place where you realise that, stood there, you are the subject of the painting. The reflection in the mirror tells us that you’re the King or Queen of Spain. It’s impossible to unsee. This sense of perspective is essential to reveal what went unnoticed up close.

As it is with Velázquez, so it is with our leaders today in the middle of a shitstorm to rival the Spanish flu.

Our leaders - the people that you and I advise every day - need a sense of perspective.

They are fatigued from months of working in survival mode. From trying to save jobs to understanding the CJRS scheme, to pleasing shareholders and owners, funders and families. They are exhausted and they need a break.

Can leaders take a break?

May leaders I speak to certainly don’t think that they can take a break. How would it look? What of something went wrong when they weren’t watching? No-one wants to be asleep at the wheel, after all.

The thing is, this epidemic isn’t going away anytime soon. We’re going to be dealing with it and the effects of it for weeks, months and years to come.

They need to take a break and it needs to be soon.

Why should leaders take a break now?

The decision making that has seen the businesses we advise continue to function so far may well not be the right set of decisions to see us survive the next few months. The context in which we are operating is changing and leaders need to be ready to make the right decisions today about the context as it stands today.

We’ve seen inklings of it in the press and in Government briefings where former darlings of lockdown are being subtly turned against. At the moment, it’s often nuanced. Clapping along for the NHS was curtailed by the women who imported it because it had been politicised. The chief nurse and modern day Nightingale , Ruth May, appears to have been quietly stood down as she would no longer toe the party line. “The science” is now overtly second to “the economy”.

Increased scrutiny of how our leaders behave and the decisions they take will also be amplified as a result of “public interest”. Most organisations have been partly subsidised by Government over recent months and their actions will be viewed through that lens as a result. Sure Virgin can furlough staff and take Government money, but how long until its owner’s dwelling on an island in paradise comes under fire?

You may recall that BP’s leader Tony Hayward once said “I want my life back” and got eviscerated by the press for it. That comment was 40 odd days after the incident – on a Sunday - and without him having taken a day off since the disaster. Sometimes, we ask too much of these people, who, exceptional as they are, are still human beings.

Who’s going to tell our leaders to take a break?

You are.

At dawn and dusk, when leaders meet with their comms professionals, where confidence means two things, that is your time. I’ve found over my career that the right word at the right moment is cause for contemplation if nothing else. Like in Inception – another work of art with layers and layers – the seed of the ideas is what needs planting along with permission to even consider it.

They say that the Chair of a company only really has two jobs: to hire and fire the CEO. Perhaps it’s ours to do our day job but also, at the right time and completely in confidence, speak to our leaders about their needs too.

Remind me, what’s the title of this magazine again?

Photo by Kyle Ryan on Unsplash