How badly do you want to be the best?

Wayside sign at ultramarathon event

"There are leaders and there are those who lead.
Leaders hold a position of power or influence.
Those who lead inspire us.

Whether individuals or organisations, we follow those who lead not because we have to, but because we want to.
We follow those who lead not for them, but for ourselves."

Simon Sinek - Start With Why - How Great Leaders Inspire Everyone To Take Action (Portfolio Penguin, 2009)

It's been two months since my last blog.  For someone as garrulous as me that's a lifetime!  This week one of my close business contacts, a Chief Financial Officer no less (they're generally not given to philosophising!), told me he'd read every one of my blogs and had noticed the deafening silence from me in the last few weeks,  I told him I'd been busy, extremely busy - he said he'd guessed as much,

I'd already been thinking of getting back to it, inspite of the pressures and distractions,  Then one of my business partners told me this week it was time we (that is I!) defined precisely what the Top 1% do differently, since the mission of our newly reborn company, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), is to apply the tried and tested, winning principles of the Top 1% to help create outstanding start-ups, turnarounds or other companies with great management teams and long-term growth potential.

The business partner in question, who shares my business values both intellectually and viscerally, went on to say it was no good offering philosophy; our definitions of Top 1% practice had to be actionable.  This reflects his strong predisposition to task ('hard'), rather than process ('soft'/behavioural) priorities - I don't refer to him affectionately as our company's SOB for nothing!! :-)

The problem though, in a nutshell, is this - if you don't have the right business philosophy then you will never get anywhere near Top 1%, not even close.  For many business people that's not a problem - as Jim Collins pointed out in 'Good to Great' the vast majority are content to be just 'good' (for 'good' read 'mediocre', or worse).  When we say the vast majority what we mean in fact are the narcissistic, selfish minority (aka the 'takers' - see Adam Grant's 'Give and Take') who don't give a tinker's cuss what their company stands for or how it performs, particularly long-term, as long as they make a killing from it and it gives them a leg up to the next self-aggrandising opportunity.  You see unfortunately a disproportionate number of the minority of society who are takers are of course to be found in leadership positions, which is not to say they know how to lead.

Collins describes presenting the 'Good to Great' findings to a conference of CEOs.  When he had finished explaining the No 1 characteristic of the greatest financial performers - what he and his team had come to call 'Level 5 Leadership' - there was an awkward silence as the majority present in the conference hall silently sought to dismiss his discomfiting findings because the consequences were so horribly unpalatable and personally threatening.

Then one CEO, a relatively young woman, had the courage to speak up.  She said "I've listened carefully to what you've said, and I know that I, for one, am not Level 5.  Are you saying that my company cannot become great unless I become Level 5?"

Collins replied as follows.  "Let's go back to the data.  Of 1,435 companies listed on the NASDAQ exchange between 1965 and 1995 we found only 11 that met our strict financial criteria. These companies had cumulative stock (share) returns at or below the market for at least 15 years, followed by cumulative stock returns at or above 3 times the market for a period of at least 15 years.  In every one of these companies we found Level 5 Leadership in place during the transition period from good to great, and in the companies we compared them with in the same sectors we did not find Level 5 Leadership in place."

The young female CEO's reply hit the nail on the head: "So can I become Level 5?"

In 'Start with Why' Simon Sinek gives an elegantly simple definition of what distinguishes great leaders and companies from those who aren't.  Great leaders and companies inspire whereas the rest manipulate people - customers, employees, regulators, tax authorities, even shareholders - for their own ends.

Sinek describes in detail how great leaders and companies infuse people with a passionate desire to work with or for them, not because of money or status, but because of the many and varied intrinsic, human rewards.  This is not to say that money and status are irrelevant, but that they are not the main consideration.  Let me say that again - if you want to build a great company then money and status are NOT the main consideration.  Sorry, that's not rank insanity; it's empirical fact.  Why?  It's simple - great leaders and their companies win, bigger and more often, because they get dramatically more out of customers, employees and business partners than merely good or mediocre companies do.

Why should this be such a surprise?  Think about sport, music, education, or any other walk of life. Inspiration ALWAYS trumps manipulation.  It's less risky, it's more effective - it's plain common sense.

What it all boils down to at the end of the day is this - how great do you want to be, and are you willing to pay the excoriating, and sometimes excruciating, price to get there?  Most people aren't, especially if they are already comfortable or affluent.  They want to make (even) more money and have (even) more power and influence in the easiest way possible.

Over the next few days I'll be working to specify the actionable steps to apply the tried and tested, winning principles of the Top 1%, to meet my business partner's challenge.  I welcome discussion about it with anyone who wants to share their thoughts.  But one thing is clear - if you don't start with an earnest resolve to improve yourself above all else, and to inspire others to commit themselves passionately to a purpose beyond profit by giving them quiet, humble, selfless, determined and visionary leadership, you're wasting your time and energy.

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I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. 

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients.

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

  

Avoiding career or leadership catastrophes: Part 4 (Liberal Democrats)

This is the 4th in a 6 part blog series on the lessons we can all learn from the varying fortunes of the recognised Parties in last Thursday's UK General Election.  Part 1 explained the neuroscientific reasons why emotions and primeval instincts will always obliterate rational argument.  Part 2 analysed the Conservative Party's success and Part 3 the Labour Party's spectacular failure. 

The vast majority of voters who elected 58 Lib Dem MPs and put them a close 2nd in many other seats in 2010 jilted them for two reasons:

• The Lib Dems embarked on a 5 year 'affair' with the Conservatives, otherwise known as coalition government. Many commentators have observed since the Party's debacle on Thursday that it was the right thing to do for the country.  Contrary to voters’ instincts it was selfless, not lustful power-grabbing.  Frankly the Lib Dems had no logical choice. It’s now well documented for instance that Labour offered no concrete, credible, alternative coalition path.  However, the Lib Dems have paid a savage price.  In 2010 many left-leaning voters saw them as far more credible than Labour but were aghast after the election when they parleyed with the Conservatives.  They have not been forgiven,

• Similarly of course the Lib Dems have been savaged for the last 3 years for breaking their 2010 manifesto pledge not to increase university tuition fees.  Again I suspect they had no choice, in which case it was a catastrophic error to have promised it in the first place.  But that's 20:20 hindsight - they could not have foreseen when they made their manifesto commitment that they'd end up in government with the Conservatives.  NO-ONE foresaw that!!  

There was an overwhelming, indeed at times hysterical, outpouring of bile and hatred towards the Lib Dems, and their leader Nick Clegg, for one simple reason.  To adapt a well-known proverb:

Hell hath no fury like an electorate (apparently) betrayed!!!

Like many others listening on BBC Radio Five Live I was moved by Nick Clegg's dignified, statesmanlike, yet distraught resignation speech on Friday morning.  Kicking him has become a national sport for the lobotomised for the last 3 years,  I'm not suggesting he shouldn't be criticised but much of it has gone way beyond that meted out to most politicians, which is bad enough.

I'm sure there were many mindless, insensitive idiots listening who felt a puerile sense of glee over his resignation.  One of them, a crude SNP barbarian, sorry, spokesman, expressed wildly disparaging remarks.  This particular idiot had neither the wit, grace, nor compassion to respect a good man's downfall, irrespective of political differences. He exemplified the reasons for the disgust with which millions of English voters, includng Anglo-Scots, view the SNP.

If that’s the shape of things to come from North of the Border, along with the rabid, spitting rodents who gate-crashed one of Scottish Labour leader Jim Murphy’s rallies, then the shiny veneer of pristine respectability presented by Nicola Sturgeon and her thousands of enthusiastic and ‘apolitical’ new recruits is, at best, a naive sham.  Whilst I'm not for a moment equating the two, I suspect I'm not alone in seeing certain disquieting parallels between this tsunami of hubristic Scottish national socialism, in which everyone's welcome in Alex and Nicola's brave(heart) new tartan utopia unless they, erm, disagree, in which case intimidation and even death threats are 'appropriate' (as Glasgow lingerie entrepreneur Michelle Mone will attest) and, well......National Socialism, if you see what I mean. 

Commenting on Nick Clegg’s resignation speech immediately afterwards the voice of John Pienaar, BBC Radio Five Live's veteran Chief Political Correspondent, almost cracked – for an instant I thought he was going to break down.  He conveyed a palpable sense of outrage and injustice, all the more so because he contained himself completely, and spoke eloquently.

Pienaar opined that history would judge Clegg's selfless work as Deputy Prime Minister far more kindly than the electorate, driven by a primeval bloodlust (my analogy, not his), had done.  Labour and Conservative MPs paid tribute to Clegg, not least David Cameron, who I long sensed had developed respect for him working alongside him in government.  Clegg’s mentor, Paddy Ashdown, described him as the ‘decentist’ (sic) man in British politics.

Sadly the Lib Dems failed to understand that politics is fundamentally driven by raw, untrammelled instinct and emotion, not sensible, moderate, progressive ideas and values which they attempted to argue for.  Punishment by voters for their perceived ‘crimes’ was always likely to be vicious – the political equivalent of a lynching. 

In retrospect Nick Clegg should have resigned on principle ('fallen on his sword') when he realised he would have to break his tuition fee pledge.  That would have paid the necessary price so his Party could recover reasonably under a new leader by the time of this election.  I don’t particularly blame him for failing to do so – he felt he could do more good by staying on in government, and history may well judge that he did.  But the personal and party political cost has been horrific.  I hope he will bounce back in some way – he’s one of dozens of highly competent politicians of all persuasions who, over the years, have not survived judgement day in the amphitheatre facing carnivorous voters.

When I think of the Lib Dems my first reaction is that they are too decent, too nice, and simply not ruthless and strong enough to survive the political jungle.  This election came perilously close to finishing them off altogether.

A good analogy for where the Lib Dems are, and where they need to be, is the book 'Give and Take' (Adam Grant, 2013).  Grant's research found that 'Givers' are the bottom 25% in all walks of life, essentially because they are too weak and/or too nice.  This is the risk that the Lib Dems run constantly, like antelopes trying to stay ahead of lions.  However, Grant found that the top 25% happiest, highest performers were smart givers, NOT takers or matchers (matchers are people who negotiate quid pro quos).

The Lib Dems have now had valuable experience of Government, and of the brutal electoral consequences that can follow it.  They need to become far tougher and more streetwise, be willing to identify weaknesses in their opponents and go for the jugular.

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I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:
Leadership - can you master it?
High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?
10 reasons to stick your neck out!
Do you ever think you've got it tough?
Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove
How the brain works and why you should know
Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?
Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you
Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Avoiding career or leadership catastophes: Part 3 (Labour)

By contrast with the Conservatives (see Part 2) Labour egregiously failed to learn the lessons of political history, above all its own.  

In Why selflessness is good business I likened ill-advised attempts at neo-cortex to neo-cortex communication, without accepting the brutal realities of the recipients' brainstems and emotions, to trying to jump the Grand Canyon - depressingly futile, and suicidal to boot.  It's like going ‘over the top’ in First World War trench warfare to face machine gun annihilation, or Pickett’s Charge at Gettysburg.  Yet that's exactly what Labour did.  How?

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On BBC Radio 4 on Friday former Conservative Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) Ken Clarke hit the nail on the head, as he usually does.  He recalled that in 1997 the Conservatives were intellectually and morally bankrupt, engaged in bitter internecine warfare.  So the electorate threw them out and refused to have them back until they had repented, like the wife who changes the locks to keep out her drunk, abusive husband.  

A politician's relationship with the electorate is disconcertingly personal.  It’s like being married to 60 million people and, even worse, having to deal with their mother too!!!

Ken Clarke went on to say everyone knows that Labour mismanaged the economy when it was last in power (1997 - 2010), yet it has never accepted this and 'worn sackcloth and ashes' (my phrase, not his) in front of the electorate.  The Labour Party representative at the interview table immediately objected to his comments.  She indignantly denied that Labour had mismanaged the economy and said the problem was that they had not sufficiently trumpeted their achievements whilst in Government.  Clarke simply replied "There you are - see what I mean?!"

Labour remained in steadfast denial, and potentially may do so for many years to come if it's not ruthless in coming to terms with brutal realities.  On this morning's Andrew Marr show on BBC1 TV Lord Peter Mandelson, Labour party grandee and architect of Tony Blair's New Labour, was blunt.  He said: "When Ed Milliband was elected Leader of the Labour Party we were all told to shake our fists and say we were for the poor, and we hated the rich.  This is not an intelligent strategy to win over voters".

Labour has often struggled throughout its history to understand the brainstems and emotions of the large body of floating voters it needs to win over.  These voters simply aren't going to roll over and surrender to facile bravado.  They don't trust Labour on the economy, period.  Ed Milliband's coterie of metropolitan champagne socialists indulged their followers in a naive grand political experiment.  Meantime as the hefty majority party in Scotland they fell asleep on the bridge whilst the Caledonian liner steamed headlong into the Nationalist iceberg.  They have only themselves to blame that the SNP took them to the cleaners on Thursday. 

Ed Milliband is a decent man, dedicated to public service, but he and his acolytes behaved as wet-behind-the-ears demagogues.  They never fathomed or accepted that whilst the UK economy has shed thousands of public sector jobs it has created 4 to 5 times that number of private sector jobs, which are NOT all zero hours or minimum wage contracts.  Neither did they come to terms with the fact that the Conservative/Liberal Democrat coalition had turned the UK into the fastest growing economy in the G7.

After decades of self-bamboozling the UK, in my humble opinion and David Cameron's too the most creative nation on earth, is finally...FINALLY!!! starting to see that the pinnacle of success is not only becoming a doctor, lawyer or civil servant, and that business is not squalid and sleazy. Thank God for that! Welcome, fellow Brits, to the 21st Century world of China, Germany, India, Japan, Korea, Scandinavia and the US, plus many other aspirational nations.  You got here just in time - the train is about to leave the station!

Oh, and by the way, where do the taxes come from to pay for our cherished National Health Service, for teachers, social workers, refuse cleaners, etc.  Money doesn't grow on trees, and the world of business is NOT, contrary to popular socialist worker myth infested solely with rapacious bankers and other ne'er do wells!!!

Labour can only start to address these problems effectively once it has started with a prolonged, sincere mea culpa to the electorate, even if it feels this is unjust, and put its economic house fully in order.  All further intellectual policy wonking and vacuous demonising of anyone not in the Labour family should be banned.  And frankly I do wonder whether the two wings of the Party can, and should, be reconciled long-term.  

If I was a strategic advisor to the new Labour leader I might well be advocating much more radical action, along the lines I suggested in Are political leaders an oxymoron?!  To be blunt, if political parties were businesses they would be subject to mergers and acquisitions far more often.  I am no raging free marketeer, but the discipline of the market acts as an important enforcer of the Laws of Evolution and stops organisational dinosaurs living on past their sell-by date, unlike politics.

Of course Labour’s other manifest, depressingly (for them) predictable, problem was electing the wrong Milliband.  Ed was never, ever credible as Prime Minister in waiting – Labour canvassers have confirmed they were told this (the bleeding obvious) ad nauseam on the doorsteps.  His brother David was, but was not elected because his candidacy was too threatening (that brainstem thing again) to the left wing of the Labour Party.

So, many salutory lessons to be learnt from the gun the Labour Party under Ed Milliband pointed at its own foot with entirely predictable consequences.

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I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Avoiding career or leadership catastrophes: Part 2 (Tories)

This 6 part blog uses the impact of Thursday's UK General Election result on each recognised Party to explain one of the main reasons why we are frequently blindsided by human attitudes and behaviour, and how to better prepare ourselves. 

This post explains how the Conservatives (Tories) managed to steal an extraordinary triumph from the anticipated jaws of defeat, or at best stalemate, with Labour.

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Under the expert direction of their Australian and American strategy chiefs David Cameron and the Conservatives worked hard and got seriously lucky.  Even THEY didn't expect it.  

The Conservative Party’s impressive strategy gurus by the way are no doubt richly funded by hedge fund magnates resident in the Cayman Islands for tax purposes - that's a well-founded, not jaundiced speculation.  It illustrates the point that well spent, rather than squandered, largesse does provide competitive advantage.

Whatever your politics you have to admire, and learn from, the ruthless, dead-eye professionalism of these strategists.  They identified, and ruthlessly targeted, the Achilles heels of their major competitors - Labour in some seats and the Liberal Democrats in others.  It proved devastatingly successful. They played on the electorate's visceral fears of a Labour/SNP Coalition or Voting Agreement, its mistrust of Labour for apparent economic incompetence when last in power, and mistrust of the Lib Dems due to their broken pledge to freeze university tuition fees.

In the run-up to the election Cameron must have contemplated the feasible outcome that he would lose, or fail for a 2nd time to achieve a majority, and consequently be torn political limb from political limb by the predatory right wingers in his own party who’ve always seen him as one of the weaker antelopes on the veldt.  That could still happen if he fails to meet their agenda or contrives to lose the Union between England and Scotland, as he so nearly did last September.  His grip on power looked pretty shaky then.

The Conservative campaign was frankly workmanlike and lacklustre, with no inspiring vision, but it worked, beautifully.  Hats off to them.  They judged perfectly the brainstems and emotions of those who could be persuaded to vote for them.        

However, when observing his close colleague Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg’s fate Cameron must be feeling "There but for the grace of God go I".  Cameron must now deliver on Friday’s promise to govern the UK as a compassionate One Nation Conservative.  That will take guts, which he has not previously shown in abundance, humilty, the willingness to stand up (constructively) to the detractors and agitators in his Party, plus principle, dedication to the task, creativity, and a previously unforeseen ability to build bridges with a hostile Scotland that views him as the Devil Incarnate, and in Europe with fellow reformers.  In other words he needs to become an outstanding leader, exhibiting the characteristics of the Top 1% and manifestly governing for the country as a whole, not just talking about it.  It's time for the applied, brainstem-reaching Big Society.

Has Cameron got what it takes?  Has he acqired at last, at least in part, the wisdom he needs to be a truly effective leader?  If so then Nick Clegg’s incalculable sacrifice (see Part 4 of this blog) may not prove to have been in vain, though of course he will never be credited with it by the vast majority, other than dispassionate historians.  Effectively he has laid down his political life for Cameron's, and the country's benefit.  

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I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.

Mark Ashton

Avoiding career or leadership catastrophes: Part 1 (NMT)

This 6 part blog uses the impact of Thursday's UK General Election result on each recognised Party to explain one of the main reasons why we are frequently blindsided by human attitudes and behaviour, and how to better prepare ourselves. 

The result was totally unforeseen - by pollsters, pundits, politicians or voters, except in Scotland, and even there it seems the victors hardly dared believe it.

No-one believed the exit polls at 10pm, predicting a Conservative majority.  Tony Blair's controversial former New Labour communications chief ('spin doctor') Alistair Campbell said he'd eat his kilt if they were true; Liberal Democrat campaign chairman Lord Paddy Ashdown said he'd eat his hat. Both are now contemplating a textile diet! 

So why did it happen, and what personal lessons can we apply in our own lives?

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Instead of a hung parliament with messy negotiations to form a coalition (and we're told staff at 10 Downing Street had already booked meeting rooms and ordered sandwiches), David Cameron is the first Conservative Prime Minister since Margaret Thatcher in 1983 to increase his majority after a first term.

Two electoral lions roared.  As their former leader Alex Salmond pithily put it the Scottish National Party (SNP) was one of them, sweeping 56 of 59 UK Parliamentary seats in Scotland, mainly at Labour's expense. The other lion was so-called aspirational Middle England.  It sustained the rout of the Labour Party and mauled the Liberal Democrats to a pulp.

The reason for this remarkable result was maddeningly stark and simple - right under our noses, in fact:

Politics, and life, is foremost about emotions, NOT ideas!!!

Last November I published two blogs, How the brain works and why you should know, and Why selflessness is good business.  They explained dramatic 'light bulb' revelations I'd had listening to Dr Bruce Perry, one of the world's leading specialists in child trauma psychotherapy and originator of the Neurosequential Model of Therapeutics (NMT).

NMT uses a 4 level hierarchical structure of the brain.  The 1st (lowest and most ancient, animal) level is the brainstem; the primitive brain. ALL stimuli enter the brain through it and are instantaneously scanned for threat.  It's the home of the hard wired, knee jerk, fight or flight response.
 
Within milliseconds the 2nd and 3rd levels kick in.  The main behavioural factors here are emotional and tribal:

• Does this stimulus make me happy, sad, angry, tense, hostile, afraid, anxious, depressed, betrayed. etc.?

• How must I react to gain approval in my tribe - my family, friends, peers, gang, boss, company, sports team, political grouping, union, religion, denomination, etc. etc.?  What is 'expected' of me?  The brain's need for affiliation (acceptance within a group) overrides rational thought and often leads to irrational action.

The 4th (highest and youngest) level is the neo-cortex, the sophisticated upper brain in which complex, abstract and concrete (rational) thought occurs.  This is the home of ideas, the place where, for example, respectful political debate is supposed to take place.

To explain the shocking chasm that exists between the brainstem and neo-cortex, and the brainstem's perilous power, I equated it to a six year old child who's found the keys to Dad's Ferrari supercar and is taking it for a ride.  You know there's going to be very serious trouble!!

Perhaps you're starting to get a sense of why political, and so many other forms of human disagreement, is so rarely rational?!  More like throwing Christians to the lions in the Coliseum!!

In the remaining parts of this blog over the next few days, armed with these rudimentary, but fundamental, neurological insights I'll seek to explain the fortunes of each of the recognised Parties in last Thursday's election and what we might learn from them if we want to increase the chances of a) success; and b) avoiding catastrophe in life ourselves.

________________________________________________________________

I’m grateful you’ve taken the time to read this post. If you find it helpful please share it. And make a difference - be a smart giver and do something positive for others this week. Pay it forward.

Recent blogs you may find helpful include:

Leadership - can you master it?

High business growth - gold at the end of the rainbow?

10 reasons to stick your neck out!

Do you ever think you've got it tough?

Be wise as a serpent, harmless as a dove

How the brain works and why you should know

Was Tesco's Terry Leahy really such a great leader?

Stop your company's demons coming back to haunt you

Do organisations thrive without the 'old timers'?

 If this blog is particularly relevant to you, your organisation, or to someone else you know, I may be able to help or advise. I strive to be a smart giver – Adam Grant’s excellent book “Give and Take” (2013) explains why smart givers are the highest 25% of achievers in all walks of life. They go out of their way to help others, intelligently, without allowing themselves to be widely exploited. In this way they inspire higher performance and create sustained new value through collaborative exchange.

The business I lead, Resolve Gets Results (RGR), provides hands-on leadership, management, problem solving, customer/market development, sales and fundraising capabilities to companies with long-term growth potential.  I'm also actively involved in Linked2Success (L2S), a business which helps clients to use social media intelligently to build professional relationships and grow.  RGR and L2S work together as a single team to leverage the benefits of our respective skill sets, giving tremendous business value to far-sighted clients..

I work with a superb small team of Board-level professionals, each a leader in their field with over 30 years’ business experience. We are based in the UK but have international business backgrounds, in my case including 5 years in the United States, where I ran a high growth machinery sales and service business.

You can find my contact details under the ‘Contact info’ tab near the top of my LinkedIn profile.