Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Tantrum
Former Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern. Photo / Mark Tantrum
Opinion by Bruce Cotterill
Bruce Cotterill is a professional director, speaker and adviser to business leaders. He is the author of the book The Best Leaders Don’t Shout, and host of the podcast Leaders Getting Coffee.
Jacinda Ardern became Prime Minister in October 2017 at the age of 37, making her the youngest to hold the office in more than 150 years.
Ardern’s leadership was marked by her handling of significant crises, including the Christchurch mosque shootings, the Whakaari/White Island volcanic eruption and the Covid-19 pandemic.
She resigned from her position in January 2023, citing that she no longer had ‘enough in the tank’ to continue leading the country
Barad was the rather glamorous chief executive of Mattel Inc in the 1990s who took well-deserved credit for the resurgence of the Barbie brand. But the last few years of her timein the corner office were marred by poor performance and failed initiatives. She was eventually let go in what was one of the first big corporate firings of the 20th century, in January 2000.
Her departure brought varying comments and criticisms, most notably for the size of her severance payment. Even by today’s standards some 25 years later, the US$50 million ($87m in today’s money) she walked away with seems like a colossal amount for a CEO whose performance led to her departure.
At the time I called it “failing your way to financial success”.
My recollection of Barad was prompted by the announcement that our former Prime Minister, Jacinda Ardern, has joined the highly regarded Oxford University Blavatnik School of Government World Leaders Circle. It follows her appointment a couple of years ago as a leadership fellow at Harvard University. We’re told the World Leaders Circle pioneers research to improve governance and that it is spearheaded by an international network of former heads of government.
It seems ironic to me that the person who some regard as our worst Prime Minister, and who led what some would say the worst government in our lifetimes, now travels the globe collecting admiration and appointments from the world’s top universities and adulation from the global elite.
The announcement of her appointment made much of the fact that Ardern would be joining former British Prime Minister Rishi Sunak at the university’s Leaders Circle.
Unlike Ardern, Sunak didn’t win an election to become Prime Minister. He took over from the embattled Liz Truss who lasted just 45 days in the role. His Conservative Party lost the election that followed only a couple of years later. Sunak’s term as Prime Minister of the UK lasted only 20 months.
The UK is, of course, a country in tatters. While much of the damage was not of Sunak’s making, he left behind a country with stagnant growth, poor productivity, a cost-of-living crisis and high public debt. The country’s health, education and criminal justice systems are all regarded as having failed the people.
Sound familiar?
Both Sunak and Ardern fit within a new category. I’ve decided to call it “failing your way to global admiration”. Ardern and Sunak share several features. Both are good communicators, youthful and look good on television. But university-level experts in governance? I think not.
Profile over substance
And so, it seems, we have fallen into a pattern of recognising and rewarding people for the role they once held and how they might look rather than for the quality of the job they did while they were there.
Our honours system swings into action a couple of times a year. Firstly, on New Year’s Day and subsequently, around the half-year mark on the King’s Birthday holiday. Over the past few years, those awarding the honours have increasingly chosen honourees based on the role occupied rather than the quality of the job done.
The appointments of Ardern and Sunak would suggest our universities are falling into the same trap. It’s called profile over substance.
There is no room on these panels for former Australian Prime Minister John Howard, despite a very successful 15-year reign as Prime Minister and an economic record second to none. Sir John Key led this country through a very challenging nine-year premiership, the outcome of which had our financial position greatly enhanced despite the impact of the Christchurch earthquakes. But there are no high-brow university panels for either.
We live in an age in which society acknowledges, and indeed celebrates, those who are different. They either look good, offer the sound bites that the vocal minorities, including those in the media, want to hear, or represent an agenda that may be current, temporarily trendy or alternatively, just different to the mainstream. I guess we have the Kardashians to blame for our interest in people who are famous for doing nothing.
To be fair to Sunak and Ardern, neither is famous for doing nothing. But when they held the spotlight, they both failed to achieve anything of note.
Meantime, we are no longer interested in people who fix things, solve problems, carve new pathways or those who leave their role or their country better than they found it. Where we were once in awe of Hilary, Fletcher or McLaren, however, we no longer look to adventure, business or engineering to find our heroes.
We’re not as interested in those who are curing cancer or rescuing broken communities. With the exception of Elon Musk, those who are building the technologies to enable the new world go relatively unnoticed. The leaders who are developing generative AI to address medical staff shortages and improve access to treatments for conditions like Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s may eventually receive some recognition from their peers, but beyond that they remain invisible.
Rocket Lab founder Peter Beck. Picture / Supplied
New Zealand’s own Peter Beck, the founder and CEO of Rocket Lab, is making a positive contribution to the world through his innovative work in aerospace technology and space exploration. He has pioneered cost-effective and reliable satellite launches, making space more accessible for scientific research, telecommunications, and environmental monitoring. If Beck were appointed to the world’s leading universities, you would get no argument from me.
Achievers, not pleasers
Instead it is those occupying our newsfeeds, not because of the worthiness of their work, but because of the position they hold and their capability at the press conference.
In tipping our hats to Ardern and Sunak, we are failing those who are making a genuine and substantial contribution to our people, our communities and our countries.
Recently, in this country, we incentivised students with free fees for the first year of university. An achievement orientation would have had us offering incentives for people to finish their studies rather than to start. Elsewhere, we’re increasingly attending awards events where people are celebrated for setting things up rather than seeing things through to some sort of success.
With the world in a series of crises ranging through economic, structural and geopolitical, we need different types of leaders. We need bureaucracy bashers, cost cutters and people who can deliver outcomes under pressure. But most of all we need leaders who can develop credible plans, assemble formidable teams and execute relentlessly in a world-class manner.
These are the people who should be celebrated by the media and our universities alike. True leaders who can drive lasting and positive change. As our productivity battle intensifies, the need for people who can get things done is paramount. Achievement of targeted outcomes is critical.
The world’s troubles should be obvious to us all. Our governments are oversized and not fit for purpose. At a government, local government, business and personal level we are carrying too much debt. We have only just brought inflation under control, but it went higher and for longer than it should have. The damage will take time to recover from. Our housing is unaffordable and we have not traditionally made sufficient land available to solve the problem. Our health services are overrun and our education systems stopped teaching kids the important stuff a decade or so ago. Crime is a problem globally, not just here.
In the meantime, capital projects run several billions of dollars over budget and take years longer than planned to deliver. But no one says anything. No one complains. Our earthquake city sits incomplete some 14 years later. And people look the other way. Our hospital is closed on weekends because of staffing and in another town we can’t build one because we can’t afford to do it for the right price.
Underperformance is becoming so acceptable, it’s almost compulsory. And somewhere along the line we have forgotten about achievement, delivery and success. The results are there for all of us to see.
We need achievers not pleasers. The real leaders are not being followed around by a film crew, and nor are they queueing up for meaningless university appointments. No, the real leaders are busy, building things, fixing things, developing things and driving positive change. We just need to get them working on the right stuff.
When Jill Barad entered the C-suite at Mattel, the biggest-selling business book of the decade was titled In Search of Excellence. Sadly, I’m not sure that we’re interested in excellence any more.
