‘On Leadership’ is one of the best leadership books I have read in years. Tony Blair, former Prime Minister of the UK, has many important leadership lessons to offer. He mainly writes about his personal experiences in government and politics, but many lessons are also relevant for business leaders. It is particularly interesting to read the book now, because it makes clear that Donald Trump is not a leader (although he is mentioned only once).
The key indicator of good leadership is achieving results, Blair writes. “Governing is delivering. Above all, what people want are solutions.” (I would add: by mobilizing people.) It is not about giving people what they want. “The Leader sets out for the people what they need and not simply what they want. Otherwise, the Leader is just a follower.”
Achieving results starts with making a plan. The public like a government with a plan, because they feel it knows what it wants and therefore to a degree what it is doing, and so gives them confidence. “A plan is a route map for governing. It sets out the destination, the milestones and, above all, the priorities. It should act to mobilize the government and give direction to ministers. It should allow the observer to know: what the Leader thinks about the state of the country; what is wrong; what should be put right: and the core principles of how the ‘putting right’ will be done. The plan should identify those things the Leaders thinks are vital, that define success or failure for the project of governing, that show where energy will be principally directed, that reveal what the government is trying to keep and what it is determined to change.” The plan is action-oriented; it is about the doable, which is different from the desirable that was the focus of the election campaign. “The Great Persuader must metamorphose into the Great CEO.”
Blair created a special Delivery Unit, specifically to improve execution. “It is a focused, targeted, laser-beam-like instrument of delivery of the Leader’s priorities.” Blair was “personally and intimately involved” in the work of the unit to give it the power it needed in its communications with departments. “It was an innovation so successful that is now copied around the world.”
Leaders shouldn’t make comprosises easily. No change making comes without pain. Change can even be so difficult that it is tempting to give up, but after you have done it, you nearly always wish you’d done more of it.
Blair suggests a causal relationship between the rise of populism and the failure to deliver. “The root cause of instability in Western democracies is a failure to deliver. If conventional democratic politics doesn’t seem to work, the person promising the biggest shake-up, creating the most stir, provoking the most outrage, succeeds. In virtually every case, populism is a response to the failure of conventional politics to take strong positions which push back hard against the “deaf ear” tendency of elements of progressive politics.”
So performance management is key for good leadership, according to Blair, as is prioritization. “The priorities are the big things, and because they’re big, there can’t be fifteen of them. If you’re lucky you will make five.” Prioritize at the beginning, he writes, and make sure that your goal has “a serviceable chance of success” before spending energy and political capital on it.
A final key success factor is personnel. “It’s all about the people.” Pick the best people, also from outside of government and politics, and remember that “exceptional talent is, well, exceptional”. Put the best people in the most important jobs and those appointed out of political necessity in positions where they have status but little impact. And get rid of the people that are not good enough or who undermine your policies. “Tolerating incompetence is a leadership failure.”
Leading a country is not easy, Blair writes. “It is an extraordinarily tough job to be Leader. When you reflect on the awesome nature of the responsibility, you do, or at least I did, shudder a little. It weighs on you mightily, and frankly, if it doesn’t, you shouldn’t be there.”
Important qualities for leaders are humility and the willingness to keep learning. Blair distinguishes three stages:
- When leaders start they know they know nothing. They listen eagerly.
- Going along they know enough to think they know everything. They’re the boss. “Many Leaders never get past stage two. And this is most often where the mistakes are made.” Leaders need to be challenged. “The quality of the decision will be greatly affected by the quality of the debate which preceded it.” (Think Trump.) Respect for the Leader is crucial, but adulation is misguided.
- “They know that they don’t know it all. With more humility, they listen and learn. That sweet arrival at discernment is unfortunately usually achieved by bitter experience.”
Blair acknowledges that leaders tend to have big egos. “The problem with winning is that you think you’re smarter than you are, or indeed than anyone is. I won. Ergo I am brilliant.” He writes that he “met billionaires who think they’re not only good at the thing that made them rich, but smarter than anyone” on anything (think Musk). Their entourage feeds their ego. “A Leader will usually be treated with more respect than they deserve by those who exist by reason of their patronage.”
This is where humility comes in. “You forget that it isn’t only about ability; it is also about circumstance, the door of opportunity opening in a timely manner, the poor quality of the opposition and, of course, luck.” Let me add what Nobel Laureate Daniel Kahneman said: success is a combination of talent and luck; great success of even more talent and a lot of luck.
Leaders need to keep learning in order to keep maturing. Study and learn from other Leaders, Blair writes (would he know about ELP?). He quotes a wise politician who said he was “contemplating the vast expanses of my own ignorance”.
A nice catch is that big egos usually don’t like other big egos. “Leaders hate to see other Leaders grandstanding, even if they do a fair amount of it themselves.”
There are many other things to learn from this book, including time management, the advantages of meditation and the difficulty of implementing an ethical foreign policy. Definitely worth reading.
Tony Blair. On Leadership. Lessons for the 21st Century. Crown, 2024