Gabazira's blog

On this final day of June 2019, we write our last blog, hopefully, on the Brexit melodrama and the lessons thereof. Learning From Brexit is aplenty for practitioners and students of management and leadership

But rather than sharing more experiences in this final Brexit lessons writeup, we choose to reflect on all the lessons thus far and from them, derive a core lesson:

Brexit Management lessons – negotiating the D.Trump way

Lesson – even when you are the weaker party on the negotiation table – never accept something that doesn’t work for you. Try brinkmanship, and if it also fails, walk away from the negotiating table.

Brexit Management lessons – leading the TM way

To you leaders: lead purposefully; don’t set up yourself to fail by accepting a job that you can’t do; and finally, be clear on the direction you want the institution you are leading to take – don’t appease.

The Brexit cacophony – how to be heard

The choice of how to deal with a noisy environment is yours to make, but we certainly discourage burying your head in the sand

Brexit and the choice of leader acrobatics

The management lesson in this blog is: apart from the few instances where there are calls for an outright organization ‘personality’ change, organization culture (personality) fit should rank high in the choice of a leader. Leaders should be chosen, for their fit to the values, beliefs, and ethos of the entity they are being asked to lead and not the other way round. So – let’s be real and let Boris be!

At the end of it all, there is only one leadership and management lesson from the Effectiveness lab’s analysis of the Brexit melodrama.

Why only one lesson?

Leadership and management are about dealing with set after set of circumstances, negative, positive or both and doing all that is possible to bring closure to such events, moreover, in a manner that either adds economic value or aligns to the values/ethos of the entity in question.

In the same vein as above, the number one ask of those in the leadership of the Conservative party, post the euphoria of the leave-EU referendum win, is to situate Brexit and define its final coordinate. We call the latter, for purposes of this blog, the Z-point on the Brexit continuum

To determine the Z-point, the party leaders need to understand the exact problem Brexit is trying to resolve; and why Brexit?

With all the above addressed, the leadership of the party must steer the party faithful towards the Brexit Z-point. The latter entails both the negotiation aspects of Brexit, as well as ensuring that the noise in the system is minimal and when in excess, brought back to the political-decibels acceptable levels

And finally – for all the above to happen, there is a must-have requirement: quintessential leadership 

A leadership that is clear on the Z-point and plays hardball when called for internally and externally, brings about consensus, resolves conflict in win-win ways, and that attains a critical mass of belief in its chosen Brexit’s Z- point by the faithful

Therefore, it’s not far fetched to conclude this Brexit leadership/management lessons series on the note that – the fundamental lesson from the Effectiveness lab’s Brexit melodrama review is that: Brexit’s cause and ultimate resolution, is a leadership matter and that if the leadership question is addressed, all the other pieces of the jigsaw shall fall in place

Of course, time will tell – after all, the 31st October 2019 the latest Brexit deadline set by the EU, isn’t far