No one is coming to rescue us.
Loss Leader #7. That's not a Throne Speech. THIS is a Throne Speech.
In times of crisis, we often praise steady leadership. People who manage carefully. Who stay the course. Who keep calm and carry on.
But sometimes what we really need is for someone to take a big swing.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, and incrementalism in the face of sea change begins to look a lot like failure.
I’ve been waiting for someone to do something bold. To acknowledge that the same old moves aren’t going to cut it anymore and to lay out a plan for something more. And I finally found it. In Barbados.
The tiny island nation delivered its Speech from the Throne last week, laying out its government’s agenda after just two years in office.
You may have seen the headline. The country announced that it would become a sovereign Republic, no longer “loitering on colonial premises” by formally removing the Queen of England as their head of state.
That in itself is nuts. The Throne Speech is read by the Queen’s representative in the country. That’s like tricking your partner into reading a break up letter out loud in front of their family at a formal dinner.
But that jaw dropping item took up just 160 words of the 14,000-word throne speech.
“No one is coming to rescue us,” the throne speech stated. “The old things have passed away.”
Barbados Prime Minister Mia Mottley
And so it just rhymed off some new things. Digitizing all of their government services, investing in affordable housing, reforming their immigration system to grow their population in the face of declining birth rates.
They are giving every school age child an electronic device for remote learning. They’re keeping the tourism sector whole until travel rebounds, on the condition that they up-skill their employees, green their practices and localize their supply chains.
They announced massive environmental and greening projects. Action on food security. Parliamentary reform. Renewed engagement internationally to build relationships that will give them a seat at the tables where decisions affecting their region and their industries are made.
Instead of support payments, the government announced that it would help the unemployed by creating jobs for them in the pandemic, hiring them as school monitors to keep children safely apart, or to help out with the elderly, or to work on agricultural projects and improve wayfinding on the island.
They announced a series of socially distanced concerts would be put on to support performing artists, along with similar programs for visual artists and crafts people, because “Our creatives must also live.”
Not enough for you?
They decriminalized the possession of less than 14 grams of marijuana.
They announced that they would recognize civil unions for same sex couples, as “The settlement of Barbados was birthed and fostered in discrimination, but the time has come for us to end discrimination in all forms.”
That, my friends, is how you lead in crisis. Not with a whimper but with a bang.
The global pandemic has upended everything and exposed massive societal rifts that must be addressed, even as the world is literally heating up. Pilot projects and pandering just don’t cut it anymore.
The Harvard Business Review found that Fortune 500 companies are increasingly eager to develop bold leaders, and created a “bold index”, which suggested that leaders perceived as bold are also perceived as being extremely effective on other leadership skills. Importantly, they noted that boldness is disastrous if not paired with integrity and good judgement. And, in case you were wondering, Canada did not rank highly on the global boldness meter.
Tomorrow, Canada will get its own Throne Speech. I did a podcast recently talking about my experience writing one, and marvelled at just how vague they usually are. If I was Justin Trudeau’s speechwriter I would tear up what I’d done, pin the Barbados speech to the wall with a dagger and make some goddamn moves.
Dereliction of Duty
It felt like there was almost a moment, earlier this year, when the public was willing to push back on grocery stores and other retailers who refused to pay their people more for the risks they were absorbing in the pandemic. When grocery stores ended their $2/hour pandemic pay bump for the low wage workers who were showing up every day to sell us our toilet paper and breadmaking flour, any chain that stepped up and did the right thing could have drawn a wave of brand loyalty and set a new standard for corporate behaviour. But none did. And it was a lost opportunity.
Now, as the second wave of infections continues to place those front line workers in harm's way, we can see just how much some benefited at their expense. Canada’s top 20 billionaires gained an average of $2 billion each over the past six months, including grocery chain owners Jim Pattison and Galen Weston and convenience store mogul Alain Bouchard, whose fortunes grew by $1.7-, $1.6-, and $1.8-billion respectively, according to new Forbes data. How long would it take them to earn that at $13/hour, I wonder?
Lost Leader
About damn time Little England stepped up!!