THE PLACES FLED XV
NSW, Australia
The mockers were always there, the talentless, the malicious, the nasty little worms wriggling at his feet. Thieves who thought they could get away with anything, because he was not the same. A man's life is a war against other men's malice. They circled and they sprang. And he didn't care. They could be as nusty, as mundane, as they wanted to be. If he was angry, he had every right to be. Not that it was a useful emotion. His mind kept running back to Lumbini, where he thought he would be safe, and even there they had pursued him. All things kept running, as they always would, faster, more profound, more competent. They could lie and they could steal, but they couldn't clean up their own back yard. He struggled for peace. He wanted to go back to Lumbini. The shame spread every way, and hit them in the face. Every agreement was in ruins. Walk tall, they said, and walk tall they did.
In the inconvenient summaries of all that had happened, he worked hard and shrugged off the cramping pain and kept smiling: for every time they threw mud it came back to hit them in the face. They hadn't heard of boomerangs. Nasty, bullish, dishonest little farang police could threaten him as much as they like, no one should ever believe them. He had never met so many dishonest people in all his life as during his tour of Thailand, either farang or Thai, had never been robbed so repeatedly, maligned by savage people trying to protect themselves. And when it all came down to it, who looked bad for harassing an old man, for stealing from him, ridiculing him? Why couldn't they have just left him alone?
But of course they all had to join in their mafia orchestrated dance. Had to play the fool. Had to cast their poisonous sneers wherever they went, and leave him bereft. Savages. Born to be slime. Vicious bitches in the comfort of their own slimey networks. Oh how comfortable they looked. He settled onto a bar stool and knew they all knew. They could not leave him in peace. It was not in their nature. They would prod and circle and sneer and thieve; and think they were what, heroes, for doing it? They were scud on his shoe; and he just kept going. He didn't care anymore what any of them thought. They had done too much. They had danced on his grave too hard. And they had lied and lied and lied to get to where they got, and so had sullied their own souls.
Yes, there were days when melancholy wreathed him like some dank storm. But on others, he could see the tremendous potential in everything, beauty sparking through the sky, in the trees, on the ground. In the various tableaus he observed, criminal or otherwise. And when he spotted a corrupt policeman, the beauty was even more intense, their demise even trickier and harder. They had no idea the shallows he sitirred as he walked. And like the birds picking at birds in the wake of an elephant in the bush, they could have swooped at any time, but did not. Because the information was too valuable. And they didn't know which way the information went, why it was being provided for free. Who was doing what to whom, who were the connections. And above all, why. They didn't know, and the entrails, the paths laid out at his feet, showed just how corrupt some of the bastards were. And that's why he replied in a flash of anger sometimes, and then let it lie. He would rather go back to Lumbini.
THE BIGGER STORY:
It took just one word from former attorney-general Nicola Roxon to question not only the character of Kevin Rudd but his leadership.
Delivering the John Button Memorial Lecture this month, Roxon called her former boss a “bastard”. The party never addressed his management problems or explained properly why he was dumped in favour of Julia Gillard, she said.
“The best companies are run from the bottom up. Rudd never recognised that. That was his mistake."
“We didn't explain the dysfunctional decision making and lack of strategy . . . we didn't talk about his rudeness or contempt for staff or disrespect for public servants.”
In short, Roxon gave Rudd's leadership short shrift.
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Is it possible to make the leap between running a company and running a country? If Rudd was chief executive of Australia, that would make the Labor Party his employees, his cabinet the board of directors and the rest of us minority shareholders.
Can managers and leaders learn how not to be a boss like Rudd?
The word "bastard" is not such a dirty work in the corporate world. Indeed, in some parts it is expected. Alex Hamill, former chief executive of George Patterson, at one time Australia's biggest advertising agency, says a lot of the people running companies are, for want of a better word, "bastards".
“To be successful in anything – whether it be sports, business or politics – you have to be ruthless. You have to understand what you're doing and why,” Hamill says.
The former prime minister surrounded himself with a first XV and forgot about the second and third graders, he says.
“The best companies are not run from the top down but from the bottom up. The girl or guy running the lower divisions is as important to the company as the vice-captain of first grade. Rudd never recognised that. That was his mistake,” Hamill says.
Executive coach and mentor Anthony Howard, who heads the Confidere Group, says the most striking thing was that Roxon spoke about leadership 101 – stay focused, do what matters, promote purpose and vision, bring people with you, be strategic, make decisions and that Rudd was lacking in almost all of these.
“No CEO would survive long without these competencies but Labor allowed Kevin Rudd to fail in the basics, and then gave him another chance. This is perhaps a greater indictment of Labor than Mr Rudd.”
Howard says Rudd's greatest leadership gift was that he demonstrated what not to do: don't micromanage or constantly change your mind, don't pander to polls or surround yourself with those who agree with you. Don't avoid the hard thinking and hard conversations. Don't insult those who have a different point of view.
“Choose purpose before popularity, principle before pragmatism, strategy before detail, and implementation before endless committees. Establish and nurture deep relationships, put others first and give them the glory while you take any blame, surround yourself with smart people who are brighter than you and give them freedom to get on with the job,” Howard says.
Of all the core competencies required for high-level leadership, Rudd demonstrated only the ability to tell a compelling story. “He spoke and wrote about strongly held values, and great moral challenges, yet readily abandoned these for political purpose,” Howard adds.
Peter Fuda, principal of Sydney management consultancy the Alignment Partnership and author of Leadership Transformed: How Ordinary Managers Become Extraordinary Leaders, says that on Rudd's return to office, many of his colleagues chose to resign rather than work with him.
"It's hard to get anything important done unless you bring people along with you, no matter how smart you are,” Fuda says.
Fuda felt Rudd was “overly scripted”, referring to the use of buzz words and the choreographed hand gestures. “It was all a bit inauthentic. I would have encouraged him to drop the mask and be himself, warts and all.”
Roy Green, professor of management and dean of business at the University of Technology, Sydney, says Rudd failed to provide a consistent, clear and well-grounded strategic narrative. He also failed in the execution of his plans.
“The elements were there but never drawn together and articulated in a compelling way,” Green says.
Rudd never adopted an inclusive approach to policy design and delivery, did not draw on talent and innovation in the organisation and lacked attention to execution of his strategy.
“As Jeffrey Garten, former dean of Yale management school and adviser to President Clinton once said: 'Vision without execution is hallucination'.”
Would Roxon have delivered this speech if Labor had won the election? Hamill laughs at the idea and returns to the sporting analogy.
The minute a team starts losing, he says, it blames the coach: “If they had had a pick-up in the polls, Roxon would have said Kevin was a darling and I love working with him. They'd still be supporting him if he was the biggest bastard in the world. It's really as simple as that.”