I don’t care for your ideas, give me a vision and throw me an elbow

Today I’m loving a post on the Harvard Business Review blog titled Having Ideas Versus Having a Vision, by Roberto Verganti. Coming from a small, mature business market like Australia, I’d been well-indoctrinated to the idea that the British economy was bigger, faster, stronger. But like the old expression says: “the bigger they are, the harder they fall”, and boy, has this economy fallen (I’d like to point out that the correlation between my getting here and the world falling apart is entirely coincidental).

From an outsider’s perspective, I really believe part of the challenge facing the British recovery post-recession is a lack of demonstrable passion in the business community. There’s plenty of passion about things like bankers’ bonuses, quantitative easing and football players. But expert commentator after expert commentator has agreed for months now that after the initial shock, the global financial crisis became a crisis of confidence. Who’s job is it to inspire confidence? The Leader’s.

A crisis of confidence is, to a natural leader, an opportunity like no other. If you have a vision, and the courage to point to it and say “that’s where I’m going”, you’ll be one of very few. And while all of your competitors are sitting around waiting for the results of the next general election, their customers and staff will take a peek over your side of the fence. And a lot will jump over. Maybe they’ll jump to a new brand. Maybe they’ll jump to a new market. Maybe they’ll all bugger-off to Asia; so long Europe, it’s been a…time.

So someone needs to get angry. Someone needs to get up off the mat and say “enough”, and grab the cliche by the horns and give British businesses a damn good seeing-to. Someone needs to throw an elbow. Because that’s the kind of someone that others follow.