Imagine you’re Simon Crean, captain of a depressed, fractious, unfocused rabble which knows it can’t win the big game. Some players think you’re the main obstacle to success. What would you do?
Those of you who are leaders, at work or at home, know how bloody hard it is to forge a united, enthusiastic team at the best of times. Indeed, the jostling for who is recognised as leader, and why, is a big part of the challenge.
I read a management book recently called “Managing transitions – making the most of change”, by American William Bridges (Perseus Books, 1991) on the recommendation of a friend who’s one of those organisational behaviour gurus. It’s about companies in transition – merging, downsizing, radical overhaul – and the psychology of transition for employees and how leaders can make it work or cause it to fail. I reckon it’s got lots to say about the Labor Party, and how it might, or might not, emerge from its crisis of identity and crisis of confidence.
It’s also got a lot to say to people like me, and to judge by your emails many of you, who are struggling to deal with the new realities in Australia and the world. What’s the point of engaging with what’s happening around us when truth doesn’t matter, might is right, and ethics hold you back and cost you money? Dunno about you, but lots of my friends are about to do the downshifting, chill out thing, or are considering leaving the rat race to do something useful. Maybe it’s just the mid-life crisis transition.
Anyway, here’s my analysis of where Labor’s at in the transition process, and what Simon Crean might consider doing to lead Labor through it to become a credible alternative government.
Bridges begins by distinguishing change from transition. CHANGE is external and situational – Labor losing government in 1996. TRANSITION is internal, “the psychological process people go through to come to terms with the new situation”. Unless transition occurs, a new beginning is not possible. Leadership is about managing the transition to achieve the desired outcome, the return of a Labor government.
“Psychological transition depends on letting go of the old reality and the old identity you had before the change took place,” Bridges says. Once people in the group have let go, they and the organisation go into a NEUTRAL ZONE, “the no man’s land between the old reality and the new…a time when the old way is gone and the new doesn’t feel comfortable yet.”
When did Labor let go? I believe Kim Beazley’s leadership delayed Labor letting go of its fantasy that it was a government in waiting, not the opposition, for six years, and that the 2001 loss forced it out of denial.
Thirteen years of power convinced Labor that it, not the Conservatives, was the natural party of government in Australia. The leadership and the party believed that a sound technical job in opposition would see it back in power soon, as people quickly tired of yesterday’s man. The small target strategy is a natural one when you think you’ve got the right to run Australia. So MPs shut up, closed ranks, maintained discipline, and followed their leader, who followed his pollsters and his spinners. There was no concerted attempt to review its record in government, discuss its mistakes, adjust its philosophical framework and party structure, and rethink its policy agenda.
Denial nearly worked. Beazley got more votes than Howard in 1998, but lost the GST election. To lose an election fought on so controversial an issue should have woken Labor up. Howard might have played small target in 1996 to beat a deeply unpopular government voters were dying to kick out, but he fought and won a very big target election in 1998.
The second term was tragic for Labor and for Labor supporters. Having lost the GST election, it did a deal on business tax, under which it passed major concessions and the halving of the capital gains tax in exchange for a mere promise from Costello to clamp down on family trusts used by the wealthy to avoid tax, a promise predictably never fulfilled. It rolled over on Howard attempts to pump extra money into rich private schools and began the wrecking of Medicare by supporting the private health insurance rebate – thus ditching central tenets of Labor’s belief system to keep itself a small target. It decided to fight another GST election by promising “rollback” and refused to release any policies until the last minute, allowing Howard to spend spare funds to butter up his constituencies. It rushed to support Howard on the Tampa in fear of its hide and after September 11 got no fresh air when it released its minuscule new policy items during the campaign.
The damage done by Labor’s second term denial became clear on election night. After six years in opposition core supporters from the Left defected to the Greens and core supporters from the blue collar working class defected to Howard. Labor had cast aside a core belief – the universality of human rights – to win an election, and lost it anyway. Neither it or its supporters had any idea of what it stood for any more.
And who would lead these damaged, lost Labor souls? A former ACTU president and Keating government minister called Simon Crean, who as Beazley’s deputy was complicit in the small target strategy. Hard worker, decent bloke, cautious to the core, a mediator, a facilitator, without a scrap of charisma, a boring, grating speaker and bad orator. But let’s get the order right, please. Labor was in despair before Crean became leader. He got the shit sandwich, that’s all, at a time when Howard was in his element in a climate of international fear.
Crean had to pick up the pieces and try to manage the delayed grief of party members, MPs, Labor supporters who’d hung on, and those who’d defected, while working towards a new beginning. “When endings take place, people get angry, sad, frightened depressed, confused,” Bridges says. “They are the signs of grieving, the natural sequence of emotions people go through when they lose something that matters to them.You find them among families who have lost a member, and you find them in an organisation where an ending has taken place.”
We’ve seen all those emotions alright, in spades. We’ve seen the anger, white hot at times, from voters, party members, and MPs. The fall of Cunningham to the Greens last year epitomised the destruction that anger and frustration can wreak.
In some ways Crean did many of the right things to end the grieving and begin the transition. He forced fresh faces onto his frontbench. He started necessary structural reform in the party, against great odds. He released a reasoned, humanised alternative to Howard’s refugee policy, which satisfied no-one but got the issue off the frontburner. Then came Iraq, and despite his bumbling, he did a reasonable job in holding together a party which threatened to split on the issue.
But September 11 and the war debate had transformed politics, and Howard rode high on the short-term results. Crean faded to black in the polls. The war changed a lot of things. A triumphalist Howard vowed to stay on indefinitely. And Kim Beazley challenged for the leadership.
I see the Beazley challenge as the climactic finale to Labor’s grieving process. One aspect of grieving is to “bargain” away the pain of loss, which Bridges defines as “unrealistic attempts to get out of the situation or to make it go away; trying to strike a special deal; making big promises like they’ll ‘save you a bundle of money’ if you’ll only undo the damage”. Beazley, the man who’d told told Labor MPs to lay low and he’d win power back, no sweat – and failed twice – was now telling a despairing party that he was only he could slay the Howard dragon and that they’d just need to lie low again and it would be third time lucky.
Beazley and his supporters promised disaster if he wasn’t elected and salvation if he was. He became a snake oil salesman, promising to lead Labor to redemption without effort, shamelessly playing on the grief he’d delayed during his failed leadership. Bridges describes the anxiety of grief thus: “Silent or expressed; a realistic fear of an unknown and probably difficult future, or simply catastrophic fantasies.”
But caucus said no. Its decision is incredible to many, but I think it’s essential to Labor’s renewal. Simon Crean discovered plain speaking, and he named the problem – Labor’s crisis of identity and refusal to look the truth of that in the eye. And he named the solution – a bold, policy driven, reformist Labor agenda for the Australian people. He even wore a red tie to symbolise new pride in the “brand”. He buried the small target strategy. In short, he promised transformation. He promised to heal and renew Labor from within, asserting that it was self-belief through new policy and new solutions that would earn Labor the right to govern, not a popular leader and a good spin machine.
This is not an easy plan to sell. It needs 100 percent commitment from everyone on the team, and courage – lots of it – in a world dominated by Howard’s political correctness, with no guarantee of short term results. And he hasn’t sold it yet, not by a long shot. Still, he’s achieved one thing – Labor is now in the neutral zone.
“The neutral zone is both a dangerous and opportune place, and it is at the very core of the transition process. It’s the place and time when the old habits that are no longer adaptive to the situation are extinguished and new, better-adapted patterns of habit begin to take shape. It is the winter in which the old growth returns to the soil as decayed matter, while the next year’s growth begins to stir in the root underground. It is the night during which we are disengaged from yesterday’s concerns and prepared for tomorrow’s. It is the chaos from which the old form of things dissolves and from which the new form emerges. It is the seedbed of the new beginning that you seek … The gap between the old and the new is the time when innovation is most possible and when revitalisation begins”.’
Labor’s grief phase climaxed in full public glare, and this extraordinary catharsis, despite its downside in PR terms, is exactly what is needed to maximise the chances of renewal in the neutral zone. For a start, the factions disintegrated. The hard left voted for Beazley! Half the NSW Right voted for Crean! A caucus tradition of not saying publicly who you vote for was thrown out the window, with complete lists of who voted for whom published. Wives and mothers entered the fray, as did former leaders, party elders and union heavies. The scab’s been lifted and Labor, in all its frailty, in all its aspects, has exposed its despair to the Australian people.
On Monday and Tuesday at Aussies cafe in Parliament house Labor backbenchers, frontbenchers, and even failed challenger Beazley sat around pouring their hearts out to any journalist who wandered by. Crean supporters’ eyes shone, Beazley supporters looked sheepish or acted too friendly to Crean’s people. This party is very raw and very open.
It’s scary to be so open. American futurist Marilyn Ferguson describes the feeling like this: “It’s not so much that we’re afraid of change or so in love with the old ways, but it’s that place in between that we fear. It’s like being between trapezes. It’s Linus when his blanket is in the dryer. There’s nothing to hold on to.”
Says Bridges: “It is natural to feel somewhat frightened and confused in this no-man’s land. As the old patterns die in their minds and the new ones begin to take shape, people are assailed by self-doubt and misgivings about their leaders. Ambiguity increases, and so does the longing for answers. This is why people in the neutral zone are so prone to follow anyone who seems to know where he or she is going – which unfortunately includes troublemakers and people who are heading toward the exit.”
Crean has a delicate management task to manage the neutral zone, otherwise sabotage, new hatreds, and old weaknesses could lead to terminal chaos. He’s probably the best man for this job. He’s an eternal optimist who enjoys working hard. He’s a negotiator. He’s straight with people mostly, and he’s a good listener. He’s not vindictive. He’s done the right thing by not purging Beazley’s backers. They did him a favour, after all, and he needs to settle the party down as quickly as possible.
I’m assuming, of course, that Crean means what he says. If his pitch of a policy driven, front foot, innovative Labor Party was a mere sales pitch, he’s a goner. I’m confident he’s for real, partly because of Mark Latham’s role in Crean’s leadership defence and his subsequent elevation to the crucial job of manager of opposition business in the House of Representatives. Latham, you’ll recall, blew the whistle on Beazley’s small target strategy after the 1998 election and retired to the backbench to write columns and speeches on the Third Way. Latham is a high voltage performer and radical reformer and his appointment means Crean means business, risky business.
Using Bridge’s suggestions as a guide, here’s a few things Crean might consider to help his party members through the neutral zone.
1. He needs to find a metaphor for the journey Labor is embarking on. Any ideas?
2. Since Labor’s factional hierarchy has all but broken down, Crean could create new teams across the backbench, frontbench and among staffers to make internal party decisions, organise events, or contribute to policy.
3. He could consider taking party members and families on a retreat, to, in the words of Bridges, “try to rebuild a sense of identification with the group and connectedness with one another”.
4. Here’s a weird one – Crean could set up a “transition monitoring team”, a group of 7 to 12 people from a wide cross section of the federal party. It could review plans or communications before Crean announces them, and pass up the feedback from those on the coal face on how things are going.
If Crean is serious about renewal, he needs to use this time in the neutral zone not only to calm , reassure and reconnect the troops, but to encourage creativity and innovation. As Bridges says, “It is during the gap between the old and the new that the organisation’s systems of immunity are weak enough to let truly creative solutions emerge unhampered. Only when the old way of seeing things disappears are habit patterns broken, and a new way will emerge.”
To do this, Crean needs to let it be known that he’s open to new ideas – on party processes, policy, whatever. Suggestion campaigns and surveys are one way. The party could send backbenchers of talent to seminars or short courses on the latest in policy ideas in an area of interest to them, or on office management, leadership, political philosophy, grass roots campaigning, whatever. He could also let people test out their ideas, as an experiment, without fear of failure. His door must always be open to his backbenchers. They’ve put their necks on the line to give him another ago.
***
Crean has promised his people nothing less than a path through the wilderness. To set the scene for the transition from opposition to government, he must explain to his party and the Australian people his plan to achieve this, and how they can play a part.
John Howard took over a party in terminal decline before the 1996 election. He then made a series of “headland speeches” in which he sought to describe his party’s history, traditions and enduring values, and how those values operate in the modern world.
Crean must urgently start this process. He needs to exploreg the values which underpinned the creation of the Party, and trace their development and adaptation as the world changed. He must examine Labor’s achievements in government, where he thinks it made mistakes and what the party has learned from them.
He must place himself within the Labor tradition and describe why he joined the Labor Party, what he learnt from his father, and how he operated as ACTU leader and now Labor leader. He needs to explain how he would see his role as Prime Minister and the style of government he would create. In particular, he needs to announce radical new policy to ensure he will preside over an ethical, trustworthy Labor government.
He needs to set out Labor’s view of the role of government – what government should and shouldn’t do, and why, and what the duties of government are to the people of Australia. He needs to describe what he sees as the great challenges facing Australia, and the priorities he would set himself in office to meet them.
Crean does not have much time to firmly establish himself as the man who will lead Labor at the next election, or to start planting in the public’s mind the basics of new Labor’s style and substance. He must settle his own party and convince them he is the right man to lead them, while at the same time convincing the Australian people that he is a worthy candidate for Prime Minister. I’d like to see him deliver his speeches at forums such as the Sydney Institute, where he can take questions from the audience.
To me, Crean’s task is to build solid, substantial foundations for a Labor win, if not at this election, then the one after. To do that, he needs to instil confidence among the party’s MPs that they’re moving towards the light at the end of the tunnel, pride that their cause is just, and energy to work hard, together, in the common cause. If he does that, he’ll have proved he’s a great leader.