Paul's Blog: Kevin Rudd - He's Just Not Cut Out To Be A Leader

If you wanted to come up with a business school case study on dysfunctional leadership, Kevin Rudd would make an ideal subject.

Rudd’s leadership style is deeply flawed.  He is a classic micromanager, caught up in the detail, trying to control every decision personally.  The result is entirely predictable: the organisation he leads is underperforming woefully.

The early signs suggested a very different approach: open, inclusive, consultative.  Within months of coming to power, he convened a group of prominent Australians in the ‘2020 summit’.   

It was just Kevin and a few hundred of his most famous friends – asking for ideas, sending out the message, ‘I don’t have all the answers.’

Like a thousand corporate retreats before it, there were facilitators and break out groups and butcher’s paper and ground rules. 

And like all too many corporate retreats, the idealism of the weekend quickly turned into disillusionment back at the office.   Australians discovered that Mr Rudd’s real leadership style was the very opposite of open and consultative.

Consider the 2020 summit itself.  After all the hype, only nine ideas (of 962 proposed) were actually adopted by the Rudd government. 

It turned out the summit was just a piece of symbolism.  Mr Rudd had no intention of sharing the levers of power.

No recent prime minister has sought to concentrate power so tightly.  Key decisions in the Rudd Government are taken not by cabinet but by the four key ministers: Rudd, Swan, Tanner and Gillard. 

Not only are other Ministers not involved, often they are not even briefed. Environment Minister Peter Garrett only learned of the decision to abandon the Emissions Trading Scheme when he heard it on a radio news bulletin.

Because no major decision can be taken without Rudd’s personal sign-off, his office is an enormous bottleneck in the decision making process.  Stories abound of Ministers and public servants waiting for many hours to see Rudd to get a decision.

The micromanagement even extends to preparing for question time each day.  An edict came down in the first days of the Rudd Government: every department’s question time briefs would need to be cleared not just through their own Minister’s office (as had always been the case); they would also need to be cleared by the Prime Minister’s office.

This management style is a recipe for disaster.  The extensive literature on corporate leadership is very clear on the dangers of a CEO trying to control everything.   It makes the organisation slower and less responsive. 

But the most serious consequence is the waste of human potential and capacity – because talented managers at lower levels in the organisation are not able to apply the full force of their own energies and intellect to solving problems.

Interestingly, one of the classic examples in the management literature comes from politics.  Jimmy Carter was US President from 1976 to 1980.  A highly intelligent man with an impressive background, his presidency was widely judged a failure. 

Carter became immersed in detail and failed to create a vision and narrative which inspired his staff and his people.  The enduring symbol of his micromanagement: he personally devoted time to drawing up the schedule for the White House tennis courts.  

Carter was followed by one of the most successful Presidents ever, Ronald Reagan.  Reagan was a big picture man and a masterful communicator.  He created a powerful narrative and concentrated on his major strategic priorities – including putting sustained pressure on the Soviet Union in a way which ultimately led to its collapse.   He trusted his staff and supporters to do the work of detail.

Kevin Rudd’s mounting list of policy failures owes much to his Carteresque insistence on doing it all himself – compounded by an arrogant refusal to accept advice which diverges from his own views.  The pink batts disaster is a good example.  Why did the Rudd Government allow this program to continue for months as the danger signs kept flashing?

 It is clear that the hapless Environment Minister, Peter Garrett, and his Department, tried repeatedly to warn the Prime Minister of the dangers.  But Rudd refused to hear unwelcome news – and Garrett simply did not have the authority to call off the program on his own. 

The consequence of this failure of leadership: four young Australians have died, there have been over one hundred and fifty house fires and the Rudd Government is now spending around a billion dollars to fix the botched installations.

With the resource super profit tax, a similar disaster is unfolding.  Rudd made an initial error by taking  a decision with very little consultation.  Now he is compounding the error by refusing to listen to alternative perspectives. 

A culture that resists unwelcome news is a very bad sign in any organisation.  National Australia Bank ran badly off the rails a few years ago, with a foreign exchange scandal triggering the departure of its CEO and chairman.  Insiders commented that at NAB good news travelled up the line very quickly, but bad news travelled very slowly.  That sounds like a perfect description of the Rudd Government as well.

It is a truism of organisational behaviour that the style of the chief executive becomes the style of the organisation.  This explains why a key feature of Rudd’s personality is reflected across his government: a deeply unpleasant authoritarianism. 

This attitude is rife in ‘Building the Education Revolution’ – the $16 billion program to build new school halls and classrooms in primary schools across Australia.  There are numerous stories of schools being told they must take what they are given – even when they have much better ideas for how to use the money.  It is no wonder that so many parents and principals are frustrated.

Leadership is not easy.  Trusting people to do their best – and giving them the autonomy they need to do it – can be very challenging.   For some personality types, it may be impossible. 

Unfortunately for Australia, it seems our present leader simply has the wrong personality for the job.  We are all suffering the consequences.