Poor Mrs May. ‘Brexit means Brexit’, ‘I’ve been absolutely clear’… She was striving to sound decisive and tough.
This isn’t a comment on politics, it’s a comment on the style our last Prime Minister (clearly) felt driven to adopt. You’ll have your own view on how well that style suited her. And you might have thoughts on who drove her in that direction. Was it the Press, or do we in the wider public bear responsibility ourselves?
What a luxury we have, outside the world of politics! When, in truth, things are complicated, we can be honest about that fact. We don’t have to produce simple soundbites.
In his magnificent book ‘Factfulness – Ten reasons we’re wrong about the world – and why things are better than you think’, one trap Hans Rosling identified was what he called The Single Perspective Instinct.
As Rosling said, we find simple ideas very attractive. We enjoy the moment of insight, we enjoy feeling we really understand or know something. The world becomes simple.
But to think everything’s simple is to misunderstand the world.
It might make life easy – and feel and look ‘strong’ and ‘clear’ – to reach a quick decision and stick to it, but often we can do better than that. In business, we and our stakeholders can benefit if we test our favourite ideas; if we’re humble about our expertise and whether it’s really up to date; and if we invite into our decision-making people who we know have different ideas from our own.