A week ago Kevin Rudd was packing his bags for Toronto where he was going to rub shoulders with the most powerful people on the planet. He was Australia’s Prime Minister, the country’s leader. In the space of twenty-four hours the labour party’s bosses brutally dispatched him to political oblivion, in terms of power, a nobody. How did it happen and what can other leaders learn from it?

Three basic flaws brought about his downfall:

• He didn’t delegate, he wanted to do it all on his own, getting lost in a sea of details, seeing his cabinet more as a group who should execute his orders rather than a team of talented colleagues who could collectively find solutions to the country’s problems.

• He didn’t use some his party’s most brilliant people for key posts or on projects that sorely needed their abilities and knowledge.

• He totally misread his countrymen’s mood when he planned his Super Resources tax on the Mining industry, a tax that would have meant that a company like BHP would have paid 57% of tax, hardly an incentive for further investment. This third flaw was particularly fatal, he thought that the populist tactic of taxing a huge company would be well considered by traditional labour voters, but instead many normal working people are quite fond of the mining industry, they credit it for having helped Australia avoid the recession and maintaining a reasonable level of unemployment. As Australians, they feel rather proud of BHP and were not very happy with a tax that was going to be imposed without consultation or much reflexion.

A leader does not always need to do what the people want him to do, but he does need to know what they think and how they feel about a situation and take it into account when trying to bring about change, not to do so, is potentially fatal, as Mr Rudd found out this week.

Lessons for Business Leaders

It is human to err and so it is not surprising that we find managers making the same mistakes as Kevin Rudd, and the consequences can be just as bad. All too often managers do tasks that are way below their level of responsibility, which means that they are not spending their time on the strategic questions for which they are paid, in fact I often see managers so trapped in doing all the tasks themselves they don’t even know what those questions are.

I also see managers who have great people around them and yet don’t use them, they sometimes don’t even search out their opinions on topics on which they are experts. And finally I see leaders who are out of touch with what people in their organizations really think and feel about situations that need to be changed.

Three keys for leaders avoiding a fall from grace

1. Know what the truly important strategic questions are for you and spend your time on addressing them. Delegate the rest.
2. Know the talent you have at your disposal and don’t be afraid to use it. Delegate responsibility to them and consult with them. A wise man always looks for different perspectives.
3. Know how your people feel and think about important situations. If you want to bring about change this is your starting point.

Take care with these things, for as Mr Rudd found out this week, ignoring them can be dangerous, it is an unfortunate truth, but people with long knives are never too far away.