Alan Johnson has been made shadow chancellor, but he has admitted he knows nothing about the job.
Does it matter that someone who could be responsible for the economic health of a country admits that he has no experience or knowledge of his new job?
A number of years ago, I took a leadership and management course, and the instructor claimed a manager didn’t need to know the business, he just needed to know how to manage people. On one hand, I can see why one might say this, but on the other hand, managing a restaurant has to be different from managing a manufacturing facility, just a little.
So on one hand, if he knows how to pick the right people to do the job, then his personal knowledge means nothing. On the other hand, if he knows nothing, how does he know who the right people for the job are?
Yeah, I think politicians or any sort of head honcho needs at least a rudimentary understanding of what those lower in the food chain will be doing.
Agreed. but …
Managing a restaurant or 10-person factory is very different from managing a 100-store restaurant chain or a 1000-workers-per-shift automobile factory.
At the small end, you’re dealing directly with the folks doing the work, and often pitch in to fill gaps. Training the bottom-of-the-pyramid workers is part of your daily tasks. You *need *a lot of knowledge about the detail work that goes on under your care.
Not so at the big end. Your job is to manage strategy and the managers who report to you. And despite all the fawning business press about “visionary leadership” at the top, most of the strategy is come up with by your underlings as well. Your key skills are selecting those folks and managing the interactions / conflicts between them.
At a time in recent memory, a gaggle of people were appointed to jobs where they would regulate the industries they came from. They ended up pointedly avoiding regulating those industries, and being specifically kind to the companies they had come from. That is particularly bad practice.
In local government it seems better if the politicians know nothing and admit it. A local politician who thinks s/he know something about the job and in fact knows very little is a disaster.
To put this onto perspective, the current Chancellor is George Osborne. His CV is this:
Osborne is beneficiary of a very large trust fund provided by his father, who is a Baronet. His statements that “cuts must be made” and “we are all in this together” ring rather hollow
Johnson on the other hand has been an orphan from a young age, brought up by his sister, living in a council house, worked stacking shelves in a supermarket, then as a postman. Got into union politics, then national politics. He’s a former Health Secretary, Education Secretary, and Home Secretary.
Johnson may well turn out to be a shit Shadow Chancellor, but at least he has some inkling of what real poverty is.
Osborne is the first against the wall, frankly.
Do you actually have to have experienced real poverty to be a good chancellor? Are you suggesting that coming from a priviledged background inherently makes you a bad person?
Ideally, whatever you’re responsible for - defence or culture or the foreign office or any other department, you should have a full working knowledge of the issues you are likely to come across, and the consequnces of your decisions, whether your parents were rich or poor.
Ultimately anyone appointed to a position of leadership should have the ability to perform not only duties specific to themselves, but also those of their immediate subordinates. This is absolutely essential, in my opinion, for the efficient operation of any organization, whether it be political, commercial, or otherwise.
I don’t see how anyone can delegate tasks and responsibilities that they have no personal understanding of. From the political perspective, I can only see unqualified appointments as ‘Quid pro quo’ kickbacks.