An interesting poser for Nick Clegg after last week’s election debacle. At what stage does he chuck it all in? Not only has he presided over the biggest electoral defeat in the modern history of the Liberal Democrats, and suffered a severe blow to his reputation and credibility, but he has also probably seen the issue that is most dear to his supporters’ hearts, electoral reform, kicked into touch for the foreseeable future. On this basis there could be a strong argument for him standing down and letting someone else take over.
Of course politics is not like the real world. Or is it? There is much discussion in business and in politics about doing the decent thing and resigning over poor performance. People must be held accountable. Barely a week goes by without somebody calling for the head of this business or that or organisation, or, more commonly, the minister for a poorly performing department.
Accountability may sound good in theory but is very difficult in practice. At one extreme you have football managers for whom a run of bad results will probably result in the sack even if it is the fault of the players or the board. At the other end of the scale you have time serving civil servants who will probably never be dismissed however poor their performance or disastrous their decision making. In between there are varying degrees of culpability and a sufficient number of grey areas to make a “should they stay or should they go” decision extremely difficult to make.
And where does that leave the average business owner in Enterprise Britain? Ok were they to make mistakes of the magnitude of their bigger rivals they would probably not be in business anyway. But if they do survive, well, what then? Resigning is clearly not a viable way out as it is likely that that the business would fold anyway. They often have to plough on best they can, putting it all behind them and making the most of what they can salvage from their situation.
Failure is still a cultural issue in UK society. We are not allowed to admit to it. We are expected to take responsibility for it. We are very rarely permitted to learn from it. Is it any surprise that in many cases people chose to cover it up or deny that it even happened?
And yet failure is often a precursor to success. It is only by trying things out and making mistakes that we often stumble upon what works. As long as it is not the result of recklessness or incompetence failure can be a valuable lesson that is then used to create something really successful.
There is no easy answer as to whether failure should result in instant dismissal or a second chance. It is often down to whether there is another option, whether the lessons have been learned or whether the individual concerned is capable of turning the situation around. In the case of Nick Clegg, dear reader, I’ll leave it to you to decide….
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