The battle to beat relative decline

WHETHER it’s business, sport or politics, one of the greatest dangers to continued and sustainable success is when those in charge look at the results and settle down for more of the same.

They may utter the usual management platitudes about ‘always seeking to improve’ or ‘never accepting second-best,’ but there is still a big problem – and that is relative decline: it is not enough simply to improve, if the competition is still outpacing you.

Complacent leaders measure success against yesterday’s criteria and objectives, not tomorrow’s.

They are marking out the pitch, placing the goalposts and deciding they know what success looks like. All the while, the world ‘out there’ is playing to a new and very different set of rules.

The water in which we are all swimming has changed its temperature, its colour, its acidity, its depth and yet so many swimmers just keep ploughing on, buoyed up by occasional success or the failure of others.

Just look at the serious plight of the Labour Party.

‘The public got it wrong’ or ‘we weren’t Left-wing enough’ are the arrogant, indeed ignorant, conclusions of several socialist commentators to its enormous defeat in the General Election.

But the world has changed and they need to move on. There is no place for a Left-wing ruling majority in this country.

A globally competitive, better-skilled, aspirational, technologically connected electorate doesn’t want yesterday – people hanker for tomorrow.

A few local authority seats won at next May’s elections will persuade the trades union paymasters and their Labour Party puppets that all is fine, and the relative decline that has been there for years will continue.

On a global basis, a worrying example is the European Union.

Brussels is marching valiantly towards 1970, hobbling the liberating wealth creation of small business with more and more red tape and regulation.

Taxpayers’ money being spent on subsidising the production of a commodity (agriculture, where prices can’t reflect value) instead of helping the unemployed of all 28 member states get into tomorrow’s jobs.

Unelected, unaccountable Eurocrats are presiding over relative decline on the grand scale.

In the only race that matters, globalisation, the EU’s speedy path to coming last is disguised by a bit of progress here and there while the other competitors (Asia, America, Africa) storm ahead.

TWO examples from the business world: taxis and supermarkets. To the backward-looking established way of ‘doing taxis’ across Europe, the rise of Uber is terrifying.

But the challenge is not to put up the legislative barriers of protectionism, it is to adapt now or eventually wither on the vine.

This mantra is writ large in the boardrooms of the big supermarkets. The question is: What is tomorrow’s customer going to do, even if they don’t yet know it themselves?

Don’t blame the consumer; provide what the more street-savvy, technologically connected, globally mobile customer wants.

Tomorrow’s customer eats differently, socialises differently, travels differently, borrows differently, finds entertainment differently, gets the news differently.

He or she lives longer, feels entitled, has no room for deference, doesn’t want to know your problems in giving (selling) them what they want, has little time and no patience.

Choice has never been so prevalent. It is the ultimate arbiter of relative decline: those around you are making choices that affect your tomorrow, not your today.

Sport is full of examples of relative decline.

The Welsh rugby team of the late 1980s and early 1990s was still beating England on a regular basis so they thought progress was being made, but they were losing to everyone else.

Their decline was relative; it depended upon against whom the standard was set, who was setting the bar.

Where did it get them? Eventually losing at home to Western Samoa – not even the whole of Samoa – while England went on to win a World Cup.

Absolute decline is easy to see. But when decline is relative, it is so much more tricky to spot and even more difficult to do something about.

Mainly, that is because the easiest option is to go for more of the same, usually with the support of those enjoying the status quo and in denial of the reality.

But preventing relative decline is really what true leadership should be all about.