Grown-up leadership

But not grown-up comms

This weener weener weener childishness of this sort of comms contrasts sharply with the Premier’s mature leadership style.

Premier Tony Wakeham has never taken a position on the Churchill Falls deal.

Never said he’s for it or agin it.

Never.

Even last week on the day the Churchill Falls panel delivered its report - as close to deadline as they could - and the negotiations on the deal hit their deadline, Wakeham never said the deal is alive or dead.

Wakeham’s not indecisive.

Quite the opposite.

Wakeham knows exactly what he wants. He’s definitely not going to make a decision until he’s ready. The Premier’s also not going to listen to just one voice. That’s why he not only appointed three people with experience to tell him whether the deal met the government’s objectives or not but will take time to study it more. Plus Wakeham took his time appointing them. This guy is not rushing.

Danny Williams thought the deal was dead. But Danny is just doing what he did with Muskrat Falls: jumping to a conclusion based on what he wants, not on evidence. Plus, it makes him seem more powerful than he is if folks go along with the idea that he somehow bought the death of the deal for a few thousand dollars in political donations.

No one - literally not a person pushing that line - thought for a second about any of the knock-on things you have accept from that idea Williams bought a decision. They just ran with it because they just ran with it.

John Hogan and the Liberals thought the deal was alive. That’s why they kept pounding away at Wakeham to sign the deal before it’s gone. Besides, they know that talks were behind schedule and the April 30 deadline was always going to shift so they think the beast is still breathing.

But this is not Schrödinger’s deal, alive and dead at the same time.

The deal is neither alive nor dead.

It’s something else.

Making decisions is a form of creativity.

Creativity, as John Cleese put it, is not a talent or a skill but a way of operating.

Part of that way of operating is the willingness - again as Cleese put it - to play “with a problem for much longer [than other people might] before they tried to resolve it, because they were prepared to tolerate that slight discomfort and anxiety that we all experience when we haven’t solved a problem.”

“Now the people I find it hardest to be creative with,” Cleese recounted, “are people who need all the time to project an image of themselves as decisive, and who feel that to create this image they need to decide everything very quickly and with a great show of confidence.”

“Well, this behavior I suggest sincerely, is the most effective way of strangling creativity at birth.”

If you go back to an observation here made last fall before the election, you can get a better sense of this in the difference between Tony Wakeham and the Andrew Furey-John Hogan Liberals generally. The Liberals framed the election choice between decisiveness (Furey-Hogan) and what they portrayed as being indecisive (Tony Wakeham). They centred the choice on the Churchill Falls agreement Andrew Furey signed in secret after years of secret talks in which no one outside a very small circle even knew for sure there were talks let alone what the provincial government thought might be a good deal.

Furey knew he’d accept the deal the moment Legault outlined it for him. If not right away for sure then not long after. Furey is all about projecting an image. Decisiveness is one of the qualities Furey wants you to associate with him. But Tony Wakeham didn’t know. He also doesn’t need you to think one way or another about him. He has a job to do, which is make decisions. And Wakeham knew how he’d figure out how to know, that is, what it would take to give him enough information to choose.

That is important.

What you decide is not as important as how you decide.

That is, if you want to make a good decision or the right decision.

For Danny and Andrew, the outcome was more important to figure first because the outcome was about their self-image. Even when it made no sense to build Muskrat Falls - as it obviously wasn’t a good idea at the time - Danny couldn’t do anything but build the monument to his ego. It was his legacy.

For Furey, same thing. This was his way to go down in history, to show himself and his parents or whoever’s approval he chronically needs, that he has value. The facts of the deal or whether it met any provincial needs didn’t matter. You can tell because the sales pitch for the deal was about anything but its merits or even facts for that matter. The claims in favour of it are all wild and in some cases, like the bit about a billion dollars a year, are lies. Known falsehoods. But the facts or the rights or wrongs don’t matter because they had nothing to do with the decision.

Making a decision for the right reasons is completely different.

That’s why it’s more interesting to watch how Tony Wakeham works. He works differently from what folks are used to around here and as a result, they miss entirely that not only is what Wakeham does good, it’s way better than the sort of thing they have been used to for 25-odd years.

That’s why the Churchill Falls deal is neither alive nor dead. Tony Wakeham will not only take time to look at the review report, he’ll hear feedback from others about the report. And as we all discovered last week, he won’t even decide to release the report or what to do next with it until he’s thought it through. That can be frustrating. But it is arguably a lot better than flopping stuff out there because you need your ego stroked.

Tony Wakeham’s grown-up way of deciding parallels Mark Carney, curiously enough. That carries over into Carney’s relationship with reporters. You’ll see them comment on the way Carney doesn't give potted answers or talk in quips. He tells you what he is thinking, clearly. Explains background and nuance. For some of us that was and is a standard way of operating. For others, it isn’t.

The provincial government comms crowd in Newfoundland and Labrador doesn’t work that way. It’s all quips and emailed statements that avoid both information and accountability as surely as they run from the notion of persuading people to a point of view. Public relations is about giving people information and ideas to gain and maintain public support. Government Comms is about something else.

And that something else is in stark contrast to Tony Wakeham’s personal approach. You can see the not-so-grown-up comms approach of government in the picture at the top. It was a budget thing posted on Facebook over the weekend. Plays on the whole promise of tax cuts delivered in the budget.

There are some issues with it. First, politically, no one gave a shit five minutes after Craig Pardy delivered the speech about tax cuts. Most voters don’t care now and won’t care in the future. Something else is on their mind now. Something else will be four years from now.

Second, the ad is drawn up by people who have no idea what is going on and aimed it at people who are also just as ignorant. That means that in a year or two if the government needs to do something else like cut programs or raise taxes, people will remember that and Tony Wakeham and his Cabinet will have precisely nothing of a relationship with voters to fall back on.

That’s the poverty of pandering. If all people know is that you give them goodies, they will dislike you when you don’t. The reality of politics is that sometimes you have to tell people things they don’t want to hear. It’s childish to do anything else. Yet that’s what we’ve been getting since 2003 and it’s especially the way of operating that got John Hogan his new job as leader of the opposition. Pandering. Whoever drafted that ad and thinks it’s brilliant should look at the folks on the other side of the House. That’s where you will end up if you keep up that crap.

The third issue with the ad is that it highlights the gigantic gap between Tony Wakeham’s way of operating and that of the crowd around him. You can tell how much they are not grown up, that is, not acting like a government and caucus familiar with the traditions and responsibilities of the House, by the way the Pea Sea caucus dealt with the whole Barbour business in the House last week.

To be fair, the opposition Liberals are no better but that is on them. The Pea Seas as the government have a responsibility to all Newfoundlanders and Labradorians to be more mature than they are, to be more polished, and professional. Let Johnny and Fred jump off the wharf. No one cares about them.

The political problem with the childishness and immaturity of the government is that, like the budget, they are just making the same mistakes as the crowd they replaced. There is no difference. If there is no difference then voters will treat the Pea Seas like the Liberals. And on the use of automated stupidity in pictures, the Barbour thing was just the tip of what has turned out to be one of the six fingers on the hand of a made-up woman promoting vaccines.

This one is from bureaucratic comms, another cesspit that the Pea Seas have been unfortunately saddled with but still need to get a grip on. They have been in office more than six months. The mess of comms and political strategy just undermines Tony Wakeham’s sensible way of operating. It’s just nonsense that undermines the government’s potential strengths. Tony and the Tories need to grow that up to Tony’s level.

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