This week’s ballot between outgoing opposition leader Sussan Ley and incoming leader Angus Taylor has been like watching the servers at a food court McDonald’s franchise fighting over the leadership of the multinational juggernaut. Nobody believes they have a say in corporate strategy. They wear a uniform which is supposed to signify a good standard of product and a reliable experience, regardless of who wears the little grey cap. Yet instead of serving up a decent McFlurry, they’ve been arguing with one another about who should be Employee of the Week.
No wonder Australians have been taking their custom elsewhere. A competitor chain has been doing very well out of the messy front of house.
It’s going to be a slog to win back those punters. Angus Taylor and new deputy leader Jane Hume might have the restaurant back on track, but they’re going to need to demonstrate there’ll be no more patchy service before voters will return.
It doesn’t help that there have been conflicting strategies. This week, two suits from corporate, Tony Abbott and Malcolm Turnbull, popped up with different versions. Ex-prime ministers carry significant weight when they comment on the strategy their party should pursue.
Turnbull stood up in the Parliament House courtyard, looking like he might want to run the show again. But he wasn’t there to help – he was there to point out that there are more restaurants around. Deposing Ley was a vulnerable moment for a party which has been haemorrhaging female voters. One of Canberra’s worst-kept secrets is that there’s a clique of disaffected or would-have-been Liberals looking to form a new party to occupy the urban centre ground and, as revealed by Peter Hartcher in this masthead on Saturday, Turnbull is encouraging them.
Tony Abbott sits across the board table from Turnbull in the corporate strategy suite of Liberal leaders. Abbott has been a frequent commentator on the direction of the Liberal Party, but has also always been one of the more active contributors to the intellectual ballast of the party. He is one of what’s starting to feel like an outmoded breed of politicians, who reads widely and does his own thinking, laying out his conclusions in writing to create a case for his approach.
While you may disagree with his deeply conservative conclusions, they are at least thoroughly reasoned. He articulates them powerfully and succinctly in articles and speeches. After Abbott has laid out an argument, conservatives are often moved to call for his reinstatement as prime minister – to which I usually respond that he had his chance, and it wasn’t a role in which he excelled. And in any case, he’s not gone. He’s exerting his influence from the boardroom – which he’s been stacking in anticipation of this moment.
Abbott was one of those who made a strong case for Taylor ahead of the spill, and he had people in place who would heed his advice. But now he’s got to withdraw so that Taylor looks less like he’s serving up hotcakes and more like the CEO of the venture.
Ley’s leadership never took off because she never stepped into that role. Over the past nine months, her main contribution was a series of speeches outlining Liberal principles. They were good speeches; my compliments to the chef. But they were also consistently frustrating, as the policies were always “under development”. The only policy-shaped object delivered by the Liberal Party in that time was a formal withdrawal from net zero.
An alternative “affordable energy plan” was initially well sold by Ley and then, apparently, forgotten – conviction would have seen the argument sustained. An immigration policy was promised and never released to the public. She always looked like she was waiting to receive instructions.
Taylor has started strongly. While articulating policies which are similar to Abbott’s in government – people who come to this country have to share our values, he said – he also spoke to new concerns. Flexibility of choice in childcare – a topic close to my heart for a long time and which is important to many families across Australia. And, of course, lower taxes and small government – core principles of giving individuals control over their own lives.
He and his deputy also apologised for past gaffes – a good move which might have been reminiscent of the Domino’s pizza apology ads, when executives said sorry for the crappiness of their product in the past and vowed to improve.
It’ll get harder from here, though. There are twin challenges ahead, one from the electorate and one from Taylor’s supporters.
Taylor will have to ensure switched-off voters hear about his new ideas. McDonald’s has relegated his namesake burger, the Mighty Angus, to an occasional menu item. The real Angus will need to be consistently available if voters are to come around to a party with a severely tarnished brand. He’ll need to be heard across the airwaves on his policy ideas and why they’re important.
The second challenge is to persuade conservative stakeholders that this is not the time to indulge in culture wars and commentary on issues that aren’t grounded in economics. Inevitably his supporters will beg him and his opponents will bait him. But the lesson of the Morrison victory was that tuning out that noise and focusing entirely on the one thing that matters to absolutely everyone – how well they are able to support themselves and their family – wins the centre and not just the fringes.
And therein lies the lesson for corporate strategy as well. To succeed, a CEO needs free rein to do what the operational lead of a company does: respond to the market and argue in the best way for serious and innovative decisions. That’s the only way they’ll ever make customers McHappy.
Parnell Palme McGuinness is an independent insights and advocacy strategist. She has done work for the Liberal Party and the German Greens.
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