Bill Clinton and Event-Making Leadership

Bill Clinton can get a conversation stared. Using his signature ability to elegantly repackage complex issues, he told an audience of over 2000 at the UNB Aitken Centre yesterday that developed countries suffer from tired, strained, and stubborn systems (think of our challenges in healthcare, education, political and economic development). They must be reformed, he said, if we are to unleash future prosperity.

What does this mean for NB? How can we take his insights and act smarter? This was the purpose of an event we called, “Dissecting Clinton,” that 21inc hosted in partnership with the Fredericton Chamber of Commerce. About 40 people joined us for a wide-ranging talk at Windsor Castle Bar.

We trotted through familiar territory before entering new ground. Many people lamented that change in NB seemingly takes forever, even when we all know the current system is broken. We discussed how our tired, strained and stubborn systems encourage anti-change behavior.

This led to a discussion on the role of leadership in fostering change. Looking to a messiah or hero isn’t sustainable. Once that person stops, so does the change. How do we create different models of leadership?

Larry Sampson, Executive Director of the NB ICT Council and one of our guest “instigators,” said his belief is that NB (and I’d argue the rest of the Maritimes) needs an event to make the right conditions for change. This is Rahm Emmanuel’s dictum. The former Chief of Staff to Obama channeled a Chinese proverb when he said that a crisis is a terrible thing to waste.

But do events or crisis always need to be external? Can we create our own conditions?

Sidney Hook calls leadership that transforms “event-making.” Most leaders are “eventful.” That is, they “shape the course of events, but their contributions could easily be replicated by others.” The little Dutch boy who put his finger in the dike was an “eventful” actor because he prevented a flood that would have destroyed his community; but virtually anyone in the same situation could have acted as he did.

Event-making leaders change the course of history because of personal qualities they bring to the situation (and not always in desirable ways). Under Franklin Roosevelt’s leadership, the United States became a world power and an emerging welfare state. “Without him,” writes Nan Keohane in her book, Thinking about Leadership, “American history would have been different and not just in its details but in its larger contours.” Roosevelt, was an “event-making” leader because his actions created consequences through his outstanding capacities of intelligence, will, and character rather than accidents of position.

I agree that New Brunswick can’t rely on a messiah. That’s part of our problem; our culture seems dependent on this as an answer. It’s like the person who who believes that their retirement funding will come by winning the lottery. But nor can we afford to wait for an outside event. We need event-making leadership at all levels. And these event-making leaders need to put in place the effective, sustainable, and adaptive systems to carry on when their work