192: Guto Harri on Leadership, Resilience and the Future of Reputation

14:42Guto Harri:No, I think in one particular way, he was utterly brilliantly suited to COVID. Because if you relied on Gordon Brown, Theresa May, even Rishi Sunak, Keir Starmer to create the framework for discovering a vaccine and rolling it out, they'd still be working on the governance today. It takes someone like Boris to say, find me a woman who understands this thing, found Kate Bingham, said, right, here's a blank checkbook. You go and invest in anything you think has a chance of making it, and I'll cover your back politically. He actually was fundamental to the fact that we got the vaccine in front of everyone else.

15:18Guto Harri:And I think on a whole load of other things, he would have been brilliant, but it went against the grain for him to shut people down.

15:24Michael Hayman:What was his biggest weakness?

15:26Guto Harri:Well, he didn't really ultimately believe that we had to lock down. But he'd gone into a trap, you know, ill-advised, I think, but he also went along with it, that he actually listened to the scientists. The scientists are an important voice, but so are the economists. So are people who can see beyond the immediate crisis to what is the effect on the economy, and through that, the public finances, and through that, the health of the nation in five years' time and in 10 years' time. Not just today, screaming, follow the science and the scientists say, shut everything down because that's the safest thing.

15:58Michael Hayman:Is it one of those jobs you look back on and think, I'm glad I did it? Or do you think people have an easier life?

16:03Guto Harri:Well, I wasn't there when all that grim stuff. But when I went in to try the rescue operation, God, I'm glad because there was some fascinating, you know, we actually had the challenge of responding to Putin invading Ukraine or attempting to invade Ukraine. That was amazing. We ended the COVID restrictions. Right. I'd have never missed that for the world.

16:21Michael Hayman:And in those moments, for those that haven't lived that side of the door, I mean, how does the Downing Street operation work? Because it strikes me it can work at moments like a very high-performance engine and at times like a spluttering wreck, and we might get on to it.

16:38Guto Harri:Well, you're spot on on that. And so when I look at how well it worked on the Ukraine, I have a lot of reflections. One is that in the room was the military attaché, who, as it turned out, had been commanding officer of one of our special forces. And we had a very competent Secretary of State. We had a prime minister who was so on it and had a personal, very deep personal connection with President Zelensky. So Boris would speak to Zelensky in the early hours of the morning. The other people in the room would say, okay, prime minister, we heard what he said. He wants anti-tank missiles. We can get them to him by the end of the week.

17:16Guto Harri:And funnily enough, it happened. There were planes taking off from RAF lineup. When you actually hold a, and Boris did host the roundtable on energy, because that's the best way of avoiding the next cost of living crisis, people talk about this thing for hours and say, come back in a week with proposals. They come back and say, oh, we'll advertise for somebody to chair a quango called Great British Energy. I think Keir Starmer recently re-announced it four years on or wherever, and then we'll get some branding and then we'll do some research, then some consultation. Nothing ever happens.

17:49Michael Hayman:And so if you had... So he was an action man. Yeah.

17:53Guto Harri:So if you had Ben Wallace and you had the military attache and the other people who were working in that, and ex-military people in the MOD, in virtually every government department, you may just get a lot done, more done in health and in education and in policing.

18:07Michael Hayman:Okay, well, look, let's fast forward many, many, many prime ministers to today's prime minister, Keir Starmer. I mean, we are speaking at the most febrile of moments. I mean, you know, the list of advisors keeps growing. We've had Morgan McSweeney. We've had Tim Allen. We've had a number of big names in the advisory world that are now no longer in Downing Street. In terms of, I suppose, not just turning this into a kind of punditry of will Keir Starmer be here or not. In terms of the role of the advisors, I guess, falling on their sword at this moment. in terms of what do you draw from that in terms of, I mean, does that just go with the territory because of the sort of job you're in?

18:53Michael Hayman:Or is there something more fundamental we should draw from it in terms of, I guess, a lesson about what it means to advise at the highest of stakes?

19:03Guto Harri:You are expendable. There's no doubt about that. You have fewer rights as, you know, a special advisor to the prime minister than anyone. If he goes, you go, and you can go because he's just changed his mind about you. But you mentioned the word sword. So I'd say it's a double-edged sword. Right. And it's painful to me. Yeah, exactly. It's a world of pain. But the danger is that, you know, you are trying to do the prime minister a favor by saying, look what, I'll take the hit for Mandelson. And that means you don't take the hit. But the loss of a key advisor like Morgan McSweeney is as damaging to the prime minister almost as the allegations about Mandelson were.

19:42Guto Harri:because it's a different kind of damage. So your departure actually, A, leaves him underpowered at a time when he needs to be at his best. It's intellectual damage. It's intellectual damage, but it's also, we all need our comfort blankets. You know, when you are taking massive decisions and the kind of decisions that you take as prime minister, you know, you take the kind of as many decisions in an hour as most CEOs of mid-sized companies have to take in a month, maybe more. and they are so tightly scrutinized that you need people around you where you're not questioning their competence or their loyalty and their instincts.

20:19Guto Harri:And so the loss of that is damaging in itself and it also creates a sort of narrative of chaos. And then when you lose two, it really adds to the narrative of chaos. And then when it's the third chief of staff and it's the fourth director of comms, it creates its own world, hence the sort of double-edged sword. But you're right, it's very hard in that situation because you do have skin in the game, you know.

20:41Michael Hayman:I mean, I suppose the behind-the-scenes story of this is the sort of work we cover at BPI and things like our Resilience Index where we look at this issue of trust. And it strikes me that the front line of trust is what we're looking at and is what's being played out right now in front of us in terms of actually... It's almost as important how I feel about a situation as what I know about a situation in terms of how governable the country is right now, in terms of the ability of people to trust in their political leaders. I mean, we are at this moment in time in a situation where it strikes me how much further can trust drop in institutions in a country like the UK, which is famed for that fabric of institutions that keeps it together.

21:30Guto Harri:Yeah, that's very interesting. And I think when we step back a little from Keir Starmer to what is relevant to any leadership scenario, I don't think he's in trouble because of the Peter Mandelson thing. That was the trigger. It's obviously the trigger, and it's going to cause him a lot more pain. But he was in trouble before then, and everyone was waiting for the trigger to blow up what had already been stacked as a potential bonfire. So the moral of the story for other companies is don't get into a situation where your reputation is that you change your mind, as Keir Starmer has done, where you change your staff, as Keir Starmer has done, where you said that you stood for one thing and then you appear to be doing another.

22:10Guto Harri:So all those lessons apply to virtually every sort of boardroom and every sort of organization in the land. And the better placed you are, and the more you know yourself, the more convincingly you project to others, the less vulnerable and the more resilient you will be when something does hit you.

22:28Michael Hayman:And resilience is the word, right? Yeah. I think when we look at companies, when we look at the political situation, I suppose what people are looking for are resilient leaders. Yeah. is it a situation where you can be resilient? I mean, who would have to be sat in number 10 right now to be delivering the sort of strong, stable government that we all say we want?

22:53Guto Harri:Yeah, I think there are structural issues, and one without getting down that rabbit hole, but we spend so much on welfare and on interest payments, largely to fund the welfare state that we have, that there's no money left for any leader. Now, if you're a right of center leader, your party wants tax cuts. Successive Tory leaders could not provide them. The parliamentary party got rabid and actually toppled three leaders. Labour want to spend more, and the money is not there to spend. So again, the backbenchers get frustrated. They look like they're set to topple a leader. So again, you've got to...

23:30Michael Hayman:I mean, that's quite an interesting point. In a way, everything comes back to the same problem. I mean, I suppose... So money, I mean, in terms of... for companies, that's quite often it's seen as like, are you winning? I'm just thinking about the lessons CEOs might draw from situations like the political world where actually it just seems to be about degrees of losing and which is the least worst decision you can take in terms of what you face today. I mean, how far do these examples actually travel through in terms of learnable advice for commercial leaders?

24:05Guto Harri:I think where CEOs are better on the whole than political leaders is that they are less attached to things that don't work. So if you launch a new product that doesn't work, you pull it. It's not like murdering your own child, which is, you know, how some politicians talk about getting rid of some obscure scheme that nobody appreciates, that is hemorrhaging money and tying up a lot of resource. Most companies are quite ruthless, rightly so, about things like that. So you don't have these ongoing things.

24:32Michael Hayman:The purifying flame of profit. Yeah, they do. You know. Yeah. So that's an important lesson. But they also want to be, or many companies will say they want to be more purposeful, they want to be more driven by agendas that might well fuel profit and performance, but they do speak to a kind of, I guess, a core mission, a core sense of purpose, and a commitment to the best side of change.

24:58Guto Harri:Yeah, I think, you know, the experience of being the comms person in a company, which, you know, we've both been in-house, going to see the CFO to discuss your annual budget, you know that you don't have a revenue line. You know, you are just a burden. And that is a great discipline. Very few people, even at the top of politics, have been through the rigor that that produces, where you say, but this is a nice thing to do. And so, but why? What is it adding? And so, you don't get forced to align what you're recommending as a comms person, for instance, or an HR person with the core success and mission of the business.

25:34Michael Hayman:But I think the thing that has changed is that the seat that that corporate affairs director sits in seems to be a lot closer to the top. So we often call it the first chair advisor, right? That actually the role of strategic communicators in a world which is so subject to sort of change seems to be on the rise and of more critical importance to a company than perhaps it was 20 years ago.

26:04Guto Harri:Absolutely. And it should be, because back to where we started, the nature of leadership, your leader gets drawn into, he or she gets drawn into debates. They have to sort of live the mission. They have to be an incorporation, if you like, of the values of the company, not just preach them. They have to navigate this tricky territory. And so, yeah, You are often the number two, pretty much, even more than the COO, depending on the company. In my situations, I've usually been in a situation where I'm arguing for one thing, the lawyers are trying to shut everything down, and the COO has got to decide between us.

26:41Guto Harri:And I've got to win that battle.

26:43Michael Hayman:But you've got to win that battle. And I suppose you win that battle through your skills, but also how you develop your skills. And I suppose actually how you keep on top of the game is a really important thing. I was really taken by the fact that you've just done an AI course, which is great, right? Because actually how we evolve as advisors is a really important part of how we stay match fit for the future.

27:04Guto Harri:Yeah, absolutely. I think it's fundamental, isn't it? It's getting your head around what it is and what it isn't. And what it isn't, you know, in a nutshell, is something that's just suddenly been discovered in the last two years called ChatGBT. This has been with us for decades. And it's been incorporated into all kinds of things that we're all, you know, well used to sort of dealing with. But where it's heading is breathtaking. And I think the challenge and the companies that will win and the leaders that will win and the individuals that will win are the people who see it as a way of augmenting what they do rather than replacing what they do.

27:38Guto Harri:And you cannot turn an idiot into a genius using AI, but what you can do is empower somebody who's got good judgment, who has got sound instincts to actually operate even more effectively. And I think that sort of eureka moment for me, in a way, is sort of very important. And in the world we're in, it's critical.

27:59Michael Hayman:Well, I've heard it described as the three superpowers of the future are the three C's of curiosity, creativity, and critical thinking. I mean, that's what we need from people to be able to actually use the tools. I like that. Well, it's free of charge there. Thank you. I suppose just in terms of if they are the skills or the superpowers of the future, I mean, let's go back. Let's finish our time together going back to the Westminster bubble, because I think this is an area where, especially in a country like the UK, where so much attention is on what goes on there. And actually, we feel, I think, a lot of people will feel that actually a lot of those skills are missing in terms of that world, that there is something just fundamentally unfit for the future that you get from a two-party system operating on the green and purple benches, red benches, in a very old building with a lot of mice in it.

29:04Michael Hayman:I now understand. I mean, in terms of how Britain gets fit for the future, I mean, how optimistic do you feel about the political class and its ability to sort of take the nation on that journey? Do you remain optimistic?

29:20Guto Harri:Well, I struggle even with my wiring as a human being. I struggle because I don't think we recruit the right people into public service as civil servants. And I think it's really hard to get decent people into politics when it's such a rough game and you are paid so little. I would halve the number of MPs, double what they're paid, and pay the prime minister of the UK at least half a million. Not because you're going to make money in the job, but you shouldn't be struggling to sort of keep – Well, you know, I think in the end, you pay penis, you get monkey. So that's a start. And then you get people who understand this.

29:54Guto Harri:Because a basic understanding of what's happening with AI means we're not going to get this without a lot more energy, cheaper energy. And nobody's taking the decisions that's going to provide the energy needed for that. And also the raw materials. China saw this, you know, decades ago. But the cost of – we are running out of memory apparently at the moment. And you need a lot of memory to operate AI systems. And the price of memory is going to go up because we don't have enough of it and we can't build enough of it because you need a lot of particularly raw materials to do that. So in a nutshell, there's one big problem that I don't think 85 % of the people in Parliament, in the British Parliament at the moment, are aware of.

30:32Guto Harri:And so they're taking decisions thinking the most important thing is that we have to maintain the triple lock on pensions, thinking, really, guys? So the rules of the game are going to change? Well, they have to. Otherwise, we're just managing decline. And that is the depressing thought. Yeah. That all you're doing is managing decline because I think there's a very simple mission when you go into politics, whoever you are. You should leave the country in a better state than you found it. And the same goes for companies. When you stand down as CEO, you'd like to look back and think this company is in hopefully even better shape than it was when you took over.

31:06Michael Hayman:So last question. Back to your kind of battle-hardened career, Gita. I mean, you've had amazing stints in the media, in public service and politics, and in business. this idea of change and where you see it most easy to affect change what what where where has the heart lifted the most in terms of the the kind of those those areas of focus that you've

31:29Guto Harri:had in in your in your time of work well you know in journalism you know it seemed improbable but i witnessed firsthand the end of communism and the the iron curtain that divided britain uh witnessed, you know, as a journalist, though I wasn't in South Africa at the time, the end of apartheid. The world got better for a long time. A lot of things got better about the UK. Politics got, you know, more stable for a while. You know, in the first 50 years of my life, eight prime ministers of the UK, the last 10, six, and we're now heading for seven. So I know that it's possible. I know in companies and I know in politics, you know, what Boris managed to do in his first term as mayor was incredible.

32:10Guto Harri:So I still believe that a good individual can make a difference. And that goes back to a theory of history. It's people stupid. So a good leader can transform history, regardless of where the dynamics of the age is going. And that applies to our age. That applies to now as well as then.

32:28Michael Hayman:Yeah, brilliant. I mean, I'm just thinking effervescent, booster-ish, positive. Your old boss would be proud. Gita, thank you very much for joining me Thank you.