The New Machiavelli by Jonathan Powell

Author:Jonathan Powell
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Publisher: Random House UK
Published: 2010-10-30T21:00:00+00:00

CHAPTER SEVEN

‘Sundry Reflections on Strategy, Tactics, New Devices and Discipline’

The Importance of Being Strategic

Prime ministers find it is all too easy to be driven by their inbox. Harold Macmillan famously talked of ‘events, dear boy, events’ forcing themselves on a government, and there are always plenty of events to keep a prime minister occupied, many of them real crises demanding their attention. But unless they want their time in office to be entirely driven by reacting to those events, a wise leader learns to distinguish between the urgent and the important and sometimes leave others to deal with the urgent while focusing on those decisions that will make a difference in the long term.

To leave a lasting mark, prime ministers need to be proactive rather than purely reactive, which in turn requires that they have a long-term vision of where they want to take the country and a plan to implement that vision. Machiavelli’s advice was this: ‘The wise man should always follow the roads that have been trodden by the great, and imitate those who have most excelled, so that if he cannot reach their perfection, he may at least acquire something of its savour. Acting in this like the skilful archer, who seeing that the object he would hit is distant, and knowing the range of his bow, takes aim much above the destined mark; not designing that his arrow should strike so high, but that flying high it may alight at the point intended.’

Leaders should therefore have an overall plan, choose their target and aim high. Machiavelli quoted Philip of Macedon and certain Roman leaders as examples who demonstrated the importance of a strategic approach in classical times: ‘The Romans did as all wise rulers should, who have to consider not only present difficulties but also future, against which they must use all diligence to provide; for, these, if they be foreseen while yet remote, admit of easy remedy, but if their approach be awaited, are already past cure, the disorder having become hopeless; realising what the physicians tell us of hectic fever, that in its beginning it is easy to cure, but hard to recognise; whereas, after a time, not having been detected and treated at the first, it becomes easy to recognise but impossible to cure.’ A prudent leader needs to prepare in the good times for the bad times that will follow: ‘Hence every government, whether it be republican or of the princely type, should consider beforehand what adverse times may befall him and on what people it may have to rely in time of adversity, and should in its dealings with them act in a way in which it judges that it will be compelled to act should misfortune befall.’ A great leader is strategic, not merely tactical.

This advice does not mean that leaders should be inflexible. They also need to be ready to change as circumstances change. If they become too entrapped in their own strategy, they will fail. In Machiavelli’s view, ‘a man who is accustomed to act in one particular way, never changes .

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