It’s one of my running themes.* Leaders can’t hold onto their jobs – and, or they don’t want to hold on to their jobs. Whichever way you slice it, leaders continue to turn over at a remarkable rate.
The post of British prime minister is an extreme case in point. The recent incumbent, Andy Burnham, is the 7th person to occupy the position in just ten years. In the U.S., out of 535 members of Congress 80 will not return to their seats next term, the highest number in over a decade.
Moreover, lest you think the exodus of those at the top is limited to the public sector, think again. Last year, 234 chief executives of publicly listed companies vacated their offices globally, “up 16 percent year on year.” It’s another record. Similarly, the tenure of leaders in higher education, which each year is shorter. An analysis of historically black colleges and universities published this month found they had “the highest rates of presidential turnover ever, averaging a new president approximately every four years.”
The reasons why the shelf life of leaders is shrinking, and then shrinking still more, are of course multiple and variegated. But for those of you interested in analyzing why what’s happening is happening, I suggest you start by looking at the leadership system. Which means looking not just at the leader but at the followers and at the contexts within which the leader and their followers are situated.
Autocracies do not generally have leader churn. It’s democracies in which the trend is so striking – and so telling.
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*See, for example, these two previous posts.