What can leaders learn from this election? Three brief takeaways from the 2024 USA election
After months (ok years…..) of election discussion, we have an outcome in the US election. While much has been written about the emotive election and its outcome (which I cover elsewhere), I wanted to move slightly away from the policy and character debates and focus on three takeaways for organizational leaders.
1) Need for, and power of simplicity:
We know simple matters, but I was immensely struck by why simple messages matter when I review the post polling data. While the Harris campaign focused on a host of important issues – from the economy and the cost of living to women’s rights to healthcare to education, the prevailing takeaway was voters espousing frustration with the cost of living, and more specifically the price of groceries. The inability to message how inflation works, and what it takes for it to go down, was personally frustrating for me to observe, and it certainly impacted the outcome. With my economic roots (my PhD was from the London School of Economics) I (and others, see also No Mercy No Malie from Prof G) have been discussing the strength of the US economy, and the data shows that the US was out-performing its peers in unemployment (at 4%), GDP growth, and financial markets with inflation at around 2% at the time of the election. None of these macro indicators mater, though, if people don’t feel it, and perception links to reality.
Much of this was on the lack of the Harris champaign to message it, partly because they focused on too many topics. They also lacked one clear, repeated, and simple way to message the status of the economy. And critically how her administration was going to improve it. Yes, this is partly the oft repeated ‘it’s the economy stupid’, but more so in a world of constant information and new major stories every 24 hours, it’s hard to break through and land anything. Your only shot is absolute consistency on a topic that matters.
So what can leaders learn? No matter how passionate you are about your strategy (or vision or culture), when you go to the organization frequently with new messages – whether these are exciting opportunities or pressing challenges to overcome, it’s too much. Employees, even senior ones, can only handle so much, but it’s more than that. If the message changes frequently, teams are less inclined to lean into any, as they assume another more urgent one will come next week. Many messages, or even the same message repeated in different ways becomes complex. Complexity leads to confusion. Confusion leads to inaction.
Shore up your message for what needs to be done in this final month of the year and stick with it in the simplest way possible. Simple is not stupid. Good simple is powerful.
2) Communication modes have changed:
American Presidential campaigns have long brought in the next era of media, perhaps none so famously as President Kennedy’s performance on the first live television debate. From the massive shift to social media and Facebook with the Obama campaign to Trump’s use of Twitter to the zoom’ing of 2020, we often see shifts during cycles, with others struggling to catch up. 2024 heralded a new medium of necessity for getting a message out – the Podcast. When comparing the reach of traditional news media (CNN averages around a million viewers), the most popular podcasts have a magnitude more reach (the Joe Rogan podcast reaches 11 million listeners on average and Alex Cooper’s Call he Daddy average 10 million).
But it’s more than ears or eyeballs, podcasts allowed for something more powerful in this cycle – a chance to spend actual, some would argue quality, time with the candidate. Broadcast news is optimized for 2-minute interviews and viral 30 second clickbait clips. Podcasts allow for longer conversations that means we can explore nuance. Yes, Harris was great on Call her Daddy (as well as Stern and others), but she started too late to the game to matter. If it even would have (see above and below).While not joining Rogan’s podcasts likely didn’t move the needle, there’s no doubt that Trump’s long sit downs with Lex Fridman and Joe Rogan did.
So what can leaders learn? No, it’s not start a podcast!! But most of us are stuck in the same organizational communication channels we’ve been using for years - monthly email, quarterly town hall, annual summits. When is the last time you sat down with your team and discussed the ‘how’ of your communication, not just the what? Your GenZ employees likely absorb information differently than your Boomer ones, and it may be time to explore some new options. On that, loving that Spotify’s Daniel Ek has been delivering earnings previews in direct videos on Instagram, rather than the traditional (stale) letter.
As you plan your 2025 communication schedule, pause and reflect on the how. AI tools allow for podcast-type audio, animated videos, or creative formatted press to be produced at little cost. Try something new (but keep the message simple, as per point one above).
3) Framing matters:
I speak to CEOs about the power of framing often. What is framing? Framing implies how we perceive news, information, or events. While it’s closely linked to how media presents information, we all quickly form our own frames as well. What many pollsters, media, and pundits failed to discuss was the impact of framing in this election. If you viewed the economy was going in the wrong direction, or Trump was your guy, you were framed he was the right choice. And that frame happened months ago (long before Harris entered the race). No news story, comment, or breaking scandal was going to break that frame. And it worked the other way as well. I was asked many times how this story or that one did not change the results, and I had to point back to the framing. Quite simply, more people were framed and ready for a change in administration than were not. While some of us may have followed every few hours of news the past few months, most voters had already tuned out, their choice made and their frames firmly in place.
So what can leaders learn? Framing matters, and ignoring its power is hurting your decision-making capability. How does this look in practice? We have an emotional attachment to a brand, so if it or something similar becomes for sale, we fight to acquire it, even if the due diligence does not make sense. We had success with one strategy in another company, so we assume that strategy will work in the next. But it happens in more simple ways. You think an employee is not working out, so over the next few weeks every action they take that affirms this view you register, and the ones that show they are a solid performer are ignored. Think you are better than this? Think Again! My colleagues Andrew Campbell and Joe Whithead wrote an excellent book on these Red Flags a few years ago. It’s a sobering take of how these frames impair strategic decision-making. But we can address this by purposefully reframing – an exercise where we explicitly ‘break’ the frame and train our brains to see the world with the opposing view so the information is absorbed by our brains in another way. Don’t trust yourself? My colleagues also discuss a host of other safeguards.
Schedule a meeting with yourself to view your existing frames about possible market opportunities (including acquisitions), employees and their performance, and critical priorities. Where have your frames narrowed? Make an explicit plan to break these.
We have more policy topics to explore that will impact your strategy, but we have plenty of time for that!
