The Corporate Monarchs!

Royal families and monarchies had always excited people across the world. Stories that met public eye were usually lapped up with a mix of awe and even a tinge of envy by common people. Little did they know of the realities of what went behind the closed doors of palaces or castles.

‘The Crown’ is a drama series that was released ten years ago in Netflix which portrayed British monarchy, especially the era of Queen Elizabeth II. There are quite a lot of remarkable episodes in the six-season series. While I was late to the party, I could not help but be at awe at some of the moments that were beautifully captured.

For instance, ‘Marionattes’ the fifth episode in season 2 of the series portrayed a sequence of how the Queen came under criticism for being a puppet of her courtiers. This was followed by the obvious rejection of criticism by the cynical monarch, an eventual twist of tale based on a meeting unrecorded in the history, of an audience with the critic by the Queen herself, and how the Queen made changes to her ways of working that transformed the monarchy to a more effective and appealing entity to the public.

The critic of the Queen was Lord Altrincham, once a Lieutenant in British Army who later tried his hands in politics and went on to become a historian and a journalist. If you can spare a few minutes, I strongly recommend watching this episode and do not be surprised if you draw an interesting parallel to the present-day corporate world.

It all started with Lord Altrincham writing a critical observation about a speech made by the Queen at the Jaguar factory in the year 1958. To set the context, this was immediately after a crushing defeat for the British armed forces against Egypt and Russia during the Suez Canal crisis, with UK losing its face and the military intervention severely straining the exchequer. Britain was broke. That was when the Queen delivered the speech that had statements which did not even acknowledge this reality and instead demeaned the people of the nation.

Interestingly even before the speech, an assistant private secretary tried to do a fact-check with the principal private secretary of the Queen about the inappropriate wordings of the speech the latter penned. But instead of trying to review, he denied it vehemently stating the Queen trusted him. Indeed, that was what happened. The monarch trusted her key personnel and delivered a mistake which people noticed, and one man stood up and spoke.

What happened later was more interesting. Initial reactions to the published article attracted a lot of wrath from the public that Lord Altrincham even got slapped by a member of an extremist group who supported monarchy. This was immediately after the critic was invited to a TV show where he articulated his thoughts in a calm, yet firm manner. The common public later acknowledged this and agreed with his views. Eventually Lord Altrincham received an invitation from Buckingham Palace where he met the Queen herself, though apparently not recorded in the history books. But the visit itself created history due to the changes the world saw that were brought in at the palace and for the monarchy itself!

Whether this incident happened with all its amusement as depicted in the Netflix series, one thing is certain. We see this drama unfolding in the modern-day corporate world as well with certain leaders functioning like a monarch. They are surrounded by office courtiers who feed all kind of incorrect realities to bosses who take decisions and actions which are against the wellbeing of their staff. That is when the likes of Lord Altrincham are born in organizations where people start raising their concerns. The natural reaction from leaders is to suppress a rebellion. But, blessed are those who decide to listen to those articulated revolutionaries and change if necessary.

For all that matter, a change proposed if implemented may even catapult the leadership to never-seen-before heights and people will have renewed faith on their leaders and loyalties will be restored with even more vigour.

Change is never easy but not listening to potential changes make matters even more difficult. Good leaders do not resist change, they listen, absorb, and adapt good changes for the benefit of their team, the organization and for themselves which transforms leaders from being good to great. It may even lead to history counting them among the legends in the corporate world!