Blame Management

10 months, 3 chiefs of staff. Michael Ignatieff is following the Mo Johnston play book.

Mo helms Toronto FC in the MLS. Off the field, by all accounts they are a successful team. They have great attendance. Their fans are boisterous and loyal. And, on paper, they have the building blocks of a contender. On the field, they get slammed 5-0 by the last place team, in their final game, when they are fighting for the last play-off spot. So what does Mo do - what he always does - drops the coach. TFC has had four coaches in 3 years, failed to make the play-offs. Loyal fans of TFC are now non-believers. Back in August, with two months to go, only the most blindly faithful fan still believed that TFC might be in the play-offs.

With Liberals down in the polls, no consistently on messaging, candidate fiasco in Quebec, flip-flops on policy and exercising of poor judgment of pushing an election for no reason - Ignatieff is playing musical chairs. Out is Ian Davey. In is Peter Donolo. The official excuse - Ignatieff needs someone with experience. That is the same line that Mo is using with TFC - we need a coach with MLS experience.

May be it is not the coach or the chief-of-staff who should be blamed. All good managers know that a certain amount of self-reflection must be done when things are not going well. Firing your underling only buys you time.

In all fairness to Ignatieff, he inherited someone elses problem. Dion left the party long on policy and short on organization and financing. Ignatieff has attempted the reverse -the Liberals are short on policy, but focusing on fundraising and courting "high quality" people. But the Party cannot be blamed for it's leader flip-flopping on issues, and making bad judgment calls. Don't forget in the only leadership race that Ignatieff participated in (and lost), he did himself in by commenting on the Lebanon crisis at the time and then flip-flopping on it on Quebec television the next day. That is an issue of judgment, and judgment is not something that can be easily taught in a short period of time. Same thing with instinct - trying to go for the jugular when your party is not prepared, you have not done the ground work, you have no policies and voters do not want an election, but Ignatieff decided to push for an election. If his judgment was doing leaps of logic telling him it was a good idea to go, his gut should have told him otherwise. Trusting your instinct cannot be learned over night.

One of the problems that was publicized last month, was that Ignatieff is too reliant on his Toronto-centred circle. They did not understand Quebec. If they cannot understand the province four hours away, then I can guarantee that they do not understand the West either. So how does Iggy respond? The Toronto guy is replaced by the Toronto guy.

Considering that Donolo's father was part of the firm that built the headquarters of National Defence, perhaps the biggest eye-sore in downtown Ottawa, let's hope Peter does not have his father's eye for design.

UPDATE:

Blogging Horse is having similar thoughts, as is Paul Wells, employing a more apt metaphor.Recommend this Post