Leading on from my last blog post, another major idea explored wittily in Memorandum is leadership and management. What is good leadership? Who makes a good boss? Is it a person with ideas s/he is willing to drive through at any price, or one with emotional intelligence and an empathy with his/her employees? Linked to this, should the leader carry the weight of responsibility for everything that happens in his/her organisation – even the things of which s/he is unaware? (Should s/he be unaware of anything – or is that a weakness…?) Mr Gross, the Managing Director – as he often announces – has to grapple with these questions and more during the events of the play. He certainly has a busy few days!
One of the things I personally resonate with is Ballas’s promotion to Director and then lack of confidence once he’s there. There’s a nice poem by Roger McGough that sums this up:
I wanna be the leader
I wanna be the leader
Can I be the leader?
Can I? I can?
Promise? Promise?
Yippee I’m the leader
I’m the leader
OK what shall we do?