The brutality of succession planning in the Australian government was revealed today as Kevin Rudd was unceremoniously ousted after party backroom machinations. He takes with him the dubious honour of being Australila’s shortest-serving PM.

Bring on Julia Gillard, Australia’s first female prime minister.

The female in me wants Julia to be  great success. I want her to succeed where Kevin wasn’t able to:

• by collaborating with Cabinet and colleagues
• by balancing the varying needs of the many stakeholders she has
• by finding a strong message, and delivering on it
• and by being herself, not a media-trained copy of a perfect politician

Time will tell. By all accounts Kevin was only able to do a part of one of these things.

He had a strong message, although he failed to deliver on the early promises that got him elected. He did not engage people, in fact he disenfranchised his colleagues.  And he had a tendency to announce policy that disturbed key players, including his own party. Worse still, he failed to recognise the consequences that his actions would bring.

 It wasn’t enough for Kevin to “say the right things” to the public when so many of his actions announced a different agenda. And that’s how it is with change and change implementation.

• When the “party rhetoric” doesn’t match other messages that people get, the change initiative will not be successful.
• When there’s not enough collaboration and engagement, or it is perfunctory and superfiical, the change initiative will not be successful
• If too many people are disenfranchised and there’s no apparent rationale about why the change should go ahead (Mining Super Profits tax and Emissions Trading Scheme backflip anyone??), then the change initiative will not be successful.

Change implementations are never successful because one thing gets done well. They are sucessful because many things get done well. As change leaders we need to be able to read the play a lot better than Kevin Rudd did. In fact if we haven’t thought all this through in the planning stages then it’s likely we wouldn’t be successful in our endeavours either.