Exploring Brexit
Tags: Leadership, Culture, Maps

Exploring Brexit

The first rule of Brexit is “you’re wrong”.

No matter what you say on Brexit then someone will argue that you’re wrong and that they’re right. The purpose of a map is never about being right but instead helping to create a better map. Hence, I’m going to start by saying that I accept that my maps are wrong but I’m not interested in why they are wrong, I am only interested in a better map. So, they’re wrong, you’re right but if you want to discuss this subject further then produce a better map.

Everything else I will consider a waste of time wrapped up in individual political capital, stories and desires. If you want to have a shouting match over some narrative then find a mirror and knock yourself out silly. Since the map is wrong, I’m going to assume the assumptions are wrong as well. It’s all wrong but that’s ok. The question is whether it can be useful?

In discussions with a group of people who voted Leave and Remain a couple of key words and phrases resonated. On the Leave side there was the idea of an elite (the few) versus the people (the many). This concept of “the many” was also replicated in the Remain discussion but through terms such as populist, “appealing to populism” and even a mob. Whilst variation existed in what those terms actually meant and who those groups were, the idea of a many and a few was fairly consistent. Hence, I will start with those as my main two users — the many and the few.

On the Leave side emphasis seems to placed on two key concepts — democracy and control. Both we couched in terms of the collective rather than the individual i.e. “Our democracy” and “We are taking back control”. On the Remain side emphasis seems to be placed on belonging and freedom. This was often a mix of both individual and collective as in “We are European”, “ We are part of Europe” (i.e. a sense of belonging to a wider collective) and “Benefits of freedom of movement” (i.e. how I or other individuals benefit from this). To a lesser extent this also occurred with discussions over wealth, as in the Leave side tending to more grandiose discussions of a “Global Britain” invoking a more collective slant whereas the remain side tended to discuss both the economic impact to them and issues of safety to the unfortunate — “Do I need to hoard food?”

Two other interesting ideas appeared early on in the discussion which were the idea of hierarchy and responsibility. Whilst hierarchy could often be well articulated and agreed upon, its associations seems to diverge. In almost all cases it was described in relationship to ideas of control but in some cases it was associated with belonging as in “a tribe needs a leader”. I tend to avoid the use of the word tribe finding faction a far more appropriate term, hence I will use faction in this description. However, what was highlighted was a distinction between meaning (i.e. does an accepted meaning exist for the term) and association (i.e. the strength or weakness of associations between meanings). Hence we can agree on what hierarchy means but can disagree on what it is connected to i.e. belonging.

In contrast, and quite unexpectedly, the notion of responsibility exhibited differences in meaning. For some, when describing ideas such as “We need to pull together” what is meant by “together” is not the same. For some, together describes more of a collection of individual responsibilities i.e. in the melting pot of the market, the overall effect caused is through a collection of individuals acting. For others together describes a collective responsibility i.e. “we” as a group need to achieve something.

Of all the terms raised, notions of “safety” and the term “democracy” were particularly fascinating. Safety showed not only disagreement over specifics but people exhibited a reluctance to discuss the issue in the company of others with a different view. The reactions were often either quickly defensive, closing down the conversation, talking over each other, failure to listen or simply not engaging.These reactions are the sorts of behaviours often seen when discussing in psychologically unsafe environments.The notion of safety also had strong resonance with the Remain parts of the group in terms of membership of the EU with the benefits of “a larger trading block”, dealing with defence and outside threats.

The idea of democracy had some peculiar divergence with general agreement on the term and ideas of fairness and equality but disagreement on what is fair with notions of the referendum being “ cheated” or “ stolen” or the Parliament “subverting the will of the people”.

So, to begin with we have concepts of a few vs many, individual vs collective, democracy and control, belonging and freedom, wealth and safety, responsibility, hierarchy and democracy. Many of the terms had disagreement over specifics or associations but convergence in terms of general meaning. From these discussions, we have enough components to create basic map using the axis of “ethical values” described in Part I.

But before we do, it’s time for …

A confession

Before I start mapping out this space, I need to fess up. There’s some amiss with the maps that you’ve seen and many of you describe difficulty with it. The issue is the value chain axis. The problem is that the axis is pure scaffolding i.e. training wheels. The value chain axis was solely added to help people get used to the idea of mapping. Once you start to have problems with it, you know you’ve outgrown it. We will now abandon the y-axis and return to the original form of maps. Since you’re reading this article then I can assume that you no longer need to rely on it. When you look at a map (figure 1) then visibility is within the chain i.e. position is part of the chain itself.

Figure 1 — A Map