The headline comes from 80s political comedy, Yes Minister, and was quoted in David Mitchell’s Observer article, bemoaning the lack of bravery shown by most politicians when confronting unpopular issues. The tendency to do exactly what people, customers or other stakeholders want you to do is a typical response to consumer empowerment. But in the same way that being described as a ‘populist politician’ implies weakness and a lack of conviction or principles, a populist business is fundamentally weak. It is an empty shell that doesn’t stand for anything and has no overarching purpose, other than to do what its various crowds want it to do on a particular day.
In the book we described a group of business leaders that were the very antithesis of populists - people such as Anita Roddick, Yvonne Chouinard (at Patagonia) and Mark Constantine (at Lush) willing to align themselves with controversial and sometimes unpopular causes that could alienate some of their stakeholders. These crowd leaders don’t try to please everyone and refuse to compromise their core beliefs and principles. It is this refusal to follow the whims of the crowd that make these businesses so strong.
The other risk facing the populist is that the crowd isn’t always right. It is easy to accept the Wisdom of Crowds, but also recognise that crowds can be prejudiced, short-sighted, cautious and just plain wrong.