How long does the transformation of a political party take?

“Most people overestimate what they can achieve in a year and underestimate what they can achieve in ten years.” Gates’s Law

Do you remember the words of that old Bond song by Louis Armstrong, “We Have All the Time in the World”? In politics, nobody says this, ever. Politics is often a fight with time, in time, against time. Long-term plans often get crushed by unforeseen events. Tactics beat strategies. Generally, there is too little time for everything–anything that does not immediately advance the interests of the party and its leadership is at risk of getting sidetracked. This makes one question even more pressing: how long does a party transformation take?

For companies, the acute phase of a critical turnaround is around 1.5 years; more comprehensive transformations take up to 5 years. But in companies, at least for some time, decision-making can be centralized and execution directed top-down. This does not make corporate transformations necessarily better, but quicker.

Transformations in Government take longer - up to 20 years, close to a generation (just think of education in many countries).

Parties somehow fall between companies and Government in terms of timescale. There are two axes to consider: the age and size of the party; and the depth of the transformation. Younger and smaller parties are quicker to transform, in contrast to older and bigger parties; a shallow transformation is quicker than a deep one.

A “Shallow Transformation” is limited to more superficial or partial aspects of the party: a rebranding, a change in communication style, a partial programmatic repositioning, a change in key personnel, or a combination of those things.

The temptation for any party is to stop there, particularly if success at the voting booth returns quickly. The risk with such an approach, however, is long-term. Underlying issues do not get fixed and may come back to bite the party later.

A “Deep Transformation” encompasses the core aspects of a party: its mindset, strategy, program, culture, structure, and key delivery processes. While riskier in the short term, as they do not produce quick and easy fixes, deep transformations hold the promise of a long-term payoff.

The hardest transformations are for older and bigger parties in Government. In such a situation, the party is only the third priority, after the Government and the Parliamentary group; as the party is in power, there may be no obvious crisis, no burning platform. The encroaching complacency increases inertia, and resistance to change.

A Deep Transformation of an old and big party in power therefore may take 10 years. Consequently, time is one big factor why deep transformations of old and big parties often fail. Most party leaders do not last 10 years.

In politics, with its comparably rapid turnover of staff, and with all the brutal pressure in the daily arena, staying on a transformation target for as long as 10 years poses a severe continuity challenge. Expectation management is exceedingly hard. Even the 3-5 years for smaller and younger parties afford a high amount of discipline, strong leadership, and smart process design.

So, while the number of failed corporate transformations is around 70% - for political parties, while there are no solid statistics, I would put the number closer to 90%. It is much easier for the party leadership to satisfy themselves with the small changes they can get away with, before selling a shallow transformation as a deep one (which comes back to bite them -or their successors- later).

True transformational leadership, however, sometimes means planting trees under whose shade one does not expect to sit. And this is why, in the end, some pull it off.