Could your team Get Brexit Done — or would they take the PPE?
What happens when a clear objective collides with a complex reality?
In November 2019, Boris Johnson’s Conservative Party entered the General Election campaign with three words that everybody understood:
Get Brexit Done.
Whatever your view of Brexit, the communication was extraordinarily simple.
There was a destination.
There was a reason.
And there was an apparent route to getting there.
A year later, the same government was wrestling with something altogether different: COVID-19.
There were arguments over PPE, lockdowns, tiers, testing, changing restrictions and public communication.
The contrast fascinated me at the time.
Not politically.
From the perspective of teams.
Why can the same leadership appear decisive in one situation and struggle for clarity in another?
And what might that teach anyone trying to lead an organisation through uncertainty?
THREE QUESTIONS EVERY TEAM HAS TO ANSWER
At Perfect Teams®, we describe three fundamental ways people process information and see the world.
They can be expressed through three sets of questions:
Where and when? — direction and vision.
Why and who? — purpose and people.
What and how? — detail and execution.
Strong teams need access to all three.
Because knowing where you’re going is useless if nobody understands why.
Knowing why something matters achieves little without knowing what needs to happen.
And having an immaculate plan is pointless if nobody knows where it’s supposed to take them.
The 2019 election campaign provides an interesting illustration.
WHERE AND WHEN: GET BREXIT DONE
The message provided a remarkably clear destination.
The UK would leave the European Union, and Johnson’s Withdrawal Agreement would be put through Parliament.
“Get Brexit Done” compressed a complicated political issue into an easily understood objective.
Whether people agreed with that objective or not, they knew what it was.
That’s the power of clarity.
People can move towards something they can see.
WHY AND WHO: GIVE PEOPLE A REASON
The campaign also connected its objective to a larger argument about democracy, sovereignty and resolving years of political deadlock.
That provided the why.
And the who was equally clear: the electorate whose votes would determine whether Johnson had the parliamentary majority required to proceed.
We’ve used a simple expression at Perfect Teams® for years:
No why = no way.
People are much more likely to commit themselves to something when they understand why it matters.
WHAT AND HOW: TURN INTENTION INTO ACTION
Finally came the mechanics.
There was a negotiated Withdrawal Agreement.
There was an election.
And the campaign sought the parliamentary majority necessary to pass the legislation.
That was the what and how.
Vision.
Purpose.
Execution.
Three elements reinforcing one another around a clearly defined objective.
Then came COVID.
WHEN CLARITY MEETS COMPLEXITY
A pandemic is an altogether different leadership problem.
There isn’t a single destination with an obvious finishing line.
Information changes.
Evidence develops.
Circumstances vary geographically.
Competing priorities have to be balanced.
Decisions have unintended consequences.
And people are asked to change their behaviour repeatedly as the situation evolves.
During the first UK lockdown, the government again produced an exceptionally simple message:
Stay at home. Protect the NHS. Save lives.
Whatever the wider debates around pandemic policy, the communication itself had clarity.
People knew what they were being asked to do and why.
Later, however, the messaging became more complicated.
“Stay home” became “Stay alert”.
National rules gave way to different restrictions and tiers.
Exceptions multiplied.
The environment had changed — and maintaining clarity became considerably harder.
That’s where the business lesson becomes interesting.
LEADERSHIP IS EASY WHEN THE WORLD IS SIMPLE
Except, of course, the world rarely remains simple.
A growing company experiences exactly the same problem on a smaller scale.
When there are five people in the business, everybody knows what’s happening.
At 25, communication becomes harder.
At 100, structures are needed that previously seemed unnecessary.
Add new markets, products, offices, technology, acquisitions or economic disruption and complexity increases again.
The original vision may still be perfectly sound.
But the system required to deliver it has changed.
What worked before may no longer work now.
That’s when the capability of the team is tested.
CLARITY DOESN’T MEAN PRETENDING THINGS ARE SIMPLE
This may be the more important lesson.
Good leadership doesn’t remove complexity by pretending it isn’t there.
It provides enough clarity for people to navigate complexity.
Where are we going?
Why does it matter?
What needs to happen next?
Who is responsible?
How will we know whether it’s working?
And when circumstances change, can we adapt without losing sight of the purpose?
That’s a considerably harder leadership challenge than creating a memorable slogan.
But it’s the one every growing organisation eventually faces.
WHAT’S MISSING IN YOUR EQUATION?
Perfect Teams® allows us to look at teams through those different perspectives.
Who naturally sees the destination?
Who connects people to the purpose?
Who interrogates the detail?
Who turns ideas into execution?
And what happens if one of those perspectives is missing?
Because a team full of visionaries can have its head in the clouds.
A team obsessed with detail can lose sight of where it’s going.
And a team without purpose may execute efficiently without anybody caring very much about the result.
The answer isn’t to decide which perspective is best.
It’s to build a team capable of bringing all three together.
Where and when.
Why and who.
What and how.
Vision. Purpose. Execution.
Different strengths working interdependently.
Nobody is perfect.
But your team can be.
You can’t download capability.™
What’s missing in your team?
Perfect Teams® helps leaders understand the characters around the table, identify gaps and build the collective capability required when the world becomes more complex.
Originally published 21 December 2020. Updated August 2026.
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