A republic would be perpetual that has the good fortune often to find men who by their example restore the laws to their original purity and force, (as we have said elsewhere), and not only prevent her from falling into decadence, but rather carry her in the opposite direction. –Niccoló Machiavelli
This is the turning point. A leader has accomplished their task. They turned their company around; they won the war; they stepped on the moon. Now, they must adapt to the new environment they have created. Similar to Moses not setting foot in Israel, most leaders will not change. What we see in the corporate world is a sort of type casting of CEOs. We have people that are good at bringing a company back from the brink of extinction and others that are good at managing an already performing ship. Keeping a leader onboard without the right qualifications for the new tasks could be dangerous.
Nation-States and societies should therefore choose their leaders looking at what they are looking to achieve rather than what they achieved in the past. Given our nature, however, we always try to relive the good parts of our past. As an example, I heard a man this week talking about Lévesque was a great Prime Minister in Quebec and how there was no one like him around during the current campaign. I do not know the person, and cannot really imply anything from his words, but usually when someone says something like this, they think that the leader of their choice would the ideal leader in the current situation. This is not true. Older political leaders always try to get us to look at their past and judge them on their successes. What we should do however, is look at their personalities. We should then look at our goals and at how those personalities would interact with those goals. We can then find the person that we think would be the best leader to get us where we want to go. Honor your heroes' victories by keeping them away from nearly certain failure.
For the leader, however things are different. Assuming he wants to stay in power, the leader will have to prove to his followers that he is still the most qualified to lead them. To keep his followers, the leader will have to find out how their needs changed and set new goals that will fulfill them. He will still be able to build on his past success since, even though it is generally a good idea, it is human nature to transpose our past unto our future. After setting the goals, the leader should then find out what skills he will need to achieve them, and set out to gain those skills.
Another avenue for the leader, depending on how much power he wields would be to bring the needs of the followers back to those that matched his skills. Basically, a government could decide to keep their people starving in order to prevent them from needing anything that they can't actually provide. It is an effective way to control a population, but it is not very conducive to growth. Another example of this would be a leader exaggerating a security risk, such as terrorists or problems with the health system, so that the people see him, who's met similar needs before, as the right person to lead them. Since it is not true, the leader can then simply change his lie and meet the security needs of his constituents.
The last avenue for a leader facing a change in goals is quite simple: bow down and let someone else take power. This is the most altruistic choice and probably the best for the society the leader is in. It will unequivocally let the people understand that times have changed and that the goal they were looking for before has been achieved. It will let them define new goals and choose the person with the best skills to achieve this. The leader can always help that person or use the time that the other person has in power to gain the skills necessary to come back as an effective leader in the future.
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