Son-of-a-toolmaker Starmer is a poor workman
Successful organisations, from businesses to governments, work best when their leaders are able to articulate a clear, long-term vision, says Paul Ormerod
Keir Starmer has been complaining that the machinery of government does not work properly. When he pulls a policy lever, very little happens.
This has provoked a public argument with the health secretary, Wes Streeting, who does not seem to have much time for this line of argument. Indeed, Streeting suggests that if the government itself cannot get things done, the electorate may well decide to choose a different one.
There is no doubt that compared to, say, 50 years ago the overall quality of the civil service has been diluted.
In the 1970s, a job in Whitehall was a coveted prize for a bright and ambitious young graduate. You might instead have become an academic or gone into the BBC.
The range of choice was considerably more limited than it is today. The City, for example, is hugely more open to talent now than it was then. The big consultancy firms are much larger, despite recent cutbacks. Starting your own business has become more normal.
So, inevitably, the civil service no longer attracts the brightest and best in quite the same way.
But it still has many perfectly competent people. And so we must look elsewhere for the reasons behind the Prime Minister’s whinge that the bureaucracy does not operate as well as he would like.
Successful organisations have a leadership which conveys a clear sense of direction, which articulates its goals.
Having a vision does not guarantee success. It might be flawed to begin with. It might be thrown off track by an unexpected event such as the emergence of a new and innovative competitor.
Conditions of success
It is, however, difficult for any institution to do well without a vision. A vision is a necessary but not sufficient condition for success.
An intriguing insight into this was provided by the Harvard academic Alfred Chandler in his magnum opus, Scale and Scope: the Dynamics of Industrial Capitalism, published over 30 years ago.
Chandler looked in detail at a small number of large firms in Britain, Germany and America in the decades immediately around 1900. He examined their strategies, read their board minutes.
This was the period when firms for the first time ever operated on a truly global scale. Some companies grew to an enormous size, only surpassed by the tech giants of the 21st century.
Chandler essentially concludes that the ones which prospered set a long term vision for the organisation.
The key task for the board was “the determination of the long-term goals and objectives of the enterprise and the adoption of courses of action and the allocation of resources necessary for carrying out those goals”.
He describes a British company, long since defunct despite its size at the time, in which the board spent most of its time on petty details. Substantial parts of each meeting were spent by board members working out the costs of each product in long hand to decide the pricing policy.
How familiar this sounds in the context of the Starmer government!
The central tasks of any British government at present are to restore a decent rate of economic growth and to improve the productivity of the public sector.
Instead, the Cabinet appears to spend its time squabbling about policies and sums of money which are trivial in the context of the serious economic situation in which Britain finds itself.
The Prime Minister has failed to articulate any sort of vision for the government. He issues contradictory orders. Little wonder that the government machine, whatever its other failings, does not respond when a lever is pulled.
The Prime Minister is fond of reminding us that his father was a toolmaker. He might usefully reflect that it is a poor workman who blames his tools.
Paul Ormerod is an Honorary Professor at the Alliance Business School at the University of Manchester. You can follow hm on Instagram @profpaulormerod