🔓 Whose job? Your job!

Joe Martin, in his words. Interviewed, titled, and edited by Tom Hashemi.

Whose job? Your job!

I’m always frustrated when I hear former cabinet secretaries, permanent secretaries or ministers going on podcasts and saying ‘it’s such a shame no one’s reformed this.’ It was literally their job. 

There are always urgent things that come up, and managing crises is a large part of their roles, but it can’t continually crowd out space for longer term thinking. Laying the foundations for better institutions for citizens is equally important. Too often they have absolved themselves of that responsibility and then come on afterwards to say ‘it’s really a shame no one tackled this.’

“Leadership is disappointing people at a rate that both you, and they, can cope with”¹

Leadership is about sometimes doing the unpopular thing today for a better organisation or outcome tomorrow. Civil service leadership became too focused on static stewardship: keep things as they are and don’t upset anybody. And that comes at the expense of the quality of our services and the outcomes for you and me.

The same dynamic plays out in smaller organisations too, where the board or senior team takes the organisation easily to the next step rather than making the hard decisions that will see it thrive in the years to come. 

The world is changing around us—a good steward is dynamic and keeps reinventing the organisation to keep it effective.

¹ Saïd Business School’s Professor Sue Dopson

Process over outcome: what matters more?

Individual agency has been replaced by standardisation and the processification of working life. So an individual working in a flawed system feels completely disempowered to say ‘yes, we know it’s mad, we'll step away from the process because we know it doesn’t work.’ 

Whitehall loves standardisation because in some ways it de-risks certain issues, especially in areas like procurement. These processes were adopted for good reason but the pendulum has swung too far.

It has come at the expense of the person who wants to commission the work saying ‘I need X, I know Tom is really good at it, I have a strong relationship with him, and he can do it for a good price.’ All of that knowledge and relational value gets stripped out and put into a process that has been designed by someone who is no longer involved in it and doesn’t understand what they are procuring.

The think tank challenges triptych

First, their research agenda is too broad. In the UK, these are often organisations no bigger than sixty people, and much more likely to sit under twenty-five. If you’re focusing on five or six massive themes at that headcount, you are never going to become the centre of gravity for any of them. You’re always going to be spread too thin.

Second, people conflate objectives with strategy. They’ve got a set of things they want the world to look like, but not the actual route to get there. What are the stepping stones? Does it give the broader team an indication of what they should and should not prioritise? People talk about objectives all the time, and not enough about how to deliver them.

Third, being strategic is about being impactful tomorrow, not today. If you’re chasing today’s impact, like jumping on news stories, you’re being tactical. This is often a sensible thing to do, but it’s not strategic. If you’re trying to build a body of thought or drive a big transformation, you need to lay the foundations of the debate, identify the network you need to engage, and become a credible partner within it.

Demos Digital does this incredibly well. They say ‘we do this element of a huge policy space, we’re really good at it and have a huge influence across the community we serve.’ Having built that reputation, they attract yet more funding which enables them to deliver even greater impact. That’s a demonstration of what happens when you focus and work strategically to a longer timescale.

What is influence?

Getting your name in a big publication is either a result of having impact, or it’s a means to an end. Where it goes wrong is when people think of it as an end in itself. That’s really the prioritisation question: are you getting into the publication because you’ve done something cool, or are you doing something because you want to get into the publication?

The proof point of influence is less the splashy name in the paper and more: if something happens, who is going to message you and ask for help? I spoke to someone hoping to become a special advisor in Burnham’s government, and they said their plan is that if there’s something they don't know the answer to, to reach out to people. I’ll know we’ve succeeded when we’re on the other side of that call every time.

Departmental co-ownership as the goal

The world I want to get to is where Demos hasn’t written a Demos paper, but Demos and the Cabinet Office have written a paper. Demos and the Government Digital Service have written a paper. Demos and the Greater Manchester Combined Authority have written a paper. 

At that point there’s ownership. I don’t have to go to the minister and say ‘I think this is what you should do’.  Instead, me, her team and her officials have developed the answer together. I’ve provided space for really radical thinking, some additional resources, and a platform to help build the coalition within and without government. At that point, I’m no longer trying to influence: it’s about mechanics.

Thank you to the 133 of you who have referred colleagues to this newsletter. The views expressed in Policy Unstuck interviews are those of the interviewee, and do not necessarily represent Cast from Clay’s view. You can read our editorial guidelines for more information on the goals, process, and formatting of this series.