A wonderful book I’ve read recently is Politics on the Edge, by the former Conservative Member of Parliament (MP), Rory Stewart.
Stewart accounts his experience working in the UK government between 2010 and 2019, as an MP for his local constituency, and in several ministerial roles (in the UK a ministerial role involves being responsible for a particular branch of government, which may involve reporting directly to the Prime Minister).
Before becoming a politician, Stewart had had a fascinating career as an author and TV presenter, a diplomat that included a role in the Iraqi Coalition Provisional Authority in the mid-2000s, a Harvard academic, and heading up non-profit organisations such as the Turquoise Mountain Foundation in Afghanistan.
During his time in political office, he recounts some of his successes; but, as the book title suggests, much of his focus is on illustrating the weaknesses and precariousness of the British political system. I’ve highlighted five key themes below which I’ve extrapolated from the book that not only appear to blight our political system but are key enemies to achieving performance in an organisation. They are:
No strategy – Stewart describes a government that lacked a clear strategy in terms of having a cogently defined action plan of what it wanted to achieve over the long term. There also seemed to be a focus on reactionary short-term tactical responses rather than an intellectually driven perseverance on achieving longer-term objectives.
Rory Stewart’s fellow podcaster on The Rest Is Politics show, former New Labour Communications Director and successful management consultant and author, Alistair Campbell, explains that many organisations do not understand the difference between strategy and tactics, and often do not have an effective strategy in place. The result of this is often a lack of cogently articulated and understood values; a lack of feasible objectives, and a lack of clarity of how they can be achieved; an emphasis on being swayed by, and (over)-reacting to, short-term trends; and a lack of discipline and perseverance in terms of remaining committed to whatever action plan may be in place.
Does your organisation understand the difference between strategy and tactics? What impact does a lack of strategy, or a misunderstanding of what a strategy is, impact your organisation?
Superficiality – What struck me from Stewart’s descriptions was the lack of substance to many of his colleagues that he interacted with. He would describe meetings with several senior colleagues who seemed to lack knowledge and understanding of their ministerial responsibilities. The ostensible cause of this was frequent reshuffles whereby ministers would be rotated between different government departments on a regular basis. Consequently, ministers would have insufficient time and opportunity to build up knowledge and experience to run their departments effectively and make strategic decisions, regularly relying on civil servants for advice and guidance, which, according to him, often wasn’t helpful or objective.
He also highlighted that loyalty to one’s political party was valued higher than intellectual debate and disagreement, which limited opportunity to address questionable policy.
Have you considered whether your employees have been given opportunity to build up sufficient intellectual capital and experience so that they can make decisions which are based on appropriate levels of knowledge and understanding? Have you created the conditions for this to occur?
Also, have you demanded loyalty to the point that you have become less tolerant of having your views and decisions questioned? If you have, perhaps it’s time to encourage, and incentivise, dissenting views, so that you surface others’ perspectives. This can afford opportunity to identify organisational weaknesses and build upon strengths.
Expediency – Linked to superficiality, is expediency. In other words, responding too quickly to events so that one can be seen as being decisive when, really, one is being reactionary and impulsive. Stewart explains that expediency is rife in British politics, where politicians are terrified of being viewed negatively and want to be perceived in a positive light. This often involves, for example, creating unnecessary new laws in response to a tragic event or public opinion, when a law to address the underlying issues already exists. Or having a referendum in response to assertive demands from a section of the population. This is an example of tactics trumping strategy, in which no one really knows what the government stands for. It is also an example of (very) poor leadership, that undermines performance and productivity.
Given the dangers of expediency, do you think that your organisation is too quick to respond to trends rather than sticking to its strategy? This is not to suggest that your organisation should not be agile. Being agile involves quickly adjusting your tactics in line with your strategy to respond effectively to a fast-changing, uncertain environment. This contrasts to being over-reactive whereby you respond impulsively to the demands of your consumers and stakeholders without consideration of long-term strategic impact. So – are you agile, or impulsive?
Dysfunction – Taking all of the previous themes into consideration, it is no surprise that, according to Stewart, British politics is plagued with dysfunction. We seem to have a political class who do not appear to be qualified to implement effective, strategic decision-making either within their own party or in the country at large. This is very worrying! I wonder whether this lack of strategic decision-making within politics is being reflected in the country at large, which may explain the country’s historically low performance vis-à-vis our peers in the OECD. It’s time that business leaders continued to remind political parties of their need to focus more on matters that connect with improving the country’s productivity, such as the economy, education, and infrastructure.
But in terms of your own organisation, do you recognise areas of dysfunction caused by the preceding themes?
Ignorance – The fifth and final theme I’ve identified from Stewart’s book is possibly the most potent. Being ignorant of a lack of strategy, the tactical calamity going on around you, the lack of knowledge and understanding of decision-makers, the elevation of impulsiveness at the expense of agility and long-term thinking, the dominance of ego, ambition, and dark-side behaviours and the erosion of ethics and integrity. These elements acting individually can cause damage to your organisation – but all of them acting together at once, can cause very poor levels of performance and competitiveness. Time to act now to avoid this occurring!
The key takeaways are:
Be aware of the difference between a strategy and tactics.
Be mindful that tactical decisions should align with your organisation’s strategy.
Be agile, not impulsive.
Photo by Startaê Team on Unsplash