Thanks, Geoff. You make a very important point here. I teach a one-day crash course in “How Organisations Really Work” built upon decades of experience in practical applications of management cybernetics. I have followed Dominic Cummings for years and offered to teach him this course. He ignored the offer. I also applied in response to his claim to be interested in recruiting “out of the box” thinkers. He ignored that too.
I have over fifty years of experience in what is now known as “digital transformation”, having successfully carried out such work for organisations in many fields, up to an annual turnover of £2 billion.
I know how to recruit and run “high performance teams” which Cummings claims to be interested in. He strangely imagines that the civil service runs badly because its members do not have a high enough IQs, but people with high IQs, such as himself, are usually hopeless at running things, because they seek intellectual stimulus, which is best attained by scoring points off each other and showing how clever you are, rather than getting on with the business of making things work.
We need people who can make sound judgments, not people who shine intellectually, but sound judgement requires a balanced mind, not cleverness.
I think Tony Blair pioneered the new approach to politics of just winning the next election, rather than bothering with having real-world policies that will work.
There are plenty of people keeping the show on the road in the UK, mostly by keeping their heads down and ignoring the absurd targets being imposed on them by people who think they are Leaders and believe they know how to deliver, despite the evidence to the contrary.
I am keen to help find a way through this current phase of stupidity, but our political elite don’t want to know, apparently.
See a great editorial from Editor of BMJ Global Health calling for more research for plumbers and "emancipators" - civil society. You are not alone. https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/4/e005802
Excellent. We need to capture and publish user sentiment on real delivery if we are to reverse the trend. Also, we cannot underestimate the depth of damage done by the Brexit government's to CS culture and morale. Recovery will take time :/
Actually, I think the lack of interest in and skills related to plumbing has a lot to do with the poetry side. Among both Tories and current Labour, the core ideology is all about the idea that the private sector does everything better. Government is inherently inefficient, the private sector inherently efficient, markets are magic. Everything that can be outsourced or privatized, should be; decisions should be made by hiring private consultants, not by having in-house expertise; government is, basically, BAD.
So if your whole ideology can be summed up by "Government bad, should do less things", you're not going to be very interested in making government do things well. If you start from the idea that of course everything the government does, it will do badly and inefficiently just because it is government, you're not going to put a lot of effort into trying to make it do things well and efficiently. You just shrug and say "Well, it has no market magic, so it can't be helped!" Furthermore, if your ideology (and the interests of people who make contributions to your campaign) is all about moving things from the "government" column to the "private profit" column, you're going to be HAPPY if government functions poorly, because it gives you excuses to continue shifting things away from government. In extreme cases you may nobble it deliberately.
Bottom line, you don't expect people to run an efficient government if their mission is to dismantle it.
But this government has no such ideology. For example, it came to power promising mission-led government (with apologies to poets, this was its poetry). And whatever that means it's not consistent with thinking that government can't or shouldn't do big things.
The puzzle is why, in spite of it being the least ideologically anti-public sector government since the 1970s, it seems to be struggling to get government to work.
Oh, please. Keir Starmer has spent much of his time since gaining the leadership purging anyone from the party who shows signs of not being neoliberal.
Such a good post. Ironic that a government so focused on delivery to head off the populist threat is run by people with little experience of delivery and relies on a civil service which has been hollowed out, whilst continuing to squeeze local government which is the one part of the system which does have the relevant experience.
"And because so many of the decision-makers and advisers couldn’t be bothered to do their homework and think through how their ideas might be implemented (Dominic Cummings and Steve Hilton were prime examples of this syndrome), the quality of government deteriorated."
Seems harsh to lump Cummings together with Hilton!
In fairness to Cummings, he ran Vote Leave, which was a very successful operation. He understands something about some kind of "plumbing".
Also, Cummings idolizes the "get things done" types - Bismarck, General Groves, military people generally, Silicon Valley - and is not short of disdain for SW1 and the media.
So what? Well, some on the left who want to criticize government's inability to get anything done also seem to want to distance themselves from Cummings (maybe because he's objectionable, and/or because of Brexit), but their position is basically the same as his. It's a distinction without a difference. If the common ground could be acknowledged change might be more likely.
Fair points. But I find it odd that Cummings idolised many doers as you say, but then showed so little interest in learning from them, or indeed from any governments around the world. I never saw a serious plan from him for anything in government (as opposed to campaigning) and he spent a remarkable amount of his time talking to the media (often ranting against his supposed enemies), which paid off in terms of profile but not in terms of results. If that's unfair please point me to a genuine bit of serious planning he was involved in.
Just to add - a puzzle worthy of note is that we have a PM with more experience of running a bureaucracy than any previous PM (?) and he seems to be struggling as much as any PM to make government work. This is at least consistent with the Cummings view.
Probably his only enduring achievement while in government is ARIA, such as it is. To be fair, he was only there for a year, and most of it during COVID.
I expect his perspective would be that UK government is so broken (it is "designed" not to get things done) that it's time wasted trying to get it to work, or to "reform" it. It's not reformable. (ARIA demonstrates it in a way - don't try to reform the existing institutions, just create a new one with the intention that it cannibalises them over time. Though it doesn't seem to be working out that way!)
I think this is a perspective the left needs to take seriously, even if it doesn't end up there. It needs a better theory about what the problem with government delivery is than simply blaming the 2010-2024 administrations. It's incredibly difficult for it to do so though, because if you're left-leaning you're more likely to work in the public sector (or related sectors).
Totally agree - well put. When I was with the UK civil service 20 years ago, parts of the organization functioned very well indeed, but 'the centre was not holding'. We see the results of a slow and uneven decline today. Tough to fix. Similar situation in Canada - https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2025/bourgon-reform/.
It really matters! The civil service is an essential (if often hidden) part of a well functioning, resilient democracy and economy.
Thanks, Geoff. You make a very important point here. I teach a one-day crash course in “How Organisations Really Work” built upon decades of experience in practical applications of management cybernetics. I have followed Dominic Cummings for years and offered to teach him this course. He ignored the offer. I also applied in response to his claim to be interested in recruiting “out of the box” thinkers. He ignored that too.
I have over fifty years of experience in what is now known as “digital transformation”, having successfully carried out such work for organisations in many fields, up to an annual turnover of £2 billion.
I know how to recruit and run “high performance teams” which Cummings claims to be interested in. He strangely imagines that the civil service runs badly because its members do not have a high enough IQs, but people with high IQs, such as himself, are usually hopeless at running things, because they seek intellectual stimulus, which is best attained by scoring points off each other and showing how clever you are, rather than getting on with the business of making things work.
We need people who can make sound judgments, not people who shine intellectually, but sound judgement requires a balanced mind, not cleverness.
I think Tony Blair pioneered the new approach to politics of just winning the next election, rather than bothering with having real-world policies that will work.
There are plenty of people keeping the show on the road in the UK, mostly by keeping their heads down and ignoring the absurd targets being imposed on them by people who think they are Leaders and believe they know how to deliver, despite the evidence to the contrary.
I am keen to help find a way through this current phase of stupidity, but our political elite don’t want to know, apparently.
See a great editorial from Editor of BMJ Global Health calling for more research for plumbers and "emancipators" - civil society. You are not alone. https://gh.bmj.com/content/6/4/e005802
Excellent. We need to capture and publish user sentiment on real delivery if we are to reverse the trend. Also, we cannot underestimate the depth of damage done by the Brexit government's to CS culture and morale. Recovery will take time :/
Actually, I think the lack of interest in and skills related to plumbing has a lot to do with the poetry side. Among both Tories and current Labour, the core ideology is all about the idea that the private sector does everything better. Government is inherently inefficient, the private sector inherently efficient, markets are magic. Everything that can be outsourced or privatized, should be; decisions should be made by hiring private consultants, not by having in-house expertise; government is, basically, BAD.
So if your whole ideology can be summed up by "Government bad, should do less things", you're not going to be very interested in making government do things well. If you start from the idea that of course everything the government does, it will do badly and inefficiently just because it is government, you're not going to put a lot of effort into trying to make it do things well and efficiently. You just shrug and say "Well, it has no market magic, so it can't be helped!" Furthermore, if your ideology (and the interests of people who make contributions to your campaign) is all about moving things from the "government" column to the "private profit" column, you're going to be HAPPY if government functions poorly, because it gives you excuses to continue shifting things away from government. In extreme cases you may nobble it deliberately.
Bottom line, you don't expect people to run an efficient government if their mission is to dismantle it.
But this government has no such ideology. For example, it came to power promising mission-led government (with apologies to poets, this was its poetry). And whatever that means it's not consistent with thinking that government can't or shouldn't do big things.
The puzzle is why, in spite of it being the least ideologically anti-public sector government since the 1970s, it seems to be struggling to get government to work.
Oh, please. Keir Starmer has spent much of his time since gaining the leadership purging anyone from the party who shows signs of not being neoliberal.
Being on the inside, and delivering, this rings true.
Such a good post. Ironic that a government so focused on delivery to head off the populist threat is run by people with little experience of delivery and relies on a civil service which has been hollowed out, whilst continuing to squeeze local government which is the one part of the system which does have the relevant experience.
"And because so many of the decision-makers and advisers couldn’t be bothered to do their homework and think through how their ideas might be implemented (Dominic Cummings and Steve Hilton were prime examples of this syndrome), the quality of government deteriorated."
Seems harsh to lump Cummings together with Hilton!
In fairness to Cummings, he ran Vote Leave, which was a very successful operation. He understands something about some kind of "plumbing".
Also, Cummings idolizes the "get things done" types - Bismarck, General Groves, military people generally, Silicon Valley - and is not short of disdain for SW1 and the media.
So what? Well, some on the left who want to criticize government's inability to get anything done also seem to want to distance themselves from Cummings (maybe because he's objectionable, and/or because of Brexit), but their position is basically the same as his. It's a distinction without a difference. If the common ground could be acknowledged change might be more likely.
Fair points. But I find it odd that Cummings idolised many doers as you say, but then showed so little interest in learning from them, or indeed from any governments around the world. I never saw a serious plan from him for anything in government (as opposed to campaigning) and he spent a remarkable amount of his time talking to the media (often ranting against his supposed enemies), which paid off in terms of profile but not in terms of results. If that's unfair please point me to a genuine bit of serious planning he was involved in.
Just to add - a puzzle worthy of note is that we have a PM with more experience of running a bureaucracy than any previous PM (?) and he seems to be struggling as much as any PM to make government work. This is at least consistent with the Cummings view.
Probably his only enduring achievement while in government is ARIA, such as it is. To be fair, he was only there for a year, and most of it during COVID.
I expect his perspective would be that UK government is so broken (it is "designed" not to get things done) that it's time wasted trying to get it to work, or to "reform" it. It's not reformable. (ARIA demonstrates it in a way - don't try to reform the existing institutions, just create a new one with the intention that it cannibalises them over time. Though it doesn't seem to be working out that way!)
I think this is a perspective the left needs to take seriously, even if it doesn't end up there. It needs a better theory about what the problem with government delivery is than simply blaming the 2010-2024 administrations. It's incredibly difficult for it to do so though, because if you're left-leaning you're more likely to work in the public sector (or related sectors).
Totally agree - well put. When I was with the UK civil service 20 years ago, parts of the organization functioned very well indeed, but 'the centre was not holding'. We see the results of a slow and uneven decline today. Tough to fix. Similar situation in Canada - https://policyoptions.irpp.org/magazines/may-2025/bourgon-reform/.
It really matters! The civil service is an essential (if often hidden) part of a well functioning, resilient democracy and economy.