Non-fiction

This month’s non-fiction recommendation is Galileo’s Error: Foundations for a New Science of Consciousness by Philip Goff. With the rise of AI there is endless debate about whether AI tools are, or may become, conscious. The problem with that question is that no-one can define consciousness or how it emerges in humans and perhaps in other organisms. Debating whether a machine can be conscious when we don’t understand it in ourselves seems to me to be a waste of energy. Goff is a leading proponent for panpsychism; the theory which posits that consciousness is not confined to biological entities but is a fundamental feature of all physical matter-from subatomic particles to the human brain. I am not entirely convinced - partly because there are significant sections of the theory that I simply can’t understand(!), but it is a really interesting idea and is definitely worth exploring. Very thought provoking.

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is The Road by Cormac McCarthy. I haven’t watched the film so I have no view on whether it is a good adaptation of the novel, but this is a truly heartbreaking, disturbing, post-apocalyptic story. The style of writing is unusual but fits perfectly here; less so for some of his other books in my opinion. You know from the outset that there is not going to be a happy ending, but even in the bleakness of the storyline, the love between father and son carries the narrative.

I read this many years ago on a train going into work and the sequence where they discover a hidden cellar and what lies in the darkness is the most visceral page of prose I’ve ever read. I remember being so transfixed that I didn’t, for several minutes, realise my train had reached its destination. It’s, somewhat unfortunately, seared into my brain forever. Hiding there, it re-surfaces at random intervals.

A masterpiece.

Even with the best of intentions, in business and in politics, things go wrong. Of course they do. My contention has, for a very long time, been that the root cause of any major issue lies with the leader. I’ve posted extensively about this previously.

Pete Townsend memorably said ‘meet the new boss, same as the old boss’. If your leader is a great one, then clearly you have nothing to fear from a new person who’s as good as the last but with a different style that you can learn from? What’s not to like? Of course Townsend really was looking at the negative of this equation. Nothing changes. Your new boss is the same (i.e. just as terrible) as the last one. Unfortunately in many cases, we see the bad version of this equation - both in public and private arenas. Those in the public sector tend to draw more publicity for obvious reasons, but it exists everywhere.

One of the issues is that those who make decisions about who should be in leadership positions may make the wrong decision and/or potentially leave a failing choice in place for too long (or for ever). Of course like any decision, some will be bad ones. However those making those decisions are rarely held to account for their bad choices. This is true of both public and private enterprises. I was, therefore, quite pleased to see that NS&I recently decided that they needed to change their leadership. This is especially good given the public sector, in the UK at least, doesn’t have a great track record of exemplary leadership. That’s where the good news ends.

Firstly, NS&I has been a horrible mess for at least a decade. If anyone reading this is a customer you’ll know! According to the BBC, ‘NS&I chief executive Dax Harkins has resigned’. Suspect that means he was sacked. He had been with NS&I for over 22 years so clearly had a deep knowledge of the company and presumably knew where all the skeletons were hidden. Nothing I can find in the news mentions who decided that he had the skills to turn around this horribly broken company. Now presumably that was the Board and as a publicly owned bank his appointment would have needed government/ministerial sign-off. As per usual there is no consequence to those making that appointment. To be fair, they have acted quickly once complaints started to escalate in the mainstream media and made a change. The National Audit Office were scathing in their review of the massive IT transformation that NS&I were undertaking. You would have hoped that in making the appointment of Mr Harkins, they would have tried to understand whether he could turnaround this mess. Nothing in his LinkedIn profile suggests that he did, but given he’d been in the organisation for over 20 years you would have expected they would have had a deep understanding of his positives (and negatives).

So, after a quite short period they clearly decided they didn’t have the right person. So who do they turn to? They replaced him with former HMRC boss Sir Jim Harra. Anyone in the UK who has had the misfortune to have any dealings with HMRC would have to blink twice at this news. HMRC is a role model for awful customer service and has been for, well, ever. I’m sure Sir Jim is a hard-working honourable man, but seriously! This constant failing upwards and seemingly having no accountability for delivery is a massive issue. At no level could anyone argue that HMRC is a world-class public function - personally I’d say it is not fit for purpose. It is an abomination. I’d love to have been in the room when someone said ‘we need to replace the CEO of NS&I. Who is our best option?’ Someone then pipes up ‘what about that chap who runs HMRC. He’s a top bloke’. Now don’t get me wrong. Running HMRC, or indeed NS&I, and fixing decades of cumulative issues is a massive job that I know I couldn’t do and I think only 2-3 people I’ve ever worked are probably up to the challenge(s), but for goodness sake why not go and look for someone who’s been there, seen it, done it? The existing people in those organisations would benefit from working for someone like that and it would help them grow expertise.

If only this were an isolated case, but afraid not. Any cursory search of the internet will find endless examples. Here’s a recent classic. The Times (which is unfortunately behind a paywall) reports:

‘An NHS chief executive who is paid £279,000 a year has led three of the five worst NHS hospital trusts in England. Lyn Simpson is interim chief executive of both Hull University Teaching Hospitals Trust and Northern Lincolnshire and Goole Foundation Trust, which merged their executive team in 2023 to form a new Humber Health Partnership. Before being appointed in July, she had spent five years as chief executive at North Cumbria Integrated Care NHS Foundation Trust. All three were among the five NHS trusts in England this week singled out by Wes Streeting as places where “failure has been tolerated for far too long”.’

How can it be that someone who serially fails just gets another go? Who is being held accountable for continuing to appoint these people? Answer - no-one is. Partly the reason is an obsession with having a deep background in whatever it is - in these cases, banking, tax or health. Sure you need deep knowledge to be, say, a doctor, but leadership skills are generic. Any leader going into a sector where they don’t personally have a lot of experience will build a team around them that compensates.

When I was entering the workplace, the ‘old school tie’ really was a thing. Major positions, in government in particular but also in the private sector, were generally only open to those with ‘connections’. That is they had been to the ‘right’ school and Oxbridge, etc. Whilst not completely gone, that structure has somewhat disappeared. Unfortunately it has been replaced by one where particular sectors just close ranks and appoint from within. The same failures rotate around. The organisation figures out they are not very good and moves them on to the next highly paid executive appointment. And repeat…

All is not lost and maybe some change is starting to happen. The appointment of Matt Brittin as the new Governor General of the BBC has ruffled a few feathers within a very traditional organisation. ‘But he has no background in media’, claim the naysayers without reminding themselves of past failures who were part of the ‘media establishment’. Britten clearly is a very successful leader who you would hope will bring fresh thinking and energy which is badly needed at the BBC. I am sure, given his track record, he’s figured out, as all good leaders do, to ensure his team has the right depth of knowledge that they don’t have. Maybe it won’t work out, but at least the decision makers are trying something different.

I suspect Dr Sowell was not worrying about those making leadership decisions when he made this highly relevant statement, but it applies equally. Of course when people take a step up some are successful and some aren’t. Possible failure is not a reason for not taking a chance on someone. I’d wager that almost all successful leaders were not ready/out of their depth when first making that leap. Helping those making that step for the first time is a topic for another day, but we need to create a culture of accountability for those making these hiring decisions - it is sadly lacking. Stop the merry-go-round of appointing failure.

It’s time for those making these senior appointments to look beyond the CV/LinkedIn profile. After all no-one puts ‘was CxO of CompanyX but unfortunately wasn’t very good at it’ in their history! There is no accountability for those making terrible decisions about who should take on important roles. They escape scot-free while the haplessly unqualified/inexperienced sap they’ve promoted is hung out to dry. As a good example, think Paula Vennells She was clearly out of her depth as CEO of the Post Office and was the key leader during their persecution of their own employees after the introduction of a failed IT system. Maybe she was always not up to the job - I suspect she wasn’t based upon the evidence presented during the public enquiry, but someone somewhere thought she was. Worse, when it became clear she was out of her depth, she was left to continue with disastrous results. Does she deserve the opprobrium she gets? Probably, but what about the person/people who made the appointment and worse didn’t act? I strongly suspect they are continuing on their merry way picking up huge rewards from being Chairperson or Board members. Zero accountability. Unless we break this cycle so perhaps we get the leaders we need in both public and private sectors, we’ll continue to decline. The talent is definitely there - we are ignoring it by supporting mediocrity built around the new ‘old school tie’ and the fact there is no downside to making the wrong call.

So how to fix it? This problem is endemic as shown by the fiasco over the appointment of Mandelson as UK Ambassador to the USA. The incompetency of those making the decision is mind boggling. Maybe our Prime Minister will eventually have to fall on his sword (he hasn’t at the time of writing) but the bigger question is why it happened and why? In my view this is a governance issue and of course all senior execs and Boards will claim that due diligence has been followed in making an appointment. Well clearly that is true in some cases, but here are some suggestions:

• A person, or group of people, making a high profile appointment to a senior position should have their track record of making these decisions assessed before they are allowed to make that decision.

• There needs to be skin in the game for the decision makers. Maybe their bonus for the next two years - the Board, or equivalent, should decide.

• Except in emergencies, all positions should have an internal and external candidate. If there isn’t time, the appointment should be temporary/acting, until that process can be executed.

• There should be a probationary period with clear outcomes to determine if the appointment should proceed or not. The default should be no. Evidence needs to be presented as to why the new person should continue.

• If the appointment turns out not to be a success, and of course some will not work out, the group who made the appointment must do a deep dive into the reasons why. Those reasons could be legion. They must be documented and those accountable for the decision explain why they made the appointment clearly noted.

In other words, governance for making decisions about senior positions needs to be reviewed and improved substantially. Clearly a balance needs to be made. No-one wants to to remove the necessity of taking a chance on someone in a senior role for the first time, but improved accountability will hopefully stop bad decisions happening again and again and also ensure that those who make those appointments retain a vested interest in ensuring that the person has the best chance of success and also retains accountability for action when/if it doesn’t work out.

Non-fiction

This month’s non-fiction recommendation is Black Gold by Jeremy Paxman. Some time ago, I did my family tree. Frankly it wasn’t that exciting. The majority of the women were housewives and the men, in between going off to war, were generally coalminers. There were a few exceptions - Grandad was a train driver. As I was growing up the mines were in decline and indeed the infamous miner’s strike of the 80s occurred when I was at University. I never met a miner, and I knew a few, who wanted their son to go ‘down pit’ which says it all. I have been ever thankful that it wasn’t me who had to endure that hell. And hell is what it was. Paxman’s book made me angry - not something that usually happens when I read history. But this felt personal. Men mostly, but also women and children, toiling in conditions that no-one around today could probably endure for a day. The hardship, the danger and the toll on health and lives is embedded in every page. Coal, for better or for worse, was the key engine of the Industrial Revolution. The toll fell mostly on the ordinary people who made it possible through their manual labour on a scale and in conditions we can now barely comprehend. Read it and thank your blessings you were born in a different time.

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is basically anything by PG Wodehouse, but especially his Jeeves books. If you want somewhere to start, then try Carry on, Jeeves.

So why recommend stories about a privileged rich guy and his butler set in the last century? Surely that is a bit dated? Well, the reason is that the writing is beyond comparison - it is truly unique. Almost every line or paragraph is a work of art that allows you to constantly re-read and still find joy. I quite often pick up one of the books as I am walking around my office and find myself chuckling at some brilliant observation and then find I’ve been reading for 20 minutes! There has never, apart from probably Shakespeare, been anyone who can delight so much with a single sentence. Here are just a few of my favourite lines:

“He looked as if he had been poured into his clothes and had forgotten to say ‘when’”

“A melancholy-looking man, he had the appearance of one who has searched for the leak in life’s gas-pipe with a lighted candle”

“Honoria, you see, is one of those robust, dynamic girls with the muscles of a welter-weight and a laugh like a squadron of cavalry charging over a tin bridge”

“Into the face of the young man who sat on the terrace of the Hotel Magnifique at Cannes there had crept a look of furtive shame, the shifty hangdog look which announces that an Englishman is about to speak French.”

Genius.

To the surprise of no-one, apart from his devoted followers, Noam Chomsky is once again being a complete arse. The latest revelation comes from the latest release of the Epstein files where according to the BBC:

Jeffrey Epstein sought advice from linguist Noam Chomsky over what he called “putrid” media coverage of sex trafficking allegations against him, new files show. In emails from February 2019, the disgraced financier asked if he should “defend myself” or “try to ignore”. A response that appears to be from Chomsky laments “the horrible way” Epstein was treated and the “hysteria that has developed about abuse of women”. “It’s painful to say, but I think the best way to proceed is to ignore it,” the email said.

Now I am well aware that in the litany of horrible crimes that these releases are uncovering, this is somewhat trivial, but it gives the opportunity to raise a really important issue about balance and increasingly polarisation of discussions. Chomsky is a perfect example of a major problem and what those on the so-called ‘progressive left’ are pushing.

Let’s start with the Middle East. To be clear, I really don’t have a problem with those who continue to bang the drum for Palestinians; provided that is done in a lawful way. Whether I agree with their arguments is neither here nor there; they are perfectly entitled to an opinion, to express it and to try and persuade governments to drive change. What is, of course, quite startling is that the same groups have nothing to say about similar outrages happening around the world - most notably, but not by any means uniquely, the suppression ongoing in Iran. In fact many of the same people running around with Palestinian flags seem to actively be supporting the Iranian regime - at best they are neutral and have nothing to say and there are plenty of other examples of things that don’t seem to matter to those determined to demonstrate about injustice. Now, one could say - many do, that the Palestinian protests are antisemitic. Certainly one of my Jewish friends is fond of using the term ‘No Jews, No News’ to point out the inconsistency/hypocrisy. I am not entirely sure I agree. I am sure that is true for some, but I doubt that is true of the majority. So what is going on? I think this is part of what I call ‘the Noam Chomsky problem’. Not to say the learned Professor Chomsky is personally responsible, but he’s a great example of the problem and given so many people follow his lead rigorously he is highly influential and oft quoted.

At one point in my career I worked for a guy who was a curious mixture of capitalist and communist - sometimes in the same sentence. A ruthless capitalist drive to growth and profitability but then to use those funds for ‘social good’. It was quite a ride at times. During one of our debates/arguments he referenced Chomsky and clearly held his ideas in high regard. I wasn’t familiar with his work other than looking at some of his early thinking on linguistics which to be honest I barely understood. Clearly he was a man of incredible intellect. What I got from further digging was, yes, a man with a massive brain, but was also guilty of intellectual dishonesty. You may think that is a big claim from someone with my limited intelligence, but it was the conclusion I drew and suddenly some of the things my boss, and the wider left/progressive movement held dear, made much more sense. One particular discussion with my ex-employer sticks in my mind. It was during one the previous intifadas in Palestine/Israel (I forget which). The point that was made to me was similar to the one made now - genocide, imperialism, etc etc. I was not unsympathetic to what was being said - the TV pictures made sure of that. When I pointed out that just next door in Syria the government was bombing and gassing its own population with Russian assistance, I was met with a lot of flak. ‘What is the difference I wanted to know?’ Surely both Palestinians and Syrians are both worthy of our support? Well it turns out not, because Israel is supported by the USA and they are the real problem. So effectively the dying Syrians didn’t count because it was Russian bombs killing them not American ones. This troubled me deeply and still does.

Noam Chomsky is the king of looking the other way when facts disturb his world view. He is an exemplar of the ability of the Western Left to criticise everything from the West - except of course itself. That is not to say the West is not deserving of criticism - it is. However, his whole proposition is the simplistic argument that capitalism, particularly American but any other ‘western’ leaning nation, is responsible for all the world’s ills. And with all black and white positions it contains a kernel of truth worth debating. The invasion of Iraq unleashed major unintended consequences and reinforced militant Islam. But it is not just recent history that is his target. In his mind all of the ills of the planet can be traced back to European colonialism ignoring the fact that subjugating others has been going on, well, forever. Again, that does not absolve that part of history from scrutiny and criticism, but what about the impact of, say, the Mogul Empire? Or more recently the Soviet one? Or indeed a myriad of others. Chomsky’s defect is that everything has to be viewed through an anti-western/American lens. It means that regimes such as Iran can escape his, and his ilk’s, opprobrium. Resistance, however perverted, is inevitable and justified. If the resistance is hideous in its impact it is the fault of the USA/The West. Hence Afghan/Taliban treatment of women barely gets a mention from the social warriors of the left.

The ends always justify the means - however many die in the process. Mao’s Great Leap Forward? A necessary move to counter the evil capitalists. The millions who died were just collateral damage and it was worth the sacrifice. Stalin’s purges? Absolutely needed to further the move towards communist purity. The ability to turn the other way is quite astounding. If you view everything that happens in the world through an anti-western lens you really can’t claim to be ‘left/progressive’. When I was growing up, those on the Left thought that socialism would be a better solution than capitalism and that was a worthy debate, and those of that persuasion that I was exposed to (in the UK) were people who would (mostly) stand up for what was right - irrespective of where in the world it was happening. Yes, they criticised much of the UK’s domestic and foreign policy, but were clear about the dangers of the Soviet system and many others. They fought injustice wherever, or whomever, perpetrated it. Not anymore.

There is a wider problem with this Chomsky position. It is feeding the drive to say everything that the West has ever done is, not just evil, but needs to be erased. In the perverted view of those left wing zealots white=western=bad and must be changed. What people forget, or don’t understand, is that Newton’s Third Law which states that for every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, also applies to politics and people. If you take a position that suggests everything about someone’s heritage and history is null and void and in fact positively dangerous, then don’t be surprised when those people take an opposing view and ‘push back’. If you are looking for a reason that the ‘far-right’ is on the rise you need look no further.

I have never met Professor Chomsky and never will. I am sure he doesn’t give a toss what I think, but his approach is poisonous and dangerous. The sooner we start talking about all injustice in a balanced manner, then perhaps we’ll stop the increasing polarisation of debate and politics. These are dangerous times which require cool heads and frank discussions.

I have never been a huge fan of ‘leadership’ books. You know the ones. They tell you how to be a great leader and usually contain trite statements like ‘it is important to build trust’. ‘No Shit Sherlock’ as we say in the UK. That is not true of all that genre of course and there are some notable exceptions. Personally I feel that better insights into leadership come from looking at historical figures who led through difficult times. That doesn’t mean you have to go back to Henry V (although actually he is a good case study) and also it doesn’t mean you need to align politically or morally with the subject. I would encourage anyone seeking to get better at leadership in their chosen profession to read historical narratives more widely. This month’s non-fiction is a good place to start.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Non-fiction

This month’s non-fiction is Abyss by Max Hastings. It is focused predominantly on JF Kennedy during the Cuban missile crisis of the early sixties which is widely accepted as mankind’s closest brush with nuclear armageddon.

Growing up in the UK, I had little affection for JFK. He clearly had a dark side and much of the noise around him, outside of the USA, focused on this; Marilyn Munroe and all that. My view changed markedly after reading this book. As always context is everything. He was dealing with pressure from all sides, unable to communicate quickly with Kruschev in the Kremlin, not knowing what he was thinking (and of course the pressure the Soviet leader was under from his own side and from Cuba). He resisted much of his own military, who were spoiling for a (nuclear) fight. He sought compromise and displayed incredible resilience under the greatest pressure. The world owes him great thanks in navigating through those difficult days. It is a fascinating insight, warts and all, into a leader under unimaginable pressure from all sides while not being possession of all the data needed to make an informed decision. Lessons for every leader.

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is Life of Chuck by Stephen King. Now I am a big fan of Mr King and this won’t be the last time I recommend one of his. While what he writes is not always great prose, he is one THE great storytellers. For those that are turned off by stories about homicidal clowns (IT) or vampires (Salem’s Lot), I understand. But there is a lot more to King’s books than horror. After all, is there anyone that doesn’t love The Shawshank Redemption, which if you didn’t know is based upon a King short story?

Life of Chuck is also a film and unusually for me I saw the film before reading the book. The film is glorious; the book equally so. Life-affirming, sad, insightful and just all around brilliant. And as a short story you can read it in a lunch hour or on your commute to work.

Going to University was a transformative experience for me. Growing up in Wigan in the 1960s and 70s, I didn’t, like most teenagers, have any clue what I wanted to do. I only knew what I didn’t want to do. I didn’t want to stay in my hometown and do the jobs that generations of my family had done. Sure, the coal mines were all but gone and the cotton mills were in terminal decline, but as far as I could see, the only way out was either University or the Army. It wasn’t snobbery that drove this desire - you didn’t last long in that place and that era if you had ‘ideas above your station’ but I just wanted to do something - anything. I was fortunate. I had sufficient brainpower and good teachers to get a place at University and off I went.

I was reflecting on this reading about the increasingly perilous state of places of Higher Education and the incredible levels of debt that graduating students have.

Back in the day we had a system of Universities, Polytechnics and Technical Colleges which provided a range of learning and acquired skills. There was clearly a hierarchy - at least in the minds of the intellectuals of the day. Universities were at the top with Technical Colleges at the bottom with Polytechnics somewhere in the middle. Of course that assumes that Head (cognitive) > Hand (manual/craft) > Heart (caring/emotional) in human aptitudes. This was covered brilliantly by David Goodheart in his book Head, Hand, Heart. In recent history the shift to Head being the most important has grown significantly despite the fact that we all need highly skilled people to do our plumbing and electrical wiring and the like, and of course also need the people who provide care when we need it. This is a recent phenomenon. The provision of nursing or engineering skills were highly valued when I was growing up. In fact the clever folks who went to University were viewed with a degree of suspicion as having ‘airs and graces’ they didn’t actually have. Yes, the British class system was, and to some extent still is, alive and well.

When did this hierarchy start to change? For me it really began when Tony Blair made, what in my opinion, was one of his biggest blunders which has had massive consequences for British society. Now all politicians make bad decisions and sometimes the consequences are unforeseen and can take many years to emerge, but this felt wrong at the time and I think has proven to be so. Blair’s ambition, set in 1999, aimed for 50% of young adults (under 30) to participate in higher education. Intended to boost skills, this goal was achieved by 2019. Since then, this target has been scrapped but the impact will last for generations. Now, before getting into this in a bit more detail, I am sure many would say that this is nowhere near Blair’s biggest error. Getting involved in President Bush’s ill-fated invasion of Iraq or opening the doors to mass immigration take that prize. That may indeed be so, but let’s focus on his ambition for British youth to get more education. On the face of it, better education surely can only be better for society? Well yes, but there are different kinds of education. The data is quite interesting.

Key Trends in UK University Attendance (1960–Present)

• 1960s: ~4%–5% of young people participated in higher education.

• 1970s–1980s: Rates grew to between 8% and 19%.

• 1990s–2000s: Rapid expansion continued; by 2007, about 43% of 17–30 year-olds were enrolled.

• 2010s–Present: The participation rate for 17–30 year-olds in England exceeded 50% by 2017-18.

• 18-Year-Old Entry Rate: The rate for UK 18-year-olds was 24.7% in 2006, rising to 38.2% in 2021, and 36.3% in 2025.

• Gender and Location: In 2025, 41% of women entered university compared to 30% of men. London has the highest entry rate (51%) compared to 30% in the South West and Scotland.

These figures focus on participation rates of UK-domiciled young people, particularly 17-30 year-olds or 18-year-olds, rather than total university enrollment, which now includes roughly 25% international students.

So Blair got what he wanted, but at what cost? When I went to University, because I came from a poor household, I got a grant and it was essentially free. To be fair the grant had to be supplemented by taking on summer work (cleaning a slaughterhouse anyone?) but it was close to being enough. Fees? Didn’t know what those were.

This huge growth in numbers was partially achieved by the old Polytechnics reinventing themselves as Universities. Nevertheless, growing from, say, 15% at the end of the 1970s (my era) to 50% by 2017 required a vast increase in funding which was never coming from the central government. Thus began the slide into students paying more; the premise being that if you get a degree you’ll earn more so you should contribute towards it. The logic of that has always slightly puzzled me. If that were really the case, then the graduating student would pay more tax given their higher salaries. But we all know that not all degrees and not all graduates get higher salaries and indeed as the number of people with degrees has massively increased it is less of a differentiator than it once was. But, there is a strong argument, especially if you want half the population to get a degree, that individuals should make some contribution. However, what we have now is plain crazy. The loans system is quite complex and repayments vary depending upon when you attend University. But a few salient points:

• Repayment is 9% of salary above a certain amount - around £27,000. Not a huge amount given the average salary is approx £39,000. So on top of the income tax and national insurance already taken, you pay an additional 9%. That threshold, like income tax, has not changed for some time and is frozen for the next three years.

• The real killer is that the interest on the amount owed is RPI +3%. RPI is a long discredited measure of inflation and is now rarely used. Usually CPI, which is lower, is used. The average debt varies by country and is far higher in England than other parts of the UK. It averages £53,000 in England. To put that into perspective, RPI is currently 4.2% so on an average loan the interest added each year is £3816. It is easy to see why so many ex-students are astonished to find that despite giving up an additional 9% of their take home pay, they often end up owing more at the end of each year.

This is madness, at least from the individual’s perspective, and creates all sorts of distortions with graduates increasingly struggling to, say, get a mortgage (which depends upon your take home pay). Whether we ever get back to University being free for the individual, as it was for me, is highly debatable (and perhaps not desirable), but this structure is not sustainable.

Now all of this criticism can seem like wanting to pull up the ladder so others can’t do what I did. That is not the intent, but my view is that this level of University attendance has had many negative impacts.

• It has massaged youth unemployment statistics by pushing the problem out by several years.

• Students are now saddled with astronomic levels of debt at ludicrous interest rates.

• Quality has declined - a third of students now get 1st class degrees and I don’t accept for one minute they are just smarter or more hardworking than my generation, where Firsts were rare on the ground.

• Less talented students can take ‘easier’ degree courses which have little value in the workplace, but still cost enormous amounts.

• Most universities are now struggling financially and are resorting to more and more overseas students to make ends meet. That door is increasingly being closed due to the general concerns about levels of immigration. This is leading to a crisis in funding.

• Universities are not surprisingly driven by getting the maximum revenue. However that is not the outcome that the country needs. Apart from the elite Universities where quality of teaching still counts for much, it has become about churning out degrees and generating revenue.

• I very much doubt it has improved social mobility. Increasingly those from lower income families are asking themselves ‘is it worth it?’ Those who perhaps can rely on the bank of Mum and Dad are less worried.

• Fewer young people, at least for now, are not going into the Heart and Hand careers which for many may be be a better fit . We have such a shortage of builders, engineers and care workers we have to import huge numbers from overseas. We are churning out hordes of students, many with worthless degrees, and having to import talent from outside to plug gaps. Crazy.

• In our rush to increase universities we’ve destroyed much of the technical college structure that pre-existed

Of course attending University isn’t all about your course. It is a great life learning experience and it would be terrific if everyone could experience it, but it just doesn’t make sense for everyone or perhaps, dare I say, half of young people.

We need to pull back from the obsession with University. Yes, it works for many, but I’d guess the right level is a third (at most) - certainly not more than half. In the short term we need to take an urgent look at the student debts that people are carrying. Impoverishing a large part (50%?) of our youth and saddling them with increasing debt is not likely to have a happy ending. As with all political decisions, governments don’t really think through the consequences - especially they don’t try to anticipate the unintended consequences. I am sure the decision to push student numbers to 50% was well intentioned, but it is time for a re-think. Perhaps spending the available money on early years education might provide wider, better outcomes.

Apart from the consequences, intended or unintended, it again highlights a serious lack of joined up thinking by Governments. More qualified people is a noble idea, but you need to define what qualifications this covers and how it might complement industrial strategy. It also needs to make sense financially for the individuals and if the objective is a better trained populace there needs to be thinking to connect to a benefits/welfare state and immigration strategy. Not only do we not have this initiatives actually pull in separate directions.

I appreciate the current government is facing huge challenges from all directions, but this is one that needs urgent attention.

A very long time ago I studied Chemistry at University. In the last few years I’ve been re-engaging with some of the topics we covered back in the day. This is especially true of quantum theory. Freed from having to delve too deeply into the mathematics involved, having space to read about the strangeness and the paradoxes that emerge, as well as the fact that there are still many unknowns, has been fascinating. It’s also been a useful test to see whether my brain still functions!

This month’s reads are both related to the quantum world. It would be helpful to have at least some level of understanding of concepts, such as entanglement, but don’t worry about the maths.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

Non-fiction

This month’s non-fiction is Helgoland by Carlo Rovelli. It is a short book that you actually may need to read more than once to really get some of the concepts. It provides the reader with insights as to what quantum theory tells us about the nature of physical reality and in particular the questions that Heisenberg and others battled with as the theory emerged nearly one hundred years ago.

I love science books for the everyman/everywoman and Rovelli is one of the best authors in the space. Well worth a read (or two).

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is The Son of Man by Chris May. It is a story set in the near future based around a group of research physicists looking into quantum theories/multiple dimensions. What makes it special, apart from the excellent writing, is the intersection of science and religion with the Vatican being convinced that the Second Coming is in progress. The ending is both predictable but at the same time not. Rather like quantum mechanics itself. Clever, thought provoking and a great read.

The English language is a wondrous thing. Reading has been a source of great comfort for me during my life and I really pity people who don’t read - they are missing out on so much. I never managed to learn any other language (much to the dismay of my French and German teachers at school) so I have to confine my love of language to English. I wish it were something I could change, but alas my efforts to get even to even conversational level in other languages has been a miserable failure. Hey-ho.

I am a self confessed grammar pedant. Misuse of apostrophes should, in my opinion, be a criminal offence. Similarly, while I strongly welcome new words into our vocabulary, the lazy misspelling of words by our American friends drives me doolally (now, there’s a great word). What is it about the letter ‘u’ that makes you want you to delete it at every opportunity? Similarly what’s the wholesale replacement of ‘s’ by ‘z’ all about. Also it’s defence not defense!

Take a word like fortnight. There could hardly be a more descriptive word - fourteen nights, i.e. two weeks, but the look of bafflement on the faces of (most) non Brits when you use it is something to behold. It’s no surprise that if they struggle with that, then the ‘dogs bollocks’ leaves them totally mystified, but there is no better idiom to describe something that is truly excellent. Idioms are marvellous tools to confuse and delight unsuspecting people and have the advantage of them thinking you are slightly mad/eccentric, which I personally think is no bad thing.

It’s also interesting that English words that have fallen out of use in the UK are still in active use in other countries. I used to love the fact that my Indian colleagues made liberal use of ‘thrice’. We all use once and twice, but no-one in the UK uses thrice - it’s a wonderful word and I have been attempting a single handed resurrection of thrice here.

I try to add some of my favourite words into everything (you saw ‘doolally’ earlier). Some of my absolute favourites, amongst a huge list, are

• Mollycoddle

• Ne\’er-do-well

• Balderdash

• Tickety-boo

• Abstemious

• Antediluvian

• Claptrap

• Collywobbles

• Dastardly

• Omnishambles

• Gauche

• Gobbledygook

• Harrumph

• Jiggery-pokery

• Kerfuffle

• Lickspittle

• Lummox

• Malarkey

• Higgledy-piggledy

• Hullabaloo

We should all try to use one of these every week. Telling your boss that everything is tickety-boo and seeing their puzzled expression, is something we should all aspire to. I indeed managed to get ne\’er-do-well into a pub conversation quite recently.

Of course as well as being a source of great pleasure, words have meaning and are powerful and open to misuse. I recently saw a woman wearing a ‘Love NOT hate’ t-shirt and that got me thinking. I understand the sentiment, but I loathe/hate the Nazis of the 1930s that my predecessors had to go and fight (and die) to stop. I totally hate pedophiles. If I had my way, they would be burned at the stake in the village square. I suppose that makes me a fascist - but then everyone to the right of Karl Marx can be expected to be labeled as such these days. It is a word that is so misused it has become almost meaningless. There is nothing wrong with hate when applied properly.

Making words, such as fascist, meaningless by stealth is a major issue. There are many, many examples of this; driven largely by social media. The word genocide is now used liberally and is not contained by its original definition. Of course the meanings of words evolve and change and become multi-faceted (gay, for example, had a very different meaning when I was growing up) but these changes can bring danger. The sharpness of a term like ‘fascist’, which is really needed, has been denuded to the point where disagreeing about almost anything someone else agrees with can get you labelled ‘Nazi’ or ‘fascist’. That matters if for no other reason than we no longer recognise real fascism when it appears. People should remember the fable of The Boy Who Cried Wolf. Accusations of racism or misogyny when directing realistic criticism of the performance of someone who deserves it is nothing of the kind. It leads those on the receiving end to claim discrimination. There are enough cases of real racism and misogyny without these deflections. This misuse of words helps no-one.

I would recommend something that I’ve been doing for several decades. Most mornings I read the online versions (fleetingly to be honest) of The Guardian followed by the Daily Mail. It provides a really interesting insight into how truth can be adjusted for political reasons. Seeing the same story from the rabidly right-wing Mail followed by the ludicrously left-wing Guardian is something to behold. It opens up a whole new world of ‘....seriously!’ which I exclaim at regular intervals. Although neither would ever admit it, they really are mirror images of each other.

Language is complex and we sometimes have to delve deeply into what is said to understand what is really being said. Euphemism and obfuscation are endemic. George Orwell knew this very well and 1984 is a masterclass in showing how language can be used by those with bad intentions - Goebbels also understood this only too well. But this is not a problem of the past, it is with us here and now. Unspeak by Steven Poole details this with numerous examples; especially from politicians of all persuasions. It should be compulsory reading in all schools, although one has to be careful to unpick the author’s own political biases - even the most thoughtful can fall into the same trap they are describing!

The classic example of unspeak is ‘pro-life’ used in the abortion debate (note I am not taking any position on the matter in hand, rather the use of the words). It is the name for something that is not neutral, but rather a smuggled political position, namely that life must be preserved at all points that otherwise is not explicitly stated. Thus it tries to eliminate any opposite argument by positioning itself that there is no other option, i.e life rather than choice. Of course all words have potentially different meanings depending upon context, but this, as Mr Poole points out, is weaponising the words for political purposes. Once you see this, you start to see many examples, such as ‘Friends of the Earth’. Disagreeing with anything that lives under that vast policy umbrella positions you as an ‘Enemy of the Earth’. It’s quite brilliantly done really.

In the modern world the case of unspeak that really, really irritates me is ‘progressive’. Now I know there are more important problems than this gross hijacking of a simple word, but I can’t help it. Clearly the opposite of progressive is regressive and who wants to be seen as regressive with all the negative connotations that brings? Now when I was a boy progressive meant making progress in stages and as I observed earlier, words can of course evolve. If you ask Google, the opposite of progressive is traditionalist; at least in a political sense, but in reality it is used as a stick to beat up people who don’t agree with ‘progressive views’. After all, as I said, who doesn’t want to be seen as progressive rather than a stick-in-the-mud always banging on about the good old days.

‘Progressive’ has been weaponised, deliberately or by happenstance, by the left of the political spectrum. For many people, the term is synonymous with “good.” Now, political discourse and agreeing or disagreeing is just part of the natural state of democracies, but grouping all left wing policies (some, in my opinion, are good and many are terrible) under the umbrella of ‘progressive’ is classic unspeak. So does it really matter? In my opinion it does. Progressivism challenges core values such as objective truth and meritocracy in favour of ‘social justice’, itself a classic unspeak term, and creates hierarchies of ‘victimhood’. These can, and do, in my opinion undermine due process in favour of subjectivity. Due process, such as laws already contain subjectivity and many ‘progressive’ policies risk undermining centuries of stability and growth. Now, I am not asking you to be convinced by me and you may well be reading this and saying ‘good - the status quo needs challenging’. That’s ok - just stop calling it progressive. Oh, and it is worth remembering that for early ‘progressives’, eugenics was a core part of their philosophy. Maybe that means all progressives are really fascists! I love it when people are hoisted by their own petard.

Anyway, my little rant is over.

Words are wonderful, mysterious and powerful. Use them wisely!

In the UK the NHS is something akin to a national religion. It was a central theme of the 2012 London Olympic Opening Ceremony and whilst it is subject to endless tinkering, its core remains essentially untouchable. However, more and more people are now questioning its size, shape and even its very existence. But to some/many to criticise is somehow unpatriotic and an insult to the (literally) millions of people who work within it and do their damn best to deliver a service against all odds. Some commentators have quipped that the UK risks becoming a Health Service with a country attached. Well if that is the case, then we are leaving future generations a barely functioning health service alongside a ballooning welfare state that are locked together in a death spiral.

Having lived through decades of reorganisations and a massive increase in spend, it is time to stop treating the NHS like some sort of sacred cow and have a grown up conversation about what needs to happen. Don’t expect we will, but we can but hope.

How did we get here?

It is almost an act of self-delusion to pretend that the NHS is still fit for purpose. Each year we pour in ever more money, applaud the heroes who work there, and constantly reorganise. Successive governments call for more investment and greater productivity and continue the ‘it needs more money’ plea. Now to be fair, the cost of health is ever increasing, we have an aging population, and so ever greater demands on the system. But no money is ever enough. As soon as any government announces a major ‘investment’ we are met with ever more missed targets and increasing numbers of scandals involving poor treatment.

How can a world class health service be on the brink of collapse every year when we have our annual flu season? It is entirely an entirely predictable event, but a system which has 1.7M employees seems unable to cope. For reference, we are talking about 2-3,000 hospitalisations out of a population of 70 million.

No-one with any sense is saying this is the fault of the people who work there. Many are paid poorly and have very difficult jobs. Anyone who has ever worked in any kind of dysfunctional organisation will understand how that feels - whatever you do it is never enough. One view is that we just have to get to the spending levels of other countries (comparisons are not easy to make) but no-one else has a model like the UK and decades of experience suggests just continuing to spend more with the existing structure will not solve the issues.

Politicians are fond of saying the opposition will kill your NHS and we will “save your NHS”, which reached a nadir when during the lead-up to the UK’s general election in 2024, Liberal Democrat leader Ed Davey, a man who makes Keir Starmer look good, declared there were “ten days to save the NHS”. Seriously… In truth this has become a political ritual: create panic, praise the people who work there, patch-up, reorganise, add more billions in funding, and… repeat. The answer is always more funding despite all the evidence that this isn’t solving the problems. It is run by a career politician who, throughout its history - not just the current incumbent, has zero business experience. Individuals who could run an enterprise of this current size (£210B spend and over 1.7M employees) and shape are in limited supply - rare as hen’s teeth. We don’t reform it because too many people are too sentimental to admit it’s failing. Can we stop pretending a broken NHS can be fixed with more money, more low skilled immigration, and better IT. It just can’t.

Other countries evolved better and more cost-effective models. Meanwhile, Britain clings to its myth of one NHS for all, even as those who can afford it quietly go private. If we really care about the NHS, we need less sentiment and more honest thinking. It’s time to start fixing it. Let’s find a better system and have it run by competent grown-ups.

Where do we go from here?

We need to start with the original aim of the NHS that it is ‘free at point of use’. I think most would agree that is a very laudable aim, although it is not completely true and hasn’t been for a long time. Of course the world looks very different than it did when the NHS came into being. It worked very well 80 years ago, but is it still realistic? What was visionary in 1948 is now not. And also always beware of any politician using the word ‘free’. Of course it isn’t - it costs an enormous amount.

The main objection to any change is that we’ll end up with the American system. Well other models are available and this feels a slightly ridiculous reason to avoid changing. Most European countries have different systems that seem to provide better outcomes (although I accept comparisons are not straightforward). It is not a choice between what we have now and the American system. Again, this is used to scare the public by saying Person X would ‘nationalise’ your NHS and introduce the US model. No-one is ever going to get elected by suggesting such a solution, nor would they survive politically if they tried to do it whilst in government. It’s just not going to happen.

However, parts of the NHS are already privatised in all but name. Dentistry and Eye care are (mostly) now handled by the private sector and patients have to pay. The government, to a limited extent, provides a safety net for those that can’t afford to pay so essentially ‘free’ for those that can’t afford to pay. It seems strange that the message that everything must be ‘free’ is somehow ignored when it comes to your head or teeth or for that matter getting drugs, which again most people, apart from those who cannot afford it, have to pay a charge. The NHS has not been ‘free’ for a long time.

For some, depending upon where you sit on the political spectrum, this ‘privatisation question’ is the most important and is one of the reasons we never seem to move forward. Passionate supporters of the current model scream ‘you want to privatise the NHS’ and refuse to consider a different model, ignoring that an even more vital service is already entirely run by the private sector - namely food. The government provides the compliance framework (sometimes not very well to be fair) and lets private enterprise grow, import, produce and sell our food. Is anyone seriously suggesting that we should have government owned supermarkets? I strongly suspect that the quality of what we get would decline rapidly and increase in price. Now of course there are plenty of things in this sector that could be better, but I would contend that food is WAY more important than the Health Service. We all need health provision from time to time (some more than others) but we all need food all the time. If the private sector can be trusted to keep us alive by feeding us, why can’t it be trusted to keep us alive when we fall ill? And, yes I know they are not the same…That is not to say that I am personally in favour of one or the other in terms of public v private, but we childishly refuse to even have the debate.

If the NHS system is the best then why does no other country copy it? Many would answer that question by saying that if we give it more money, then it would prove that the UK model is best - is it a lack of funding that is the issue? But huge sums of money are pumped into the system with minimal impact, hence why every new Health Minister decides to reorganise. I don’t see governments in Germany or anywhere else in Europe saying ‘look at the system those Brits have! We need one of those’.

How to Change?

What to do? We need to decide what the mission is. Personally I think the original founding statement that ‘services should be free at the point of delivery, comprehensive, and based on clinical need, not the ability to pay’ is a good one and ignoring that not everything is likely to be included, it is a clear mission. Of course ‘free’ is a word that many take literally in that someone else will fund it, but any politician who virtuously tells you something is free is clearly lying. Someone is paying somewhere. Keeping that mission seems a good thing but that does not mean that everything needs to be ‘free’ and that provision has to be done by a centralised, state owned entity. The two things are not the same at all. Now, I am not presupposing that the state run, publicly owned model should go. It is really tiring listening to people with such entrenched positions. For a private model to work for any industry there has to be a strong market and the availability of choice for consumers. That has worked well in Telecoms (who would want the old BT monopoly back?), but less so on things like water provision which has been a disaster in so many ways. Make a sensible choice based upon evidence; both in the UK and in other countries.

The NHS has to stop being a political football and calm heads and some serious leadership is needed. A full, cross-party, review is needed with NOTHING off the table. Take politics out of the equation and have a group whose role is to give us the best system based upon medical outcomes. A full review of the pros and cons of other systems across the World resulting in some clear recommendations and a plan for change. And of course, some joined up thinking. GPs, Hospitals and Social Care need to be holistically joined together otherwise improvements in one will inevitably create problems elsewhere - stop treating them as separate; they are part of the same end to end process.

Of course it’s not going to happen until the whole thing implodes at some point in the future. In the meantime, we’ll get more mediocre politicians telling us they can fix an organisation with 1.7M staff and a £210B budget. The more gullible voters will of course be taken in by their promises/fear mongering and in true British style we’ll muddle along.

It worries me a lot that people use these criteria so heavily to make hiring decisions. Sure you need domain expertise in your team, but does each leader really need that? I don’t believe so and indeed my point to them, which they didn’t take well, was that simply bringing in someone to transform their IT who already had deep domain experience and knew their key infrastructure meant they were almost certainly missing out on new thinking and new ideas. As a consultant for many years I was used to being dropped into environments where I actually knew very little about the business; especially in the early days. You bring in, if it isn’t already there, the necessary deep domain knowledge. You need someone in the room to ask ‘why?’ - to challenge the status quo that perhaps has been built over many years.

I see this all the time in particular sectors; health being one example. Of course your medical practitioners need to be qualified and have deep knowledge, but your IT teams and leadership? No they really don’t. I see endless non-exec jobs in healthcare being advertised but they almost always stipulate years of relevant experience. If that is you, then you are missing out on new energy, fresh ideas and innovation. It is ridiculously short sighted and is part of the reason that failed leaders just keep cropping in a new role in the same industry and failing again. Of course the corollary is also true. Bringing in someone at a very senior level from outside who knows zero about your business can end in disaster as well. There are plenty of well documented case studies.

Where you need deep expertise, such as in health or legal, then of course employ experts, but part of your role in leadership is to constantly refresh with new ideas and new energy, and of course to steal ideas from different domains. If you keep insisting on ‘decades of experience’ you are likely perpetuating the same thinking (both good and bad) and just hiring the same. Like begets like, which is great for maintaining core cultural characteristics (which you should not compromise on) but in terms of business thinking.... it is self-defeating. It is why you see leaders constantly failing upwards because they tick the ‘experience’ criteria.

Unless you need to fill a domain expert role, hire for capability not decades of deep experience. Otherwise you will just get more of the same. Give that person who doesn’t quite fit your specification a chance. They may well surprise you and your business will benefit enormously.

Rules, regulations, laws are there for a reason. Clearly they can provide a great foundation for business, for our rights and a framework for how society operates and where the boundaries are. For business there are regulations, such as much of the health and safety regime, that are there for good reason and improve the lives and safety of workers. There is also a strand of regulation that is there, and grows and grows, that adds nothing - apart from getting in the way. It’s a tough balance. Every government, and indeed company, seems to have a mission to reduce complexity, to minimise process and limit impedance to productivity. Most fail, so it is not through lack of desire - mostly.

As seems to be my thing these days, I am going to use the UK government and its prime minister as an example as to why solving this is a problem. It’s nothing personal. It’s just that he, Keir Starmer, seems to present great case studies as to what not to do. I hope for all our sakes (those living in the UK at least) he becomes more adept. It will, given the example, not only point out why rules and regulations, how they are interpreted and when they need to change, need to be handled with care but also when done badly undermines confidence in our leaders and institutions.

So let’s talk about the ECHR. You might feel this is a bad example to use, but actually it draws out many of the issues that hamstring companies and governments through lack of clarity, lack of pragmatism and a refusal to countenance change. The ECHR is a hot topic but how many people have actually looked at what it is. Here is a summary (from AI)

The ECHR, or the European Convention on Human Rights, is an international treaty of the Council of Europe that protects human rights and fundamental freedoms. It was adopted in 1950 and is enforced by the European Court of Human Rights, which handles individual complaints after all domestic legal options have been exhausted. The convention guarantees rights such as freedom of speech, religion, and assembly, as well as protection from torture and the right to a fair trial. It is

• A treaty: The ECHR is an international treaty that makes certain human rights legally binding for the 46 member states of the Council of Europe.

• A protection mechanism: It was created after World War II to prevent atrocities and safeguard human rights across Europe.

• A legal framework: It was the first instrument to make rights from the Universal Declaration of Human Rights binding in law.

Key rights it protects

• Right to life

• Prohibition of torture and inhuman or degrading treatment

• Right to liberty and security

• Right to a fair trial

• Right to private and family life

• Freedom of thought, conscience, and religion

• Freedom of expression

• Freedom of assembly and association

How it works

• Enforcement: The European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) in Strasbourg oversees the convention’s implementation.

• Individual complaints: Individuals can bring cases to the Court if they believe their rights have been violated by a member state, but only after they have exhausted all legal avenues within their own country.

• Inter-State applications: A member state can also bring a case against another member state.

People constantly mix up ECHR and ECtHR and it is really important to separate them. Too many people say ECHR but they don’t distinguish - even our super talented politicians(!) make this error frequently. There is no doubt in the late 1940s this declaration was a great idea, but I doubt any of those involved envisaged a world we all now inhabit where millions are on the move in search of a better life.

Sir Keir Starmer has few clear ideals. He flip flops around without any sense of mission, but the one thing he has, so far at least, been clear about is his strict adherence to the law - especially international law. He is after all a lawyer by trade, so it informs his world view. But as with all things, taking your point to extremes can be a problem and purity in your view also creates conditions that disallow any nuance. He refuses to countenance the UK leaving the ECHR. It is therefore somewhat surprising that his new Justice Minister, presumably with Sir Keir’s approval, is willing to override 800 years of UK common law and remove the rights set out in Magna Carta to be tried by a jury of your peers. Seems that in Sir Keir’s mind there is a hierarchy of laws with international ones coming higher than those of the country he is running. Of course he has no ability to change international law as he does domestically. Whether true or not it creates a perception of inconsistency. That is always a problem when dealing with any regulation; even ones with less impact than the ECHR.

The problem with the ECHR is twofold. It is only one way (by design) and focused on individuals and ignores rights of society in general and also the way that it is interpreted. This is massively accentuated by the fact that the ECHR is overseen by the ECtHR and not by our own parliament. It has led to crazy situations where foreign criminals guilty of crimes such as rape, avoid deportation by using the Human Rights act to appeal and win. There have been so many instances of this it is impractical to list them (you can do your own google search), and of course these cases are leveraged by people with ulterior motives. Rightly, irrespective of numbers involved, this causes widespread anger from many of the native population. Large numbers of MPs just shrug their collective shoulders. They outsource their consciences to the ECHR because without this list of universal rights they fear they won’t be able to control the baser instincts and desires of the great unwashed masses. This despite the fact that the UK led the way for hundreds of years, post Magna Carta, in defending the rights of individuals against the state. But apparently now, we simply don’t have the ability to do that without oversight from the ECHR and ECtHR. It’s like children deferring difficult decisions to their parents for fear of getting it wrong and getting into trouble.

There seems to be this fear that without the ECHR that the UK will turn into North Korea. That without this oversight from judges in Strasbourg, all of the rights that we’ve had through common law for the last 800 years will be ruthlessly removed by the government. A few days ago, I’d have said that was just ridiculous, but given Lammy has now taken a bludgeon to our fundamental right to trial by jury, perhaps those who are so opposed to leaving the ECHR are right. Of course the ECHR does not talk about said trial by jury, so nothing to see here.

There is of course fundamentally nothing wrong with the ECHR. It was created in troubled times for very good reasons. As with all legal frameworks, interpretation is everything. All this nonsense could be solved by withdrawing from the ECHR, incorporating the rights into UK Law immediately but crucially then having the guidance on how to interpret these rights under the remit of the UK parliament.

Human rights are, by definition, focused on the individual. That has to be balanced by the rights and needs of the collective, i.e. everyone else. So that rapist from somewhere overseas cannot be deported because it would infringe his rights to a family here in the UK? What about the human rights of the families with daughters who live near said convicted rapist? The argument that all asylum seekers are not rapists and we have plenty indigenous ones, is pretty thin. Yes we do and they should feel the full weight of the law, but surely your average Brit should not have their rights infringed by adding to our own pile of criminals by importing more. There needs to be balance and that is what the interpretation of the ECHR as it currently stands doesn’t have. One of the best traits of British people is fairness. This isn’t fair. Everyone knows it, our government knows it, but nothing can be done, because rules are rules and we can’t align ourselves with Russia by being the only country in Europe not signed up to ECHR. No wonder faith in the establishment is so low.

Also the whole idea of human rights has morphed and been corrupted since the end of WWII. The endless fighting over Trans ‘rights’ is a good example. Now I’m not going to enter into that debate per se, but it’s fascinating how a desire to say, enter the toilets of the opposite sex, is now increasingly talked about in terms of rights. Of course with the sacrosanct nature of the ECHR, then anyone who objects is suddenly beyond the pale - rational argument is thrown into the bin. But rights are not, in my opinion, determined by God. They are open to debate and change as much as any other supposed moral position. Of course we need to be careful when deciding such things, but the present climate seems to create a position where things cannot be questioned - the ECHR has taken on a similar position as the Ten Commandments did in older times. It is almost heresy to suggest that they might need to be questioned or changed.

As mentioned earlier, another issue is that the flow is one way. It is about what society should provide to the individual (important of course) but there is nothing that defines what you put back. There is no equivalent of ‘ask not what your country can do for you, but rather what you can do for your country’. That fits with the increasing drift towards self over collective.

The rights defined by the ECHR also have a cost. The right to food, shelter, family or whatever comes with a cost. When funds are limited, simply screaming it is my right to have a house big enough for my multiple children is clearly a problem. No administration, no matter its political persuasion, can meet all needs when they are so ill-defined and resources are limited. Hence why we get so much unease over the Billions spent on housing refugees/asylum seekers, when there are already huge numbers of people who are in equal need. But as stated earlier, in the hierarchy of laws, it is easier to ignore home grown issues in favour of the unforgiving ECHR rules and the threat of EU judges getting involved.

So we have a key piece of legislation that, whatever your political views, is not fit for purpose that we can’t change because…. well it would be a bad thing. You see the same thing in companies. ‘We can’t change that’ ‘Why not?’ ‘Well, we’ve always done it like that and in any case compliance says we can’t’. At that point the conversation usually ends without any discussion as to how said ‘rule’ is just to hard to question.

Starmer - if you want to leave a legacy other than being the most useless Prime Minister we’ve ever had, do something about this. You are in the position, in fact you or the only person who can, sort this mess out. Show some leadership, backbone and common sense. The numbers may be small, but the damage done to the credibility of law and order, and yes fairness, done by treating ECHR like the tablets of stone from Mount Sinai, is incalculable.

For us lesser mortals who just have to cope with ever more regulations/rules which are full of holes and subject to interpretation, then we have to do what we can. We need to be thoughtful about how we interpret rules & regulations - slavish adherence is not sensible or useful. Work through your position and what your response should be, and where possible, push for change. If all else fails, remember the old adage - ‘if you can’t make things better, don’t make them worse’.

Child poverty in the UK is measured as anyone living below 60% of the median income. It is not a measure of poverty, it is a measure of income inequality. If the government wants to pin its flag to the mast of reducing income inequality, then fair enough (some people will agree and others won’t), but please stop using emotional terms like child poverty which for most of us, especially older folks, conjures visions of Dickensian workhouses.

By this measure you can only get rid of ‘child poverty’ by flattening the distribution of everyone’s income, which to be fair they seem to be trying hard to achieve by endlessly increasing taxes. Maybe that is the communist outcome they aspire to; drag everyone down so everyone qualifies for state assistance. The opposite of trickle-down wealth… trickle-up poverty.

Oh, and in case anyone thinks that I am cruel, heartless and unsympathetic, I grew up in a household that would have not only have met today’s criteria for child poverty, but very probably absolute poverty (depending of course on how you measure it). Better to define absolute poverty, but that is much harder and will provoke endless argument. Does not having a smart phone in 2025 mean you are poor?

This is a really stupid metric that doesn’t help and needs to be replaced. Of course it won’t be because who will stand up and say they are against ending child poverty?

Idiots all.

This month’s non-fiction is Conflicted by Ian Leslie. As anyone who reads any of my ramblings will know I am not a fan of ‘traditional’ business books. I find that most of them have one, if you are lucky, insight which is then padded out with waffle and meaningless motherhood statements for hundreds of pages. Better to look outside of business authors for insight if you are looking for how to build more effective organisations.

Conflicted is a brilliant book, full of what seem afterwards like obvious insights into how people make decisions and more importantly good decisions. It particularly resonated with me as I tend, now I am retired, to look backwards more than forwards. I have been reflecting on the various companies I worked for and why some were successful and some less so (even the successful ones struggled to remain successful). I was reminded of one company where the level of innovation, thought leadership and business success was exceptional for an extended period. I think there were two main reasons. Firstly the talent density was off the scale with a strong common culture and mission. The second was what Mr Leslie covers so superbly. The ability to disagree within a collaborative structure. That came from the leadership but permeated the whole organisation and led to better decisions. Any leader or aspiring leader should read this book and teach their teams how to disagree.

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is Old God’s Time by Sebastian Barry. This is a very recent read (like, last week) and rarely these days do I read something new that is as lyrical and beautifully written as this is. I shall certainly be seeking out his other writings. It packs quite a punch, although it takes a while to get to the final denouncement. It is a tragic tale and not for the faint-hearted, but is thought provoking and emotionally draining. A must read.

Personally I think it is a bit of a stretch to place all the ills of British business at the feet of HR, but he does raise some interesting points that are worth exploring further.

I don’t like the term HR (as I am sure many others don’t) so before talking about how it works, and how it doesn’t, let’s be clear what we are talking about. It has become more common for what used to be traditional HR processes to be subsumed into a wider People/Talent function; especially in larger organisations. For the purposes of this discussion let’s use the term Talent.

There is no doubt that there is today a greater emphasis in most companies upon talent. That is no small part due to the growth of the knowledge economy and the increasing power of technology. But unless AI replaces us all, the acquisition, growth and retention of talent will continue to be central to success. With that increased scrutiny has come the evolution of HR departments which were originally about policy and process (as well as keeping everything legal) into Talent teams whose brief can include recruiting, performance management, DEI plus a whole host of former HR responsibilities. The scope of a ‘Talent’ department clearly varies, but AI suggests the following for a reasonably sized enterprise:

1. Attracting talent: Using an attractive employer brand and employee value proposition to recruit new talent

2. Identifying talent: Identifying business critical roles, such as leadership and specialist roles

3. Developing talent: Linking talent development to other learning and development initiatives

4. Engaging talent: Ensuring employees have good quality jobs, autonomy, and clarity of expectations

5. Retaining talent: Investing in development activities and providing reward and recognition

6. Deploying talent: Using the workforce in the most effective and efficient way

7. Promoting the company’s brand: Promoting the company’s brand through recruitment initiatives and events

8. Ensuring current employees are satisfied: Ensuring that current employees are satisfied in their positions

9. Building talent strategies: Building talent strategies to attract and retain top talent

10. Managing a team: Managing a team of talent acquisition specialists

11. Training programs: Designing and delivering training programs

12. Performance reviews: Designing and Conducting performance reviews

13. Workforce planning: Optimising workforce planning and strategy

Wow, and that doesn’t even include the old HR responsibilities, such as payroll, leave management and the like! Of course the list varies by company but there is no doubt that it has become a significant part of any sizeable company.

But why has it grown so much and is that a good thing? Do all of those accountabilities live in Talent? Before answering, let’s talk about some of the fault lines.

What should the scope of Talent be?

So actually what should the role of a Talent team be? Too often, the actual scope and accountabilities of the Talent organisation are ill-defined. Given their raison d’etre is around ‘people’ and in most organisations that is the centre of things, then it is easy to push anything that affects people, which is almost everything, in the direction of Talent.

Thinking at a macro level about what should be the scope, then in purely capitalistic terms surely it is to attract, hire and grow the talent necessary for the company to be successful. Of course that begs the question about how you define success and does it mean success at any cost? If your company has a clear mission then that can provide guardrails - ‘don’t be evil’ anyone? A mission, such as that, is of course open to considerable interpretation.

One key area where there is likely contention of the scope of Talent, is in the social area. Is the Talent team just there simply to provide the talent for commercial success, or is it there to make the world a better place? This then takes us into some murky and contentious spaces - politics, DEI/EDI and ESG.

Most companies will want to be seen to be ‘progressive’ (a word I loathe that I’ll come back to in a later blog) so will provide the space for Talent to drive these agenda items as they see fit so they can proclaim their virtue on their website and social media. My experience is even where Exec teams see themselves as ‘progressive’, they essentially outsource a lot of the thinking and implementation to their Talent teams and their main focus - not surprisingly - is on commercial reality. Of course these can come into conflict and increasingly do; especially when boundaries are ill-defined and resources are scarce.

This is not just about the profit motive within the private sector. It also applies to the public sector - in fact probably more so because a lack of commercial pressure means other more social/progressive issues can, and do, come to the fore. Is that a bad thing? Well if it stops public sector efficiency then yes it is. As just one example of very many, witness the mess that NHS Scotland has got itself into. Whatever the rights and wrongs of this particular case, the absurd amount of time and money spent is distracting from the purpose of a struggling public service.

So there is a contention at the heart of Talent that rarely gets resolved which is then accentuated by other issues. Fundamentally, most companies (or countries in fact) don’t answer the question about what Talent is for so they are straddling, quite often contradictory, missions.

Abdication of Leadership

The role of Chief People Officer or Chief Talent Officer is an extremely difficult one as you can see by the scope of responsibilities, but the growth of Talent departments has allowed other leaders to accidentally, or frankly quite often by design, to abdicate responsibility for key parts of their role. Leadership is about leading people. When talking about the negatives around more and more ‘Talent’, this may be the biggest.

There are as many bad Talent Leaders as there are bad Business Leaders; and of course the corollary is also true, but poor leaders have increasingly been able to hide behind a Talent organisation for key decisions that should be theirs. As anyone who has read any of my other blogs will know this is, in my opinion, the main cause of the decline of British (and other countries) business - not explicitly the fault of Talent, but ever bigger more powerful Talent teams have creating the conditions where mediocrity can outsource some of the more difficult parts of the leadership role - and they do.

Talent allows leaders, simply by being there, to abdicate responsibility for things that are clearly part of the leadership remit, such as performance management. That is not to say that your Talent team doesn’t have a role to play in something like performance management (mostly because it overlaps with many legal requirements), but this area is a good example of where the ever more powerful Talent organisation quite often doesn’t help the wider business. We’ll return to Performance Management shortly.

How are your team (which can be of very varying size of course) feeling? Too often we now see ‘I’ll get the Talent team to run a survey’ as the answer - an answer that grew exponentially through Covid. Well you could go and talk to them and find out their hopes and dreams, concerns, or general feelings. Get to know them as human beings. As an ex-CIO I was once pushed really hard by a senior leader to roll-out a system that would allow remote feedback, i.e a survey tool. Their rationale was ‘I don’t have time to talk to people - I have a business to run’. That left me deeply depressed. Of course at some point we did roll-out such a system given we had become a very significant organisation and it can provide some interesting data points when used alongside other feedback. However, what I feared transpired. The weaker leaders retreated ever more into their (virtual) office - never or rarely meeting their teams in person. This roll-out required a significant amount of effort, not only from IT, but also meant additional workload in running the surveys and analysing the results. There is a place for this type of data but it is a good example of something that reinforces weak leadership behaviours, increasing the scope of Talent and adding minimal value. If you are a leader, at whatever level, and you don’t know what your team is thinking, you just aren’t doing your job.

I clearly remember a senior executive asking the Talent leadership to prepare a monthly list of ‘Who is a flight risk’. Well the only way that can be done is by asking the leaders and managers who run the various functions, departments and teams. No centralised Talent team will have a clue. However, the bad leaders also had no clue, so the collected data was of awful quality and after a few cycles everybody conveniently forgot about it. A good leader knows because they are properly leading teams of people - yes you’ll get the occasional surprise, but you should know who is a flight risk and why. It is yet another great example of how easy it becomes to outsource a problem to a central team, which increases their scope, who are perceived to be there to ‘manage people’.

Growth of regulation

In years gone by, only significant organisations would have a ‘HR dept’. One of the reasons for its seemingly endless growth is the relentless rise in legal and advisory employment processes pouring from government. We’ll talk about some of the softer issues, such as DEI, later but the scale and size of employment law that has to be followed is huge. Now of course there needs to be a balance between employee and employer rights and few would argue that in times gone by that lay with the employer which resulted in dangerous and toxic workplaces, but it really feels that the pendulum has swung way, way towards the employee. This became more clear to me by observing the policies and processes needed by the charities that I now work with. The regulations are comparable between a $10M turnover charity and a $1B turnover publicly listed company. Actually it is in some ways more onerous as charities have additional rules and regulations to comply with. It is a minefield in which risk-averse leaders will generally gravitate to total compliance because that is just easier. ‘Rules say no’.

Policies and Procedures

Companies don’t help themselves by creating massively overcomplicated processes which are designed to aid compliance but to do so they introduce rigid structures to catch the edge cases/people who might abuse the system. Many of these currently live in Talent or intersect with existing Talent responsibilities. The result is massive and complex processes, IT and people to administer said process. A classic example is Leave Management which I covered in an earlier blog. It is a huge soak of effort and time that generally doesn’t add anything to your business - quite the reverse in fact. All of these things add up and suddenly you have a significant operational team to make all of these things work - but as with Annual leave it doesn’t (work that is) so tons of manual work is needed on top of the ‘official’ process.

Being Social

We now step into controversial territory. Talent is now usually the home of DEI and all that entails. DEI essentially layers on top of regulation and adds more process, structure and training above that which is legally mandated - and yes, those two things overlap to a greater or lesser degree depending upon which country you are in. I’ll say at the start that I am a big supporter of creating equality of opportunity for everyone, but I am not, and never have been, a fan of DEI. The concept of ‘equity’ is fundamentally flawed when it is interpreted, as it usually is, not in creating equality of opportunity but in equity of outcome. In my opinion it is a very poor solution to a significant issue.

Any leader of any note knows that having diversity of thought in their teams is essential for innovation and growth. Diversity of thought can be a wonderful thing when done well. However, too many just turn this into a numbers game on race, sex, gender or any other of the myriad of intersections that DEI invents.

My experience in this space has been varied and informative - at least for me. In one of my earlier jobs in the mid 80s, I worked for a guy called Phil Sosin. Phil was openly gay; unusual for the time - he made no secret of it. He regaled us with lurid stories of his nights in various dubious nightclubs in London. He was just one of us, someone I was happy to share a pint with if not join him on his nighttime escapades! When years later he later died of Aids we mourned him as a lost friend and colleague. Phil did more for ‘DEI’ than anyone else I’d ever met to that point and certainly more than any number of training courses on diversity or microaggressions.

Back in the early 2000s I joined a company called Thoughtworks. Whilst I didn’t realise it at the time, I think Thoughtworks was the first commercial company, certainly the first I knew about, where the issues of social justice were embedded into everything we did - it was part of our mission, explicit and integrated. As a private company, we were not beholden to shareholders and driven by the founder we spent a huge amount of leadership time talking, fighting, disagreeing and agreeing on how we could make the world a better place through technology. Did we always agree? Absolutely not. Did we succeed? Well, we certainly punched above our weight. Later as the company went into PE and then public ownership, the mission changed and we ended up with much more formal DEI structures. Which was more effective? Without doubt the first. Mainly because the leadership really owned the commitments we made - later, and indeed in most companies, that was outsourced to ‘DEI professionals’ and while I am sure there will be howls of protest from those who put nice statements on their websites about inclusivity, it starts to become just another exec team report. As an example of how things changed over time, in the later years I once actually sat in a meeting, run by Talent, where we looked at salaries and whether they were balanced across a particular population. For nearly an hour there was a huge debate about why, at a particular grade band, men on average earned 0.7% more than women. At the next grade band women actually earned slightly more than men - no discussion because obviously that didn’t fit the prevailing DEI optics. Pretty much a full afternoon of several senior executives was spent on frankly meaningless analysis rather than important issues (commercial and/or social).

Whatever your view on DEI as a concept, in reality the main issue is that devolving ownership to Talent means feeble leadership can say it is someone else’s job. You end up with weaker commitment to whatever you have decided should be part of your mission, and also get much more process which requires an army of people to run. The growth of DEI creates two things. Firstly an obsession with measurement. Of course it is quite hard to measure diversity of thought, so it is easier to measure indirect substitutes even though they actually don’t tell you anything about the thing that is important. I remember one memorable discussion where I was told ‘we need less white men and more Indian women’. Right, as though those two blocks of humans are each homogeneous in some way and one is more innovative than the other. Even the most blinkered diversity driven human will generally accept that, but their answer is to add a myriad of other ‘intersections’ to make sure everything is tickety boo. Result - meaningless numbers, a myriad of people to devise and monitor said intersections and a nice report for senior execs who can congratulate themselves on being ‘progressive’. It also creates a new class of experts - the so-called DEI Professional. What actually is a DEI professional? Well it is clearly someone who has a deep interest and passion for the subject and if that is you that’s absolutely fine - great to have a passion about something. But suggesting that this equivalent to say, the qualifications to be a finance professional, is totally bogus. Companies have added a whole set of specialist overheads and roles and have ended up with worse outcomes.

To illustrate the problem of taking good intent with bad results, look no further than Oxford University. A world-class institution, frequently the leading university in the world, built on excellence but with a (well deserved) reputation for elitism. Full marks for them then wanting to give a wider group of people the opportunities that attending such an institution brings. How they implemented this was to push for certain underprivileged groups to get offered preferential (lower) grades to join. Unfortunately they then equated that to colour/race and it has resulted in a significant lowering of standards with bigger drop-outs, fewer first class degrees and accusations of ‘racism’ and ‘dumbing down’. They would perhaps have been much better served by using their considerable expertise to sponsor schools in more impoverished areas and give those kids a better chance to ‘make the grade’ while still maintaining excellence. In my opinion this is classic DEI by numbers instead of looking at the issues deeply.

If DEI is important to you, and the principles should be, then you need to think harder about how it works. Just creating a ‘DEI function’ within Talent is not the answer. Your first question to answer is as a company what you are trying to do and how does that fit with the rest of your business? If your mission is to change the world, then give that equally footing to commercial success. By all means have your Talent team help you, but ownership has to sit with your leaders. Simply making bland statements on your website and on your job openings is trite, meaningless and not helping your business nor the people you purport to.

Culture

Increasingly many Talent teams see themselves as the custodian, or indeed the owner, of culture. Just no, no, no. Again this is allowed by weak leaders. Culture is created, maintained, and indeed broken, by the behaviour and actions of leaders - full stop. Of course Talent is part of said leadership, but anyone who says they are responsible for culture should be exited immediately - it is nonsense and indeed dangerous nonsense.

If you claim to ‘own’ culture then you then have to do things to make it better. That can, and does, lead to all sorts of initiatives which rarely help. The most important thing that Talent can do for culture is to make sure you recruit people who fit with the cultural norms and aspirations; especially leaders.

Performance Management

One of the key business processes that now generally sits inside Talent is Performance Management and in theory, that makes sense after all it is about the performance of your people. However, as with other parts of the scope of Talent, the tentacles and impact of Performance Management extend across huge parts of your company’s operating model.

If you are reading this and think your company has cracked the performance management challenge, then please write it up and share. In my experience both as a senior leader and also a consultant to other companies, it is invariably a very complex, time consuming process that adds little value. Yes, in theory it protects you from legal issues when dealing with underperformance, but in my lengthy experience it usually doesn’t.

The issue with Performance Management living inside Talent is that what is created (grades, roles, job titles, capability) are completely embedded into your operating model and have huge consequences. Just a couple of examples. Data privacy/protection is a huge growth area. Who should have access to what data is a critical and important factor in any significant organisation. Most companies attempt to do this based upon role and and partly some other attributes such as where in the organisational chart they live and potentially which geography. When Talent is creating fancy job titles/roles like ‘Vice President’ or ‘Executive Vice President’ or whatever, they rarely define data access rights. This invariably becomes a nightmare for various operational functions; especially your CISO and CIO. Another example is ‘grades’. Talent teams just love grades and defining what they are and how you move from one to another. It’s quite fascinating that the same team that wants to decompose people into endless separate boxes each with its own needs as part of DEI, insists on forcing the same people with wildly different skills and roles into a single ‘grade’. Of course this creates a myriad of problems, not least of which is that all performance reviews turn into promotion debates because, ignoring the status aspect, irrespective of any claims that grade and salary are not connected - of course they are. And as the inevitable ‘grade inflation’ eventually creeps up on virtually every company and you hear the “We need more grades” cry from the Talent professionals…

In terms of the wider business, the performance process invariably puts a huge burden on leaders and managers; endless data collection, reviews, arguments, unhappy employees (and sometimes happy ones) with precious little business value generated. No-one is happy, except of course once again the Execs who can point to some lovely powerpoint slides about how they are managing their employees so brilliantly. Once again a quick visit to the ‘coal face’ would dissuade any out of touch exec of that misguided belief. But I guess you could send out a survey instead…

There are a myriad of other issues with pretty much every performance review process built in a significant organisation - unpicking that is a subject for another day. Suffice to say that this is so intimately bound up with your overall operating model and requires such significant time and effort to run it should not be within the remit of Talent unless you have a truly exceptional business leader running the function. As with all things, the question is ‘is this adding value to your business commensurate with the effort and time spent?’ Based upon my experiences in a multitude of companies, I would suggest the answer is almost always no.

So is Talent breaking your Business?

Of course it isn’t. The original article was click-bait and when done well, a strong Talent team is a great asset to your business. Recruitment for example is a highly specialised capability that should be run from within Talent. However, as discussed earlier, there is a growing tendency to use Talent as a dumping ground for things that should sit elsewhere. Hence a quick tour of LinkedIn will show you leaders in these functions complaining about overwork and stress. Am not surprised - as it stands it is a thankless job. The implications of lack of clarity of direction and priorities for your organisation can allow poor leadership to thrive by outsourcing key accountabilities.

And all these things don’t scale linearly with your business growth. Unless you are very careful they exponentially get worse.

What is your mission?

You need to resolve whether your Talent function is there to improve the commercials of your business or to make the world a better place or both. I suspect all senior leaders reading this will say both as to not say that will clearly make the company pariahs who will never attract the right talent in today’s marketplace. Clearly making the company attractive to talent is hugely important, but you need to clearly articulate your employee value proposition and what that means for your overall mission. Most companies fail to do this - they simply say ‘we are committed to diversity, blah, blah, blah’. Well what does that mean and importantly how does that get implemented across your business? Many organisations fail to prioritise effectively. They try to do too many things and then provide little or no guidance on how prioritisation happens further down the food chain. In the Talent space that creates the problem of trying to straddle competing priorities and loss of focus.

You must be really, really clear about what this means between commercial success and/or improving the world. Yes, I know they are not mutually exclusive and overlap, but that is the issue. Too often it is left unclear and wide ranging commitments are made at Exec level that can’t all be met. I remember sitting in meetings to discover huge Exec commitments, without any detailed analysis, had been made around ESG which meant a diversion of resources away from other priorities which in turn created significant tension and a loss of focus. If you remain ambiguous you run the risk of increased focus on ‘improve the world’ at the expense of other priorities. Why? Because it is easier to do. Getting everyone to go on Diversity training gets boxes ticked (irrespective of whether it improves things) whereas focusing on great recruitment and capability building is hard. In tough economic times that is an increasing issue.

Compliance/Regulation

You can do little about this apart from lobbying the government. However, you can make it less onerous. All decisions in business come with risk. There is an argument that the act of taking risk is at the core of leadership and a highly underrated skill. However, in my experience there is a tendency to not take risks around anything to do with employment law and increasingly DEI. Hence every box must be ticked. No nuance is allowed. A more pragmatic approach can yield huge savings - yes, of course that increases risk, but that is what business leaders do everyday. Good Talent leaders will understand this and partner to find the right balance. Too often the answer is ‘no’.

Figure out how to be ‘minimally compliant’ and accept the risks that brings.

Performance Management

Your Talent team should certainly be part of its administration, but it is hugely important that this supports the business better. In my opinion, the COO (or equivalent) should own this important process given how central and integral it is to the operating model for the company. You may have a Talent leader who has the skills to design and implement this, but generally you won’t as proven by how awful most of the implementations are.

A performance management process that actually adds value to your organisation that is commensurate with the effort needed to run it, is a rare thing indeed. Do better and stop adding more burden to your leaders and managers for no gain.

Policies and Processes

Stop designing processes to catch people who potentially break the rules (leave, expenses, travel policy, etc) and trust your employees to do the right thing. Sure put in place a process that will still catch miscreants who, say, decide to take double their holiday allowance, but design to trust the many and reduce both impedance to the business in terms of managing compliance.

You need agility and flexibility. Sometimes rules and processes force people to do the wrong, or pointless, thing because, well, they are following the rules.

DEI

I am absolutely not saying you should not consider and adopt many of the outcomes that DEI pushes, you really should, but personally I see no need for a separate DEI function, inside Talent or anywhere in fact.

If you disagree, then that is your decision, but whatever route you take you must think hard and be clear about how this is supporting the business, your mission and make sure it doesn’t allow weak leaders (who you should dispose of anyway) to just ‘delegate’ key responsibilities.

Muddled messages result in muddled thinking and atrophy.

Next Steps

Of course, all of the problems we just talked about are a consequence (mostly) of scale. If your company is 20 people and everyone is multi-tasking, playing multiple roles, and you all completely understand each other’s contribution to the business, then much of this just happens - it is part of your day to day. With scale comes challenges. The number of connections between people grows, the business gets bigger and is delivering more products and is just harder to run.

There is also the ‘boiling frog’ syndrome to consider. Where is the tipping point after which you need more formal processes to understand and manage these Talent business processes? Well there probably isn’t one. It is a slow decline into greater impedance, increasingly sclerotic functions and more arguments about your Talent. When that tipping point happens will be different for each company but if you grow, it will happen. Of course even when it does, it is unlikely to be your highest priority and you’ll do a few changes, usually adding more complexity, and muddle through. These take on a life of their own and spread tentacles into other parts of the business making it increasingly difficult to change.

AI potentially, and I stress potentially, offers an opportunity to reduce the cost of many Talent processes - especially around business processes such as performance management and operational requirements such as leave management. But don’t make the mistake of using IT to make bad processes faster - a problem that has been around for as long as I have! Instead use the opportunity to rethink and realign. Clarity of mission and priorities and then reimagine what the Talent team of the future should be. It isn’t what we have now.

A great Talent team can be a HUGE enabler of your business, but the trend today is quite often leading you in the wrong direction hence why some people are asking the question about whether it is taking over and holding back business.

The first step is to decide the scope of Talent, especially around any ‘social mission’ and stop scope creep. Hold leaders accountable for people issues that are firmly within their remit.

So what is the right time to start on building your great Talent function given where you are on your journey? Probably the same as when you should plant a tree ? Answer - 10 years ago or failing that, today. That of course doesn’t mean that you introduce huge processes and spend zillions on IT to support. Look at where you are at and put in place what is appropriate for now and something you can build on sensibly as you continue your journey.

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Non-fiction

The level of discourse these days is not great; especially on social media. It seems that everyone who disagrees with anything you say will label you a Fascist or a Nazi or both. That is irrespective of where you sit on the political spectrum. It is similar with accusations of genocide - the words have lost all meaning as they are distributed like sweets at a children’s party.

I have always been fascinated by WWII. Several reasons, one is the stories of extraordinary people in extraordinary times who exhibited unimaginable bravery and resourcefulness. I am sure we all wonder ‘what would I have done?’ The other side to that is how seemingly ordinary people could commit such heinous crimes? Is it inherent in our nature or are they children of circumstance? This is particularly, but not uniquely, true of the Third Reich. Were they psychopaths or ‘ordinary people’?

Richard Evans ‘Hitler’s People’ is the latest in a long line of studies into what were the movers and shakers of The Thousand Year Reich actually like? He does a super job of taking you through each of the ones you have already heard of (Himmler et al) but also lesser known criminals such as Irma Grese. It is easy to dismiss such individuals as mad, but they were flesh and blood like the rest of us. What made them tick and how did they get to where they ended up? What part is nature v nurture? As the author reminds us, ‘Nazism was not the ideology of the uneducated or unsuccessful’.

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is The Wasp Factory by Iain Banks. I read this some thirty years ago and it has stuck with me through the interviewing years with a force that few books do. At the time, it was the most original thing I’d ever read with an ending that literally no-one imagines (well at least anyone I’ve ever spoken to). I remember reaching the conclusion on the train into work and being almost too stunned to get off at the other end! Death and blood and gore fill the pages offset by flashes of humour. A horror story with a final twist that you’ll never forget!

Reading has always been a huge part of my life. From my earliest memories, I have been in love with books (and music which will be a separate blog). I struggle to understand those who don’t read or find no pleasure in it. I worry that they are missing out on one of life’s great joys. Still each to their own.

But, reading is in major decline, at least in the western world, and that is a worry not just in terms of lost opportunities for individuals but in the potential damage to society. As James Marriott brilliantly points out in his missive The dawn of the post-literate society the implications are potentially very significant. I agree with pretty much everything he says. Perhaps with wars all over the World and other huge issues such as Climate Change, then this feels maybe a lesser thing. I don’t think so.

I have no idea what the answer is, but to play a small part in perhaps spiking someone’s interest (I am under no illusions that no-one cares what I think on the subject) to read, I intend to promote one fiction and one non-fiction book a month. If only a single person visits their bookshop or picks up a Kindle then it will be worthwhile. These will not always be new volumes (I read even more than I did now I am retired) - some will come from the yellowing tomes adorning my home office. What they won’t include is the myriad of ‘business’ books; most of which in my opinion are poor fare.

In case you are a sensitive soul I should warn that some of the recommendations will not be ‘woke’ and may provoke disgust/anger or some other emotion. I do not believe in no-platforming anyone. Debate, disagreement and challenging the status quo has been the fuel of innovation since the Dark Ages. If we have lots of bad people around, I’d rather know about it rather than them lurking in the shadows. A good example of something most people would probably now ban is Mein Kampf by Adolf Hitler. I read it about 40 years ago and it was a miserable few days. The writing is amateurish and of course the messages are difficult to read. What is, I think, quite interesting is that anyone reading this in the late 1930s could be under no illusions about what he intended to happen if he got power. It’s all there. So even if we have the message we can be inclined to ignore it. Danger Will Robinson! I was reminded recently of an American friend of mine who in the first few weeks of Trump’s first term was horrified that he was building a wall on the Mexican border. But I protested ‘that’s what he said he would do’. The response was really interesting ‘but no politician does what they say they were going to do once elected’. Lessons for us all that we seem to have failed to understand since the 1930s.

Hope some of you have your interest piqued. Here are September’s suggestions. Oh and feel free to reply with your suggestions.

And if you do nothing else, go and read The dawn of the post-literate society It explains the issue way more eloquently than I ever could - maybe I need to read more books!

Non-fiction

This month’s non-fiction recommendation is Prisoners of Geography by Tim Marshall. A fascinating and illuminating journey through how the geography of countries has heavily influenced world events through the centuries. It’s an easy read that is full of insights; some of which you may already know, but others such as why Russia is so belligerent towards the West is probably one most don’t think about too much when reading about the horrors of the current Ukrainian invasion.

One of the reasons this is a thought provoker is its analysis of the rather stupid way that Empires of the last couple of centuries moved countries away from historic boundaries, that had arisen largely through geographical features, to putting together tribal and religious groups who had zero in common and in fact had a history of conflict. The logic behind it from an occupying power perspective is actually sound, but the result is the fault lines we see today around the world, especially in the Middle East and Africa. There are interesting lessons for now in that despite the overwhelming historical evidence that bringing together different ethnicities and religions together at high speed usually results in endless conflict, we seem hell bent, at least in some parts of the world, of making the same mistake the colonialists did but now via mass migration/immigration. Of course it will all be different this time!

Well worth a read in my opinion. It, as one reviewer said, ‘puts the Geo back into Geo politics’

Fiction

This month’s fiction recommendation is The Remains of the Day by Kazuo Ishiguro. I don’t usually read books more than once, but this was an exception. The film is magnificent as well, but the book is an absolute masterpiece of lost love, a life unfulfilled and a devotion to duty/work that crushes emotion. The main protagonist, a butler named Stevens, is beautifully created and fleshed out. I suspect many of us reading this book will see something of ourselves; I certainly did - how we limit ourselves through our beliefs, our ideologies, and self-imposed values and restrictions. It’s one of the great English language novels and a deserved Booker prize winner.

When I was growing up, which was in the 60s and 70s, it was relatively easy to define what ‘working class' was. There was a straightforward understanding based mostly around occupation, which of course is usually directly correlated to salary, to education with most of the working class leaving school at 14 and very rarely going on to higher education, and lifestyle. This in general meant it was defined as those who worked in factories, mines, the building trade and those in other semi-skilled roles. Politically they were generally Labour voters and union members. My family was very much working class. Dad worked in the building trade before his early death, Mum was a housewife who before marriage worked in the cotton mills that surrounded our house and upon becoming a widow did all sorts of menial cleaning and cooking jobs. Our relatives worked in other similar industries. I did start on the family tree some while ago, but apart from one grandfather who was a train driver, pretty much every man was a coal miner and every woman a housewife. The highlight was finding someone who was an iron ore miner rather than a coal miner! Probably 90% of my friends were of similar background. Of course we were the lucky ones who, if blessed with any intelligence, had the chance denied to our forefathers of going on to further education. I was quite shocked when arriving at university to find ‘posh’ and ‘middle class’ peeps. A whole new world!

I’ve been very fortunate career wise and now live in a lovely house a world away from the one I grew up in with a pension that, unless Rachel Reeves steals it all, will allow me to live comfortably for the rest of my days. So am I still working class, I definitely still have the accent, but does it even matter? And what does working class actually mean now? The current government has tied itself into knots by talking about their mission to help ‘working people’. Is that the same as working class and who indeed do they include in that definition?

I raise this now as I’ve watched with some fascination the rise and fall of Angela Rayner. Apologies for anyone reading this outside of the UK, but our former Deputy Prime Minister and Minister for Housing came from what some might describe as a very traditional working class background. Grew up in poverty in a dysfunctional family, few qualifications, pregnant at 16, etc. Getting to such a lofty status from those humble beginnings is no mean feat and shows remarkable political acumen. Of course moving through trade union hierarchy and then through the layers of a political party in many people’s eyes isn’t a real job, but there is no doubt it is still quite an achievement. Recently she was forced to resign over a financial scandal. What has been quite interesting is that many agonising over her departure seem to entirely be basing their disappointment on her identity as a working class woman rather than any discussion about her performance or suitability for high office; attempt to suggest otherwise is just snobbery. Excuse my language, but as a fellow working class person that is total bollocks. It is identity politics taken to its ludicrous end point. Being working class does not obviate the need for the basics; competency, probity, honesty and honour. In the words of said working class, ‘she was caught with her hands in the till’. A sin compounded by her arrogance in holding to account previous politicians (‘scum’ in her words) and then subsequently committing the same offences. A better working class role model, which will obviously upset those on the left of the political spectrum, is perhaps the girl who grew up living above a grocer’s shop, went to Oxford University and turned the male dominated political scene on its head by becoming the first female Prime Minister of the UK. A straw, unscientific, poll of my ‘working class’ female friends shows absolutely zero sympathy for Rayner.

Now, I know from personal experience that discrimination against ‘working class’ by those in the middle and upper tiers is, or at least was, a real thing. Some of those elites think that anyone growing up in a council house is stupid, ignorant, and uncivilised. I had the misfortune to interview for a position in an elite London bank at the end of my university course. On the day (first time I’d ever been to London) I was the only person there who hadn’t gone to a private school and/or Oxbridge and to say I was a fish out of water would be an insult to fishes. Still, I am sure they could have pointed to their commitment to equality by inviting me. I would hope that the world has moved on a bit since then, but I am sure it is still there in some quarters. Decades of politicians simply ignoring the views and concerns of the working classes, and indeed dismissing them as a collective group of racist thickos, is hopefully thankfully ending. It is now trendy to be working class. Our Prime Minister constantly reminds us that his father was a toolmaker. Presumably because he thinks that makes him credible in working class eyes. Sir Keir - it really doesn’t.

But in reality the working class thing is well past its sell by date. Many traditional working-class jobs have disappeared or transformed, and the lines between social classes have blurred which surely must be a good thing. The reality remains that those growing up poor have less chance of being successful - irrespective of race, sex, class or any other characteristic. I strongly suspect that if I were growing up today it would be harder to break out of that poverty cycle than it was in the 70s.

Honestly it’s the 21st century. Great Britain needs to move on with its obsession with class - note to non-Brits, it really isn’t like Downton Abbey. The important status measure is whether we all have an equal chance in life and do we have appropriate mechanisms to support those who, for whatever reason, fail to progress. At the moment the answer to that is no and no and governments for many, many years have failed to improve it. I am not a fan of those that drive towards ‘equality’. That just isn’t possible given the wide range of talents that we all have - and indeed our interests and desires. What we should be focused on is equality of opportunity. That is the key and should be the north star for any government mission. ‘What is the government doing to further the opportunity for everyone (and businesses as well to be honest) to make the most of their talents?’ That should be the driving force for everything else - education, health, welfare. Currently social mobility is in decline/not improving and the welfare system is clearly not fit for purpose and bankrupting the country. Continually banging on about working class or working people or blue collar workers or whatever, really isn’t moving us forward. It’s divisive and pointless.

Angela Rayner’s demise has nothing to do with her background. She created opportunities for herself (well done) and then messed up (no-one’s fault but her own). She will in the future probably be a great case study for hubris.

I was once at one of those corporate meetings that certain cultures, such as Americans, love but where British peeps feel their heart sinking to the floor in horror at the words ‘let’s talk about ourselves’. This particular incarnation, and there were plenty worse, involved everyone in the room stating what their ‘superpower’ was. Of course the external, probably very well remunerated, consultant insisted everyone must have one and we needed to be open about our strengths. Despite being one of the more senior people in the room, I looked around for support and found my fellow Brits, amongst a myriad of other nationalities, looking at their shoes in mortal dread of what was to follow. Clearly I was not about to catch the eye of the facilitator, but rather give myself time to think of a suitable answer; or at least one that wasn’t embarrassing. Bigging yourself up doesn’t come naturally to poor working class folk from the north of England.

So after some period of panic, I was ready(ish). ‘So David, what is your superpower?’ I have to confess that I was so engrossed in thinking about what I would say that I hadn’t listened to any of the previous answers so wasn’t sure what others were professing to be great at. I had no idea whether mine was interesting or indeed a superpower. In later years I have come to think, based upon my experience with other colleagues, that perhaps it is substantive. My superpower is that I can completely compartmentalise my life between work and non-work. Within seconds of finishing work, I am able to forget about it until I next need to. This skill, if you want to call it that, was honed in a time when we all travelled into the office and we didn’t have internet access at home. I took it to extremes. My travel time was my time and I used to read novels or non-work related non-fiction. I was always astonished at people on my train who were frantically typing away on their laptops at 7am. At the end of the day, the moment I closed my laptop and was in the lift to exit the building, it was gone from my mind. If I went to the pub after work with some colleagues I would generally refuse to engage in ‘work talk’. I very, very rarely ever thought about work again until I was in the lift going back up the next day. What was interesting to me was that as I spoke about that others in the room were hugely envious. They found it hard if not impossible to do it themselves.

These days the ability to ‘switch off’ is much harder. You have your work ever present on your phone and the temptation to ‘just check a few emails’ is high. Personally, I never found it a major problem. My rationale was that if there was a crisis, someone would actually call me and 99.9% of issues could wait until I was back in the (now virtual) lift in the morning. It was telling that even in a group that had grown up at the same time as me, they still hadn’t developed the discipline to take time out and to refresh. Sure, I think I had a natural ability (superpower) to do that, but as with all things, it is not just talent (not sure that is the right description) that is important, but honing the skills and adjusting to new environments and situations that is needed. And of course, working out what is best for you. We are all different - one size doesn’t fit all.

Why raise this now? Well a couple of reasons. First is the rise in people complaining about stress in the workplace. I am not going to get drawn into an argument about people not being as tough as they were in the past. Hey, my parents lived in bomb shelters for most of their teenage years so I am very familiar with being told ‘youngsters today don’t know how lucky they are/have no grit’ statements. Having said that, stress is an inevitable part of a senior role and while it is incumbent on the employers to provide a reasonable and supportive working environment, there is a responsibility on the individuals to figure out how they should manage themselves. I believe that a large amount of the difficulties many face is that they can’t ‘switch off’, that work is all consuming and continuous.

I see a lot of flak for companies and their leadership for not providing a ‘supporting environment’ resulting in the increase in mental health issues. I am sure that in some cases that is true and if you find yourself there then, if you can, get the hell out. However, I perhaps naively believe that most organisations are trying to do the right thing. People should realise that they have agency. They need to exercise it better. Of course in a competitive environment pressure for more, faster will always arise. Manage it. Don’t answer emails at 9pm, set boundaries and use self-discipline to enforce them. At this point someone will say that’s easy for you to say and indeed that is true, but as I say, apart from the terminal toxic places, most leaders know that happy employees are more productive. That doesn’t stop them pushing for more, but too many people seem happy to be the victim. Be more assertive and at least try to manage the situation. In my experience, you have a good chance of being pleasantly surprised. A win for everyone.

This leads directly into the remote working debate. I do not believe that we understand the long term impact of remote working on team dynamics, alignment, relationship building, innovation and perhaps most importantly on the individuals themselves. My suspicion is that all these things are affected to a greater or lesser degree by remote working and we won’t know for a number of years by how much. As with all things these days there seems to be an absence of trying to look at both sides of the argument - those in favour and those against are convinced of the virtue of their position and will not countenance any disagreement or discussion. There are, of course, obvious benefits to many individuals to remote working and these may, or may not, balance the probable long term downsides to business and to themselves. Anyone claiming to have the definitive answer to these questions is being disingenuous. There is no doubt in my mind that working from home makes it way harder to separate work from non-work. Walking out of the office is a clear demarcation, but if you are one of those people who struggles to ‘switch-off’ then this becomes dramatically harder if you simply stand up, shut your laptop and walk (if you are lucky) into a different room. You add to that, the very human need for social interaction and it is easy to see that while there are benefits to remote working there can, for many, be significant downsides which lead to mental health issues. The rush to remote to, in theory at least, gives you more time for family, but quite often it doesn’t work out that way. Perhaps I am a child of my time, but even with my superpower I could not work remotely full-time nor do I think I could be as effective as hopefully I was.

If you are struggling, as many do, with ‘switching off’ then get help and/or advice. I spent time with individuals in my teams on this topic giving them suggestions about how they could improve. One simple example, which was actually given to me, is for those that travel extensively for work is to set a fixed number of nights that you sleep in your bed each month - and make that known and get others to help you stick to it. Worked very well for me and for some others I know. If you are one of those people who struggles with switching off, you should think hard about whether remote is the panacea that so many people claim it is. Perhaps actually going into the office a couple of days a week, even if you don’t have to, will help.

Take accountability for your own happiness and health, and as part of that figure out what your superpower is.

We all benefit from great role models. Sometimes that can be a parent or a relative, perhaps a teacher, maybe someone in the media - there are plenty out there. There is also great benefit in looking at bad role models; or as I christen them, anti-role models. We all learn from positive example, but we also learn as much, and indeed sometimes more, from negative ones.

Sticking with work and in particular leadership, I have had the honour of working with and for some exceptional leaders in my life. I won’t embarrass them by putting their names here - they know who they are. I’ve also worked for and with some really, really poor ones. I would not be so crass as to name those ones - maybe they realise, but perhaps part of their failings as a leader is being unable to recognise their inadequacies? Who knows? Maybe that was true of me?

Unfortunately for all of us in the UK we now have an almost perfect role model of bad leadership - namely our Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer. It is quite something to spend time watching (from a distance) and speculating what it must be like to be on the receiving end of his incompetence on a daily/hourly basis. I guess as a citizen of the UK I am, albeit many levels removed. Now, while I have views on his politics, that really isn’t the point of this blog. If you want a critique of that, you have plenty of options. I also realise that he is following in a long, and getting longer, line of awful Prime Ministers of the UK, but he seems to be taking things to new levels of terrible.

Let’s start with what I think is the most important part of leadership; building a high performing team. It is not to say that others things which we’ll get onto, aren’t critical, but without the right team you have no leverage and your ability to deliver your vision is very, very limited. In order to do that you need to be a good judge of people. Some are innately good at that, others less so and most of us get better at it as we get older. Let’s just look at some of Sir Keir’s appointments - and for you non-UK peeps, this has all happened in the last year:

• Anti-corruption Minister Tulip Suddiq, who had to resign after being accused of corruption.

• Homelessness Minister, Rushanara Ali, who resigned after making people homeless.

• Housing Minister and deputy Prime Minister, Angela Rayner, who resigned after being caught up in a tax scandal over a home purchase.

• Ambassador to the USA (our closest ally), Lord Mandelson, who has been sacked, a day after Sir Keir stoutly defended him in the House of Commons, for being best buddies with a convicted pedophile.

On top of that, there are serious questions about the competency of several other senior ministers, especially David Lammy, Rachel Reeves and Ed Milliband. Do they have the skills for their roles? Clearly not. Do they have the intellect? Hard to say, but Lammy’s performance on Mastermind doesn’t inspire confidence. Starmer shows no ability to mold a high-performing team. He seems incapable of even building one that doesn’t get themselves fired for breaking the rules. That is particularly ridiculous given his penchance for process. Indeed a day before (rightly) sacking Mandelson, he told the country that ‘all checks and processes had been made’. Right. A quick search on the internet would have raised concerns about past misdemeanors. Wikipedia states ‘Mandelson has faced several scandals during his political career, being twice dismissed from Cabinet following scandals, and dismissed a third time from a diplomatic post following another scandal’. You don’t need MI5 to do a deep dive to realise you might be on thin ice giving him such a critical role. Just being a bit more savvy might have given you a clue.

Of course any leader of note needs to be making their team better; growing and helping them in their roles. Whilst he might not have much to work with, I suspect there must be a few individuals of potential in there. They will have to be pretty exceptional to come out of this positively. Perhaps as I started by saying, being so close to the problem will at least tell them what not to do if they get the opportunity in the future.

His focus on rules/process seem to override any common sense (maybe he has none) and as you can see from his cabinet choices, his team seems to lack integrity. Even if Sir Keir is the most honourable man on the planet (I don’t know him so hard to tell), his team reflects back onto him. It smells of corruption and entitlement, a view that is extended when you think back to the start of his premiership with all the noises about ‘gifts’ for him, his wife and various others. And before everyone chimes in with Boris being worse, that is irrelevant. He may, or may not have been, but Starmer’s big selling point was that he was better - he isn’t.

Moving on from his people skills, he can’t communicate effectively, he flip-flops constantly with changes of direction, he is weak when having to make tough decisions, and if there is a clear vision for what this government is for, then I and many others, including his own party, are in the dark. In opposition it was all about ‘growth’. You may or may not agree with that as an overriding mission, but to spend all your time making it ever harder to grow businesses with a series of ham-fisted policy and tax changes, makes it irrelevant. He is also fond, like many other politicians, of using terminology that is undefined. His other mission (I think) is to make life better for ‘working people’. Of course he doesn’t define what that means - I assume he doesn’t mean Hedge Fund managers, but it is awfully vague and therefore policy to help ‘working people’ is inevitably going to be questioned as to just who is he helping. Guess as I’m retired he doesn't give a toss about me anymore!

I could go on, but on every measure of effective leadership, Starmer is at, or near, the bottom of the scale. It begs the question of how someone so bad could get to the top leadership job in the country? Well, he’s clearly a savvy political operator under the covers and as I mentioned earlier we’ve had such a procession of awfulness (Liz Truss anyone?), he was probably worth a shot - he wasn’t.

For any aspiring leaders out there, here’s your role model of what not to do.

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Many years ago, an old colleague of mine said ‘we’ll know when we have equality when we have as many useless women in leadership positions as useless men’. I’ve thought about that as a measure frequently, and I have grown to like it a lot. Yes, I know it is not perfect - most measures aren’t, but it contains important principles. The view that there is a glass ceiling for women and they don’t get taken seriously at senior levels, is a widely held one. Personally I have worked for many women over the years and found them to be in the same range of great to bad as for the male versions, but I have no idea whether my experience is representative or not.

I was pondering this measure as I listened this week to the latest travails of the UK government. Our current leadership team is

1. Keir Starmer: Prime Minister, First Lord of the Treasury, Minister for the Civil Service, and Minister for the Union

2. Angela Rayner: Deputy Prime Minister and Secretary of State for Housing, Communities and Local Government

3. Rachel Reeves: Chancellor of the Exchequer

4. Yvette Cooper: Secretary of State for the Home Department

5. David Lammy: Secretary of State for Foreign, Commonwealth and Development Affairs

6. Pat McFadden: Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster

7. John Healey: Secretary of State for Defence

8. Shabana Mahmood: Lord Chancellor and Secretary of State for Justice

9. Wes Streeting: Secretary of State for Health and Social Care

10. Bridget Phillipson: Secretary of State for Education and Minister for Women and Equalities

11. Ed Miliband: Secretary of State for Energy Security and Net Zero

12. Liz Kendall: Secretary of State for Work and Pensions

13. Jonathan Reynolds: Secretary of State for Business and Trade and President of the Board of Trade

14. Peter Kyle: Secretary of State for Science, Innovation and Technology

Traditionally the four Great Offices of State are the Prime Minister, the Chancellor of the Exchequer, the Foreign Secretary and the Home Secretary. A more recent addition to this, is the role of Deputy Prime Minister so there is an argument for there now being five. If you agree there are five, then three of those five are women. Six of the fourteen Cabinet are women. Excellent progress.

As a group, my personal view is that this is the least talented group we’ve had in my lifetime - and I am quite old and have seen some awful governments. Shabana Mahmood is, in my opinion, doing a really decent job as Secretary of State for Justice; especially given where she is starting from. So she gets a pass - the rest meh. If this were a company would you be buying shares? If you answer yes, I have a bridge to sell you.

Back to the point. Except for Ms Mahmood the women are just as terrible as the men so equality is achieved! I will qualify that with the fact that it is hard to be successful when you are working for a boss as hopeless as Starmer; perhaps with a better leader they could be more successful. Who knows? But a quick link on their bios will tell you that most of them just don’t have the experience or skills to do the roles that they’ve been assigned; Wes Streeting being the stand-out in that regard. Whether they have the potential to get there is an open question. Again perhaps with a leader who can coach them…

So we can declare success. Competency, or lack of it, is now gender neutral.