Industrial Policy, the “Systems Thinking Capabilities Gap”, & Long Term Success

Recently I shared my view in a post, that MAKE UK are right to criticise the successive UK governments for their failure to develop an implement a good industrial strategy for the country.  I also suggested ”The failings are the result of the “#SystemsThinkingCapabilitiesGaps” and they won’t get fixed until the gaps are addressed.” And I explained that this explained why we created this programme: https://lnkd.in/gHayy8vg

In the Financial Times this week Camilla Cavenish wrote an article: “A bureaucratic tangle has replaced the UK’s industrial policy.” In it she observed that, “Without what we used to call joined-up thinking, we are in danger of wasting money on failed bets.” She also notes that, ““hopeless”, “slow” and “confused” are some of the words used to describe the current state of UK government machinery” by the business experts she has spoken to. And she concludes by saying, “we need agility, not ideology.”

Cavendish is right, today we do need governments that are agile. And the reason they are not agile is the lack of “joined-up thinking.” The problem is not limited to government. It is a problem in business and in organisations and institutions across all sectors.

The #EnlightenedEnterpriseAcademy has a number of programmes starting in September that are designed to tackle the problem. The most relevant two are “Flat Fluid Flexible: How to be a 21st Century Organisation and Avoid the Pitfalls” and “Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity.” To help leaders overcome their own systems thinking capabilities gaps, and those of their organisation.

Siloes have long been recognised as an organisational problem. Another FT journalist, Gillian Tett , wrote about it in The Silo Effect a few years ago. Despite being such a long-standing issue Directors and Executives still struggle to address it. Doing so is the focus of manage ‘change management’ and ‘transformation’ initiatives, which often fail.

The other problem is siloed thinking, or #CognitiveSiloes. An excellent book on the danger of this is Rebel Ideas by Matthew Syed . And addressing this problem is often the reason for Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (#DEI) initiatives, though they are just as often driven by political considerations and amount to little more than #valueswashing, a problem I wrote about recently and suggested it is a bigger problem than #greenwashing.

Most leaders have yet to recognise, acknowledge and confront their “systems thinking capabilities gaps.” Doing so would help them address the challenges they have been incapable of to date, except in rare cases. It is a transdisciplinary and multi-methodological approach that requires the collaboration of cross-functional teams. And #CriticalSystemsThinking and #CriticalSystemsPractice can help leaders achieve these objectives.

The Critical Systems Thinking and the Management of Complexity programme dove-tails nicely with the Flat Fluid Flexible programme which focuses on the organisational changes needed and how to address them, plus the new approaches to leading such organisations.

You may think this all sounds like the start of another management fad like Business Process Reengineering (#BPR), Total Quality Management (#TQM), or the many others driven by the obsession with performance, efficiency and cost control. That would be wrong.

The approach we advocate recognises that those concerns are necessary, but insufficient for long-term success which demands an obsession with the creation of real value, for all stakeholders who should be treated equitably.

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