{"id":68059,"date":"2023-02-25T10:16:53","date_gmt":"2023-02-25T10:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/?p=68059"},"modified":"2023-02-25T10:19:47","modified_gmt":"2023-02-25T10:19:47","slug":"keir-starmers-template-based-strategy-is-straight-out-of-the-management-consultants-copybook","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/2023\/02\/25\/keir-starmers-template-based-strategy-is-straight-out-of-the-management-consultants-copybook\/","title":{"rendered":"Keir Starmer\u2019s \u2018template-based strategy\u2019 is straight out of the management consultants’ copybook"},"content":{"rendered":"

I admit that after a week in which I wrote at least 25,000 words, I feel like a Saturday off. However, yesterday long-term commentator on this blog, Ivan Horrocks, posted a comment<\/a> in response to my post<\/a> on Keir Starmer\u2019s new \u2018mission-based\u2019 approach to Labour campaigning that I thought worth sharing, and which coincidentally gave me the great I want for today.<\/em><\/p>\n

This is Ivan\u2019s analysis of what he thinks Starmer is going, which seems spot-on to me:<\/em><\/p>\n

\n

Reading reports of Starmer\u2019s speech and reading the document Labour released in which they set out Starmer\u2019s \u2018missions\u2019 I was reminded of some material I wrote for an OU Masters course on strategy back in 2016.<\/p>\n

One of the approaches to strategy I discussed was \u2018template based strategy\u2019, which I noted at the time, had become the most popular approach to strategy\/strategic management by then (at the time there were over 76 million \u2018hits\u2019 on Google). The approach was the result of the merging of strategic management and vision-led leadership, which led, in turn, to the emergence of what I referred to as an \u2018industry\u2019 producing template-based or styled systems of strategy\/strategic planning, not least because it was \u2018a money-spinner for a significantly sized army of consultants and experts (including academics).\u2019<\/p>\n

A typical template designed for a variety of entities consisted of the following:<\/p>\n

The Vision: a unique vision of what the organisation\/nation will be like in the future.<\/p>\n

The Mission: a high-sounding politically correct statement of the purpose of the organisation\/nation.<\/p>\n

The Values: a statement describing the organisation\/nations values. Make sure they are noncontroversial.<\/p>\n

The Strategies: describe some aspirations\/goals but call them strategies.<\/p>\n

Later in the module I drew on the work of Richard Rumelt (\u2018Good Strategy, Bad Strategy\u2019, 2011) who noted that, \u2018To detect a bad strategy, look for one of more of four major hallmarks:<\/p>\n

Fluff. A form of gibberish masquerading as strategic concepts or arguments. It uses \u201cSunday\u201d words (words that are inflated and unnecessarily abstruse) and apparently esoteric concepts to create the illusion of high-level thinking.<\/p>\n

Failure to face the challenge. Bad strategy fails to recognise or define the challenge. When you cannot define the challenge, you cannot evaluate a strategy to improve it.<\/p>\n

Mistaking goals for strategy. Many bad strategies are just statements of desire rather than plans for overcoming obstacles.<\/p>\n

Bad strategic objectives. A strategic objective is set by a leader as a means to an end. Strategic objectives are \u201cbad\u201d when they fail to address critical issues or when they are impracticable.\u2019 (Rumelt, 2011:32).<\/p>\n

It struck me that there are quite a number of similarities between Starmer\u2019s \u2018visions\u2019 and Labour\u2019s current attempts at strategic thinking, and template-based and \u2018bad strategy\u2019. Maybe some of the members of the \u2018industry\u2019 of consultants and experts that I noted existed at the time are now members of Starmer\u2019s advisory team.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I admit that after a week in which I wrote at least 25,000 words, I feel like a Saturday off. However, yesterday long-term commentator on
 Read the full article…<\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35,118,106],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-68059","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-economics","category-labour","category-politics"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68059","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=68059"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/68059\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=68059"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=68059"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.taxresearch.org.uk\/Blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=68059"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}