A lack of strategic thinking threatens the UK

A lack of strategic thinking by the government is threatening the UK’s national interest, says the cross-party public administration committee of MP’s which has suggested a tendency for Whitehall to “muddle through”.

To what extent is this now endemic within all aspects of our managerial society though?

For several years I have protested that the target driven mentalities prevalent within our public sector along with the short-termism beloved by the private sector were killing our ability to think and execute strategically.  It now appears we have the confirmatory evidence.

What should be our real concern though is how do we develop these skills once more? I believe that, like Tom Reeves – Alchemy for Managers p 260 there are three key stages to development as a leader, which are,

• the conformist implementer – ‘does as told’
• the independent experimenter – ‘finds out what works, experiences things and develops understanding’
• the autonomous agent – wants to make change happen

The problem could well be in that how many of our so called senior executives, particularly public sector, have not had the opportunity to develop past stage 1? Maybe we have a generation that can only deliver to pre-set targets and methods, never had the chance to experiment, formulate strategies then derive outcomes and deliver to them – making mistakes and learning along the way.

I may be wrong, but probably partly correct which leaves the great educational challenge – how do we quickly develop these skills in our managers and leaders.  I suspect sending them on an MBA course is not the correct answer!

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