How will the new officers of UKGI, many appointed in 2022, change UKGI's culture to address the mistakes of the past?

Nine of the 12 Directors of UKGI have been appolinted from September 2022 or later.  So its to be hoped that they already have in place a plan to change the culture of the organisation.

Why does the culture need to change?  Just look at UKGI's role in the Post Office scandal.  Like many organisations they were slow to realise the extent of the corporate wrong doing.  But perhaps the most shocking revelation that their former Chairman (recently left in 2021) admitted at the enquiry was that a dashboard with risks on it "was not presented for discussion at the board it was presented for information".  

Some would say that a Board that delegates discussion of risks is one that seriously misunderstands its role in corporate governance.

Looking at the history of UKGI one conclusion might be that private sector bankers, consultants and their ilk may have many commercial skill sets.  But what they don't have is the actual experience of holding arms length owned government organisations to account to the standards that tax payers assume somebody is applying on their behalf..  

Perhaps their lack of attention to this dynamic is because, although a few people might be chosen to suffer public humiliation with honours returned, for the rest there is no such danger nor the risk or criminal prosecution.

Below I've set out some more detail on the performance of  UKGI.  

  

More detail

Owned by HM Treasury, UK Government Investments - UKGI - (previously the Stakeholder Executive) purpose is "to be the government’s centre of excellence in corporate governance and corporate finance. One of our core objectives is to act as shareholder for, and lead the establishment of, UK government arm’s length bodies." (Source 2)

The UKGI what we do/governance website page says - about a1/3rd of a way down the page - says that "The public sector and state owned enterprises, wholly or partially owned, which UKGI works with are" and then there is a long list of 16 or so arms length wholly/partially state owned enterprises covering the nuclear industry, various bank like organisations, Channel 4, Nat West and the Royal Mint.

Of the 12 current officers of UKGI listed with Companies House, all have been appointed in the last 4 or 5 years with the bulk from 2022 but others earlier.  Presumably they would all argue that their tenure at UKGI is after the peak 2014-2018 cover up period at the Post Office as concerns the Horizon and sub-postmaster scandal.  (the PO is one of the organisations UKGI works with).

Assuming that argument is valid, they still inherit a UKGI culture which resulted in:

- in 2014 one reported risk "if the system were to show up as defective, then potentially the criminal convictions could be overturned and compensation [from Post Office] Ltd" that didn't go to the Shareholder Executive Board.  At the PO enquiry UKGI's Chief Exec - Mark Russell - (2013-2019) stated that particular risk hadn't been considered significant.

- at the PO enquiry UKGI's Chairman - Robert Swannell  (2014-2021) said that the dashboard with the risks on it "was not presented for discussion at the board it was presented for information".  So even in 2018, 2 years after litigation against the PO had been launched, this risk was not considered.  It did become a top priority for the Board when, in March 2019, the High Court voiced a verdict ofn the PO's "oppressive" behaviour.

According to the Companies House records available on line, as at 17/8/2024 - the 12 current officers are 

Dr Mahnaz, Akbary-Safa - Occupation Non-Executive Director

Andrew Mark Ballheimer - Occupation Non-Executive Director

Manvinder Singh Banga - Occupation Company Director

Gareth Neil Davies - Occupation Civil Servant

Kalpana Desai - Occupation Non-Executive Director

Charles Hunter Donald -  Occupation Chief Executive

Andrew James Duff - Occupation Llpmember

Jessica Elizabeth Glover - Occupation Civil Servant

Andrew Nigel Halford - Occupation Company Director

Dr Vanessa Vivienne, Lawrence - Occupation Company Director

Iain James Mackay - Occupation Company Director

Elizabeth Jane Russel - Occupation Civil Servant

Photo by @bendavisual via unsplash.com

Sources 

1) Post above initially inspired with assertions made in page 7 "Steward Inquiry" paragraphs and page 40"Post Office Enquiry" page in Private Eye Issue no. 1630 16th August - 29th August 2024.

2) UKGI's 6th May 2021 letter replying to Rt Hon Mel Stride, MP Chair of the Treasury Committee, on the Committees their inquiry into the lessons to be learnt from the failure of Greensill Capital.

3) Various queries of Gemini AI on UKGI

4) The application of some HI

The Conservative Party's "blame it on" culture war strategy for the next election

In politics the playbook of blaming others for what is wrong with our country is as old as the hills.  Sadly it still appears to work.  The tactic basically goes like this: 

1) remind people of an imaginery ast when all was rosy; 

2) pick out a group of people and/or some institutions to blame for why things aren't good now; 

3) suggest we should be afraid of the menace from these people/institutions; 

4) say you'll be tough on them to counter their menace to our way of life.  

This morning an interviewee on a radio programme illustrated how this playbook will probably be used in the next UK General Election.

The BBC's Radio 4 Today news programme this morning had a slot on twitter comments by Gary Lineker, (former footballer, popular UK sport TV presenter), comparing UK Government ministers language on migrants with the language used in the 1930's in Germany.

Given Gary's position as a prominent star presenter at the BBC, the Today programme asked Richard Eyre, a former BBC Controler of Editorial Policy, and former BBC Trustee, for his view on whether Gary should have tweeted what he did.

In giving his view Richard highlighted in a startingly clear manner the probable culture war strategy the Conservative party has for the next general election.  Here is what he said

" You can almost sense ... the start of a Government strategy - re-energise disallusioned Brexit voters, blame continuing immigration on lawyers like Kier Starmer (leader of the Labour Party opposition in the UK), blame it on the Supreme Court, blame it on, better still, the European Court of Human Rights, blame it on the Refugee Convention, blame it on woke media, blame it on woke metropolitan elites".  

So at least now, if you heed his insight, you'll recognise this specific blame playbook when its rolled out

71min clip - Dave Snowden - How leaders change culture through small actions

Found via a regular friday email from Nick Shepherd. 

Text from youtube "Summer School 2016  - Chief Scientific Officer of Cognitive Edge and Director of the Centre for Applied Complexity at Bangor University @snowded 

His work is international in nature and covers government and industry looking at complex issues relating to strategy, organisational decision making and decision making. He has pioneered a science based approach to organisations drawing on anthropology, neuroscience and complex adaptive systems theory."

3min 51sec clip - 2020 YouTube #Culture & #Trends Report: Introduction

text from youtube "YouTube's Culture & Trends team examines the trends and behavior defining our ever-evolving digital culture in 2020. Kevin Allocca, YouTube's Head of Culture & Trends, kicks things off. To see the full YouTube Culture & Trends Report, head to https://www.youtube.com/trends/report"

#PoliticalTactics when giving a #nonapology OR How to find out the true culture of a team/organisation

Like me you've probably seen a politician on TV giving an apology that is actually a nonapology.  Examples include "I'm sorry they felt that way" or "I meant no disrespect". 

In a private complaint I've recently made I learnt some more about nonapologies.  It also illustrated how valuable a private non serious complaint can be if you want to shed some light on the true culture of a team or organisation.  The content of their response to your complaint reveals whether their reply is just a form of nonapology or a real apology.

The complaint I made was about some slides and videos from a conference not being avaialble until 3 weeks after the conference despite assurances during the conference that they'd be made available quickly.  A suggestion in my complaint was that in future they should set the expectation that slides/videos would be available 3 weeks later if that is what they are capable of delivering.

The timescale facts of my complaint were that it was made 2 weeks after the event, that an email with the slides/videos from the event was sent 3 weeks after the event, that a reply to the complaint was sent 12 days after the complaint was made.

The response I received to my complaint made me think of four tactics politicians use when giving a nonapology.  It also struck me how the nonapolgy culture of politicians now seems to be infecting PR/Comms generally.

In summary the four tactics politicians use when giving a nonapology are: 1) Flatly contradict any complaint by citing online evidence you control and have made subsequently unavailable; 2) Ignore those parts of the complaint that are factually correct; 3) Ignore any suggestion from the complainent about how in future you could avoid the problem that led to the complaint; 4) Say you/your team is doing the best you can and working hard.  

1) Flatly contradict any complaint by citing online evidence you control and have subsequently made unavailable - and so the evidence quoted is unverifiable.  This is a gold standard nonapology.  You give a fact based counter claim that nobody can fact check.

2) Ignore those parts of the complaint that are factually correct.  So in my complaint the videos of the sessions made available excluded the keynote session from their most senior person in the organisation at the conference.  Yet their reply said they had made videos of the sessions available.

3) Ignore any suggestion from the complainent about how in future you could avoid the problem that led to the complaint.  So in my complaint my suggestion that in future they set realistic expectations as to when slides/videos would be available was ignored.

4) Say you/your team is doing the best you can and working hard. Such a nonapology may well be true but it ignores the possibility that the team could have forseen that they would have more work than they could handle, In my complaint I pointed out how long they took to provide slides/videos.  They should have forseen that the size of their team meant it would take them 3 weeks to provide slides/videos, given they knew in advance how much work they would need to do after the conference to provide slides and videos, and therefore should have set the expectation that slides/videos would be made avaialbe in a couple of weeks.

Previous posts on #PoliticalTactics

30 Oct 2020 Corbyns response to EHRC's antisemitism report - The 5 #PoliticalTactics are: 1) I'm the victim here; 2) It's somebody else's fault; 3) I don't accept all the points, 4) There is a conspiracy against me; 5) Simply ignore the most damaging points.

20 Nov 2020 English Government responses to NAO investigation into procurement during COVID-19 - The 7 #PoliticalTactics are: 1) Answer the question you wanted to be asked rather than the question you were asked; 2) Welcome a report and its recommendations (Notice this isn't the same as agreeing with the report); 3) Don't agree that what happened was sub-standard; 4) Don't agree you should have known it was sub-standard; 5) Don't agree to any action plan to make sure this doesn't happen in future; 6) Don't agree that individuals may have financially benefitted themselves or friends through such sub-standard actions and finally 7) Claim you are feeling an emotion directly opposite to what you should be feeling.  So if you should be ashamed say you are proud, if you should be unsure say you are confident and so on, sad/happy, depressed/jubilant, anger/calm. 

This post  - The 4 #PoliticalTactics are: 1) Flatly contradict the complaint by citing online evidence you control and have subsequently made unavailable; 2) Ignore those parts of the complaint that are factually correct; 3) Ignore any suggestion from the complainant about how in future to avoid the problem that led to the complaint; 4) Say you/your team is doing the best you can and working hard.

46sec @wef clip - The 5 countries with the greatest #cultural #influence

7min @RSAEvents clip - Why #Arts and #Culture in #Education is Essential

Text from youtube "What role can arts and cultural learning play in creating a truly rich education for all children? Our panel of experts share their ideas about why schools should be interested in the arts and how we should be looking to understand their impact. Speakers: Andria Zafirakou - Global Teacher Prize Winner 2018 Laura McInerney - education journalist and co-founder of Teacher Tapp Darren Henley OBE - CEO at Arts Council England Stella Duffy - co-director of Fun Palaces"

3min 28sec @TheRSA clip - Simon Sinek on Intensity vs #Consistency in #corporate culture

text from you tube 

"Sick of endless ‘re-orgs’, lay-offs and away days? Why do workplaces always go for quick wins and flashy paint jobs over steady, consistent change? Award-winning animator Jocie Juritz brings her trademark wit and creativity to the second animation extracted from Simon Sinek’s acclaimed RSA talk on organisational culture. 

 Voice: Simon Sinek, Global bestselling author and leadership guru 
Animation: Jocie Juritz"

10 useful links (no. 10) - delete search history, 2015 social media, click farms, #twitter mistakes, #google cultural institute, #facebook changes, data visualisation, church projects, social media tips

how to delete or download your google search history

uk social media in 2015 - found via @was3210

dealing with trolls - found via an email from @abc3d & @hautepop.  

The Bot bubble - how Click Farms Have Inflated Social Media Currency - found via digg

Common Twitter mistakes and how to avoid them - from DigiProud - Easy Digi and Social Media Advice for Churches

google cultural institute - a great way of curating some images

Facebook Likes don't go as far as they used to in News Feed update - found via @was3210

types of data visualisation - found via an email from @abc3d & @hautepop.  

cinnamon projects churches might consider applying to do - found via @cinnamonnetwork

5 tips on social media for non-profits - found via @hootsuitepro


Previous 10 Useful Links posts 

No.'s 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9,

#netflix's culture slide pack

Culture from Reed Hastings  found  via @lakematt who found it on huffington post

charting #culture

 -this animation distils hundreds of years of culture into just five minutes.

Found via motherboard

word on the curb

5steps in considering culture and business process improvement

the following 5 steps are summarised and inferred from the following ....

Schmiedel, Theresa, vom Brocke, Jan, & Recker, Jan (2013) "Which cultural values matter to business process management? Results from a global Delphi study". Business Process Management Journal, 19(2), pp.292-317. and available here 

for the purposes of the study culture was mainly defined through invisible values, that manifest themselves in visible actions and structures, such as ceremonies, manners, technology, products, organization charts, etc. etc. (where a value is what a group considers as desirable, i.e. ideals that influence behavioral and organizational patterns of a group) 

the Delphi method the study used relies on the use of business process management (BPM) expert opinions “to obtain the most reliable consensus” via a series of questionnaires with controlled feedback.  Two types of BPM experts were distinguished: academics and practitioners from many different countries. This was done to balance opinions from academia and practice as both have an influence on the development and diffusion of BPM as a management approach.   The Delphi study was conducted between February and May 2011. 

so those 5 steps ...

1) assess your organisation versus 4 values (arrived at by the study) - which are ....
- Customer orientation (the proactive and responsive attitude towards the needs of process output recipients - so from an organisation perspective this is an external perspective)

- Excellence (the orientation towards continuous improvement and innovation to achieve superior process performance - so so from an organisation perspective emphasizes flexibility in that constant change in an organization is perceived as a trigger to performance enhancement. ) 
- Responsibility (the commitment to process objectives and the accountability for process decisions - so so from an organisation perspective relates to stability because commitment and accountability represent a structural control mechanism that provides stability) 
- Teamwork (refers to the positive attitude towards cross-functional collaboration - so from an organisation perspectivean internal focus on collaboration within an organization across functional boundaries )

(one of the experts identified a nice credo of an ideal employee in a process oriented company: ‘I am committed to work with others to continually improve the performance of my business process to deliver excellent service/product to the customer and I take full responsibility for my actions’)


2) assess your organizational culture (using the CVF - Competing Values Framework - explained in the diagram and text below)

- the CVF has 2 dimensions: focus (internal vs. external) and structure (flexibility vs. stability) 
- which provide the basis for the identification of four types of organizational culture labeled with the following action imperatives: collaborate, control, compete, and create

focusing on internal aspects,
- collaborate culture - characterized by a strong sense of belonging to a community, 
- control culture - driven by organizational rules, policies, and processes which account for security, efficiency, and uniformity. 

regarding an external focus
- compete culture - is concerned with productivity, performance, and goal achievement
- create culture - emphasizes growth, risk taking, trend identification, innovation, and adaptability to changing environments. 

(Diagram taken from paper)


3) assess possible cultural obstacles (using the labels explained in 1) & 2) above) - for example, an organization may perceive a trade-off between focusing on the excellence of internal processes and focusing on adapting to changing external customer requirements; or they may perceive fixed responsibilities as a static structural element that inhibits the creative atmosphere that is required for innovations. 

4) debate whether your organisation could achieve several of the cultures and values simultaneously (the study argues that it is possible and desirable for organizations to take all four perspectives simultaneously as only their simultaneous presence makes up a business process management culture. In other words, values can and should be realized simultaneously in order to provide a supportive cultural setting for a business process management approach. This interpretation suggests that while an existing organizational culture may be primarily determined by one of the four culture quadrants, the other three can also be present, complementing this predominant culture focus)

5) determine how you can institutionalize (in visible actions and structures) all four values  - rather than take a reductionist focus on single values only. So values can be institutionalized in corporate training programs; used as guides in project team selection and for hiring decisions; used in end-of-year peer performance evaluations; used as a guide for managers on how to recognize and reward employees. 

#10tips on how to identify the #culture of an organisation ht #schein

Some have defined an organisations' culture as been the learned solutions to problems which are ultimately embodied as an interrelated patterned set of basic assumptions that deal with ultimate issues (see Tip 10 below). 

Many of these assumptions are underlying, almost unconscious and so are taken for granted because they have repeatedly worked in dealing with problems. 

And of course within an organisation there can be multiple cultures (often linked to members occupational backgrounds). 

Below are 10 tips on how to identify an organisation’s culture, many of these focus on identifying what the underlying assumptions of the organisations’ culture are. Where the tip is to find out or interview then consider interviewing supervisors, leaders and older peers. 

These tips are derived from this winter 1984 article in the Sloane Management Review on “Coming to a new awareness of organisational culture” by Edgar H Schein 

10 tips on identifying an organisations' culture

1) Start by looking at what is visible – like how offices are laid out or the dress code or how people behave with bosses or the technology used or documents in the public domain and the values they include. 

2) identify an insider who is representative of the culture  - and who wants to identify their own assumptions - and then jointly explore with them observations/anomalies about the organisation that puzzle outsiders. 

3) on external adaptation - find out what the consensus is on the following aspects of the organisation: primary task or core mission; goals and performance measures, reward system and organisation structure, remedial strategies when goals aren’t accomplished. 

4) on internal integration - find out what the consensus is on the following aspects of the organisation: common language and conceptual categories; boundaries and inclusion/exclusion criteria; power and status allocation criteria, intimacy and friendship criteria; reward and punishment criteria; ideology in the face of unexplainable events. 

5) define a biography of the organisation - in terms of major periods of culture formation and what was done, why it was done and what the outcome was – then look for major themes in the reasons given for the actions taken.

6) learning in problem solving or anxiety avoidance situations - identify in which of these two types of situation the organisation learned it's solutions to problems (with problem solving situations a learned solution will be used until it ceases to work, with anxiety avoidance situations a learned solution is more likely to be repeated indefinitely as such a response does not test whether the cause of the anxiety is still operating). 

7) try to identify "parent" culture assumptions - so parent could be society or the larger organisation.

8) identify how the group describes “how the world is”  - and the way of perceiving, thinking, feeling and acting passed on with conviction to new members. 

9) consider what assumptions people have refused to discuss  - or where you have been considered “insane” or “ignorant” for bringing them up – these are often signs you are touching underlying assumptions 

10) cross check - ensure the assumptions you have identified using the 9 tips above cover the following 5 criteria: a) the environment (e.g. dominance, submission, harmonizing); b) reality, truth, time, space, property (e.g what real and what not, truth revealed or discovered? time linear or cyclical?, space limited or infinite?, property communal or individual?); c) human nature (e.g. what attributes are intrinsic or ultimate? good, evil or neutral? perfectible or not?); d) human activity (e.g what right to do, active, passive, fatalistic, what is work and what is play); e) human relationships (e.g. distribute power and love? cooperative or competitive? Individualistic or communal? lineal authority, law or charisma?)

10 most significant cultural trends in the last decade

according to andy crouch can be found on his qideas.org blog (found via a post on thesimplepastor.co.uk) are:





1) connection - the technologies that facilitate it - e.g. facebook
2) place - local, putting down roots, volume of travel flat
3) cities - revival and growth of
4) the end of majority - cultural majorities collapsing - we are all minorities
5) polarity - what do we have in common?
6) the self shot - is how we see ourselves - not mirror images with R & L reversed
7) pornography - omnipresent yet still underground
8) informality - only low status employees wear uniforms
9) liquidity - and the betting culture in financial markets whilst raw material prices rise
10) complexity - through countless connections

connecting with culture

a weekly email to spark ideas from the london institute for contemporary christianity - licc.org.uk