A business-like approach to the political product
Michael Skapinker | Monday, 21 July 2008
WHAT can business teach politicians about ethics? Absolutely nothing, was the answer at a recent discussion on the subject. What about the other way around: can politicians teach business anything about ethics? Do not be ridiculous, came the reply.
The curious thing was that it was business people who thought business could teach politicians nothing. And it was a politician who scoffed at the idea of politicians passing on lessons to business.
One of the doubting business people was Liam Halligan, chief economist at Prosperity Capital Management, which manages investments in Russia and the former Soviet states. While agreeing that "business is full of ethical people doing ethical things", he pointed to the credit markets, "gummed up by lack of trust. Banks can't trust each other to do the right thing. The business community is in no position to preach."
The discussion panel, organised by the Institute of Business Ethics, KPMG and Editorial Intelligence, a media analysis firm, contained only one politician - Alan Duncan, the Conservative party's business and enterprise spokesman - and he barely had a good word to say for politicians.
Mr Duncan, who was once an oil trader, ticked off the areas where business was superior to politics. Business was more honest in its claims than politics, he said. Compare a company's stock exchange listing document, subject to detailed scrutiny, with a political party's election manifesto. "The one is an exercise in honesty, the other, too often, an exercise in trickery," he said.
It was not just in ethics that Mr Duncan thought business had the edge. Look at the care with which boards recruited a mixture of experience, Mr Duncan continued. Britain's parliament, by contrast, was drawn from an increasingly narrow field - mostly the public sector and public relations.
Business was ahead in career development. Companies attempted to match the person to the job. Cabinet positions often went to politicians with no experience in the area.
Business careers developed in a more coherent fashion, Mr Duncan said. People did a job, succeeded and were promoted. In politics, there was no obvious hierarchy. Elections swept politicians aside, replacing them with inexperienced new ones.
Politicians could also learn from business how to launch a product or, in the case of politics, a policy. Companies tested products in the market and evaluated customers' response. By contrast, Mr Duncan said: "The making of law is a shambles. The attention paid to detail is execrable."
Is it fair to compare product launches with lawmaking? Surely the processes are entirely different? Successful companies find out what customers want and give it to them. When customer tastes shift, so do companies. If they do not, they fail.
Politicians are meant to be different. Those who change their policies to suit the public mood look unprincipled. The most admired politicians stick to their guns, the way Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. "Conviction politician" is a compliment. Those who adjust their policies to suit the prevailing wind are derided as "flip-floppers".
That may have been the way it once was, but politicians have changed, becoming more like business people. Tony Blair was a great practitioner of this, using focus groups to tell him what people wanted and then giving it to them.
Now Barack Obama is at it too, upsetting supporters with his recent opposition to gun control and support for the death penalty and immunity for wire-tapping telephone companies.
Hard-headed backers tell the worriers to get over it. This is how you win elections. Mr Obama has no intention of being a principled loser.
It worked for Mr Blair, who won three elections in a row. (As my colleague Gideon Rachman remarked to me: New Labour was more successful than New Coke.) Indeed, it was only when Mr Blair put principle before popularity by entering the Iraq war that he lost the public and his party.
Will tacking to match the public mood work for Mr Obama? It depends whether he can hold on to what attracted voters to him in the first place: his freshness, his articulacy and, above all, his promise of a new approach to political life. Will his policy shifts damage all that?
Mr Obama could look at the way companies deal with change. They do change their products, but the successful ones do so while retaining their distinctive qualities.
Wal-Mart was once simply about low prices, until Lee Scott, its chief executive, sensing the change in customer sentiment, decided to make it an environmentally friendly company too. But the basic offering remained the same: Wal-Mart is the place to go to buy a huge range of goods at low prices.
You can change, provided you hang on to the essential you. That is something else politicians can learn from business.
........................................
FT Syndication Service
The curious thing was that it was business people who thought business could teach politicians nothing. And it was a politician who scoffed at the idea of politicians passing on lessons to business.
One of the doubting business people was Liam Halligan, chief economist at Prosperity Capital Management, which manages investments in Russia and the former Soviet states. While agreeing that "business is full of ethical people doing ethical things", he pointed to the credit markets, "gummed up by lack of trust. Banks can't trust each other to do the right thing. The business community is in no position to preach."
The discussion panel, organised by the Institute of Business Ethics, KPMG and Editorial Intelligence, a media analysis firm, contained only one politician - Alan Duncan, the Conservative party's business and enterprise spokesman - and he barely had a good word to say for politicians.
Mr Duncan, who was once an oil trader, ticked off the areas where business was superior to politics. Business was more honest in its claims than politics, he said. Compare a company's stock exchange listing document, subject to detailed scrutiny, with a political party's election manifesto. "The one is an exercise in honesty, the other, too often, an exercise in trickery," he said.
It was not just in ethics that Mr Duncan thought business had the edge. Look at the care with which boards recruited a mixture of experience, Mr Duncan continued. Britain's parliament, by contrast, was drawn from an increasingly narrow field - mostly the public sector and public relations.
Business was ahead in career development. Companies attempted to match the person to the job. Cabinet positions often went to politicians with no experience in the area.
Business careers developed in a more coherent fashion, Mr Duncan said. People did a job, succeeded and were promoted. In politics, there was no obvious hierarchy. Elections swept politicians aside, replacing them with inexperienced new ones.
Politicians could also learn from business how to launch a product or, in the case of politics, a policy. Companies tested products in the market and evaluated customers' response. By contrast, Mr Duncan said: "The making of law is a shambles. The attention paid to detail is execrable."
Is it fair to compare product launches with lawmaking? Surely the processes are entirely different? Successful companies find out what customers want and give it to them. When customer tastes shift, so do companies. If they do not, they fail.
Politicians are meant to be different. Those who change their policies to suit the public mood look unprincipled. The most admired politicians stick to their guns, the way Ronald Reagan and Margaret Thatcher did. "Conviction politician" is a compliment. Those who adjust their policies to suit the prevailing wind are derided as "flip-floppers".
That may have been the way it once was, but politicians have changed, becoming more like business people. Tony Blair was a great practitioner of this, using focus groups to tell him what people wanted and then giving it to them.
Now Barack Obama is at it too, upsetting supporters with his recent opposition to gun control and support for the death penalty and immunity for wire-tapping telephone companies.
Hard-headed backers tell the worriers to get over it. This is how you win elections. Mr Obama has no intention of being a principled loser.
It worked for Mr Blair, who won three elections in a row. (As my colleague Gideon Rachman remarked to me: New Labour was more successful than New Coke.) Indeed, it was only when Mr Blair put principle before popularity by entering the Iraq war that he lost the public and his party.
Will tacking to match the public mood work for Mr Obama? It depends whether he can hold on to what attracted voters to him in the first place: his freshness, his articulacy and, above all, his promise of a new approach to political life. Will his policy shifts damage all that?
Mr Obama could look at the way companies deal with change. They do change their products, but the successful ones do so while retaining their distinctive qualities.
Wal-Mart was once simply about low prices, until Lee Scott, its chief executive, sensing the change in customer sentiment, decided to make it an environmentally friendly company too. But the basic offering remained the same: Wal-Mart is the place to go to buy a huge range of goods at low prices.
You can change, provided you hang on to the essential you. That is something else politicians can learn from business.
........................................
FT Syndication Service