Why We Should Bother with Honour

The end of the year in the United Kingdom also marks the awarding of the 'Honours' to people who have made special contributions to public life. For those outside of the UK, it must be as curious as the way Brits can't make eye-contact with each other on public transport.

Honours have grand titles. Even the most humble of Honours, the MBE, has the official description of Member of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire. They rise to such wonderful forms as the DBE, Dame Commander of the Most Excellent Order of the British Empire (don't mess with me, mister) and the oldest form, KT, The Most Ancient and Most Noble Order of the Thistle (an honour that dates back to 1687). Go Thistles!

The friends

The Honours list forms a peculiar part of the British milieu. They dominate the newspapers for a couple of days each year. Personally, for most of my life they were just something that strangers did. Lists to glance at in the daily broadsheets.

But in recent years, more and more friends, acquaintances and colleagues have found their way to Honours Lists, making them more proximate than ever.

In this year's list, at least three of my network were duly Honoured:

• Colette Bowe, for her services to media, a DBE
• Mike Bracken, for his services to digitising stuff, a CBE
• Michael Acton Smith, for his towards internet services and gaming, who gets an OBE
• Penny Power, an OBE

First of all, a congratulations to them!

And in previous years, many others, not on this short list, have been honoured.

The controversy

Honours can be controversial. Several hundred people are believed to have spurned offers of Honours. For example, the following all declined honours

• Michael Foot, an eminent British politician
• Alan Bennett, a playwright
• J G Ballard, the novelist
• David Bowie, the musician
• Nigella Lawson, the television chef

In general the reasons for declining honours seem to coalesce around politics, and I say this without suggesting the people above decline honours for political reasons. The politics being those of:

• Republicanism - isn't a monarchy an anachronism? And should we not stand against it in all its forms, including such a public honour?
• Colonialism - wasn't empire in general and the British Empire in particular a byword for slavery?
• Politicisation - Isn't the process imperfect? Doesn't it just reward the connected?

And, at some level, in an era of meritocracy, ought we not let the market speak for who should get honoured?

The honour in Honours

In an era of listicles and performance-by-page-view, we can overlook the fact the some types of endeavour cannot be measured by a simple quantitative scale. They require analysis, discussion and context.

The market has a tendency to reward people against a single metric. The ability to generate dollars. And the reward those people get is ... in dollars. And if we don't use dollars, we'll tend to use something that proxies for it.

However in a complex society, individuals may have that impact at many different levels. In ways that are not measured by a Kelvin's or Deming's scales. Instead, Britain's own Civil Servants investigate and judge the validity of the claims, and the extent of each individual's impact.

By creating new ways for children to engage with each other (Mr Smith). Or figuring out how to get government to genuinely empower itself to deliver its services electronically (Mr Bracken). Or to manage the reform and restructuring of how media is regulated during a time of unprecedented innovation (Ms Bowe). The impact of these things cannot be measured by Google Analytics. Or the balance of your bank account. They are nuanced, complex.

The Honours system in the UK hands that task over to the formidable (and occasionally annoying) civil service, and puts in place a painstaking mechanism of assessment. One which builds on years of experience of understanding what contribution of public life means.

So in this era of measure everything, a short moment to remember that some achievements are better understood by their quality and not just by their KPIs.

And to those on this year's lists, congratulations!

Who would you honour? And why?