Pat McFadden's idea is terrible. Here's why...
Pat McFadden wants the civil service to be “more like a startup”. 540,000 public servants, he said on Monday, should adopt the “test and learn” approach of startup culture. It’s a terrible idea.
It’s also nothing new. We’ve heard it before from the visionary-with-terrible-vision, Dominic Cummings. Political bosses love to fantasise about the early days of launch, when your focus is narrow and you have the agility to pivot in whichever direction you’d like.?
Questioning established processes is undoubtedly healthy. But a leaner business model can hardly be the answer for an entity that reportedly gave ￡3.4bn to private consultants in the past year due to under-staffing. Besides which, startups don’t tend to have 465 departments. You can’t “move fast and break things” when you’re responsible for a state’s social welfare.?
This is also why I find the minister’s message insulting, not flattering, to new founders. For them, the core objective is growth, not to tread water.?
In the same week that startups are being praised, we’ve seen how sceptical the business world can be about them. Overnight, Tortoise Media, buyer of The Observer, has gone from plucky disruptor to harbinger of doom, partly due to concerns about its profitability and youth.
Startups don’t need to hear the UK government lionising those in founder mode. What they actually need is backing and capital as they look to scale (exactly as the Scottish government has promised this week). Meanwhile, cash-strapped new businesses are having their overheads further burdened to save the Chancellor a quick buck, thanks to employer national insurance contributions increases.
We can romanticise the risk-taking ethos of startups, but the reality is that such a culture is born out of necessity, not choice. Founders are forced to operate on razor-thin margins and make rapid decisions to survive. Is that really how a government should choose to run itself??
Helena Young - Startups, Lead Writer
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