Tag: Governance

Our leaders blog, twitter and consult focus groups. But these developments do not make society better governed.

We should learn lessons from the Apollo programme and the people who design our television sets. Modular constructions are more robust.

Great and enduringly successful organisations are not stages on which geniuses can strut. They are structures that make the most of the ordinary talents of ordinary people.

Liberal democracies of the modern world based on lightly regulated capitalism acknowledge two mechanisms of accountability – the marketplace and the ballot box.

Power is a duty, not a prize, is probably the most important reason why some countries in the world are rich and others poor. The point needs to be brought home in equal measure to legislators, chief executives and bankers.

Values of integrity, of public service, and of responsible stewardship of the money of others can never be replaced by rules or imposed by regulation.

Typically reasons given for judgment are rationalisations after the event, the consultation is a formality rather than a sincere search for opinions, and the accountability is a matter of extensive paperwork rather than a genuine appraisal of performance.

The crippling consequence of inability to admit error is the impossibility of learning from past mistakes.

Havens exist only because larger states allow them to exist, and larger states allow them to exist because the customers of havens are the rich and powerful.

It is true that professional reputations are not what they once were, that self-regulation of standards of competence has often been inadequate, that professions’ ethical standards have declined generally. But it is also striking that such decline is most noticeable in the areas of law and accountancy closest to financial services.