043: Sir Michael Barber on the science of delivery in politics

Returning from the Summer, this week I'm talking to Sir Michael Barber, the man who Tony Blair appointed to create and then run his Delivery Unit at No. 10.

While not overt, there's lots of behavioural science going on here: creating repeatable routines, fear of and resistance to change, influencing and persuading intransigent individuals. A great part of Michael's work after all is understanding people, with all their biases and preconceptions, and then reorganising them.

Show notes

What Scafell Pike walk teaches you about problem solvingWhy did Tony Blair ask Michael to set up his Delivery Unit?What was the civil service doing before the introduction of the Delivery Unit?Changing real people’s lives in a very visible, meaningful wayHow boring and radical government must hang togetherWhy delivery is like a soap opera as well as a documentaryThe importance of a guiding coalition in government to make policy happenGovernment by routine vs. by spasmBuy-in is overrated, or why you don’t need it at the beginningReaching irreversibilityHow intrusive press blurs the line between transparency and privacyExcuses that ministers throw up to resist changeWhat Michael advised Boris Johnson in 2019The next frontier in Delivery – using real-time data

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Podcast music: Tamsin Waley-Cohen's Mendelssohn's violin concerto