Business Management – what the government can teach us

Most elected politicians have no experience of business management and the few that have didn’t get it managing small and medium enterprises.

So what can government teach us about business management? Plenty!

Take recruitment for example. If you’ve not enough work to fully occupy all your staff, stop recruiting. Don’t be like our government and keep allowing people in; especially if they’ve no useful skills.

What about discipline? Make sure that all your employees have a copy of your handbook, in which you clearly set out the terms and conditions of employment in your business, including the process for dismissing troublemakers. This way you’ll avoid having any Abu Hamza situations.

Government can teach us much about product development. In particular the fact familiar to most engineers that there comes a time when a design has to be “frozen”. Failure to do so gives rise to situations familiar to the Ministry of Defence, where huge budget overruns and late delivery are commonplace – not to mention having aircraft carriers but no planes to land on them.

Continuous Professional Development! Follow the example of government who appoint Ministers with no previous experience of managing the function for which they are to be responsible. Wait until they’ve made a few costly errors, and then move them on to another post where they have no previous experience. In the real world it’s just about acceptable to move new graduates/trainees that way to give them exposure to the different aspects of your business; just as long as you can stand the cost.

Public Relations is an area where governments of all shades have much to teach us. First, let every Tom Dick and Harriet leak to the media. That way you’ll get lots of opportunity to speak to the media to make clear that what they’ve heard isn’t (necessarily) company policy. If you have a new product to launch, make sure that you leak it to the media months before the launch so that by the time of the launch everyone is heartily sick and tired of hearing about it and your competitors have had time to prepare their knocking copy.

If you’ve not developed a new product or service for years, give your old ones a new name and re-launch them with a new colour or logo. That’ll fool everyone!

Most important of all, just as the members of successive governments have had no experience of running businesses, be absolutely certain to have a board that has no idea whatever of what your company does.