‘Weirdos and Misfits’

The crucial missing ingredient in Dominic Cummings’ recruitment thinking

Simon’s blog, January 2020

Dominic Cummings’ blog (2nd January) clearly describes the desired skills, qualities, education and experience of the new people he believes are necessary to create the innovation and change sought by this administration. He thinks that a bolder and more challenging set of people are needed: they will be clever and technologically diverse. They will break the established mode.

He is not the first to think this way. Others have wanted radical change agents to achieve new goals and standards. A new team with people like that may be scary for the old guard but that is what cultural change is all about.

Think about Bletchley Park, the WW2 organisation charged with breaking the Enigma code and for whom the brilliant Alan Turin worked (later tragically misunderstood and mistreated). They started recruiting unusual and talented people: university mathematicians with exceptional language skills who could solve difficult puzzles – poets who had an affinity and ear for the infinite possibilities of language – people who could reconstruct dead languages by breaking codes such as hieroglyphics used by pharaohs – Chess champions, given that to excel at chess is to hold 100 abstract possibilities in one’s head which is why chess players made formidable code breakers.

Bletchley Park is an inspiring example of breaking the mould, so what is the missing ingredient in Cummings’ initiative?

It lacks the power of Bletchley’s unifying sense of purpose: the need to defend us from Germany’s Third Reich against whom this country stood alone until Pearl Harbour, 7th December 1941.

An Employer Brand must reflect an urgent and overarching purpose which will attract outstanding and uniquely qualified talent. If that is missing it’s just another job.

It is the lack of that emotional power which makes this Government initiative so challenging. It is entwined with politics and divisions and it fails to state the vision and aim which will inspire the target audience.

The handicap is that HMG have not stated the vision in terms which will stir the heart beyond ‘Take Back Control’ and ‘Get Brexit done’. Those are clear  goals but the realities in planning our future actual relationships which will be a complex balance eg with the rest of Europe, with America and indeed within the UK eg Scotland and Northern Ireland. How does it apply to supply chains of companies investing here and our services, in particular London’s financial services? What will our future ability be to hire people from Europe and elsewhere? How are we going to work together on matters which affect us all – defence, crime prevention, climate change, R&D? Success in all that will need trust, respect and partnership and that must be evident from the start.

Running through Cummings’ blog is the theme of superior intelligence. Such people can be difficult to pigeonhole. That was fine at Bletchley since the overall aim was clear and urgent. He has high standards but many of those who qualify intellectually may have personal beliefs which rule them out. What kind of people are not welcome and will be shown the door as he threatens? He needs to be clearer up front on this.

There are some warning signals for the rest of the Civil Service and its culture e.g. “changing policy and the structure of decision making, being prepared to take risks to change things a lot and ‘not being worried about short term unpopularity”. Does he mean to scare them? There are more effective ways of changing culture.

Brilliant ‘Weirdos and Misfits’ are hard to marshal and discipline. They can make trouble if they see an end game which you cannot live with. That is why they are often not regarded as ‘sound’ but that is what makes them so special.

Only a great shared and specific vision can hope to unify the UK and harness everyone whatever their past and present beliefs.

Simon Barrow