Emperor Cummings the naked incompetent

This blog post challenges the myth that Dominic Cummings is competent at anything relevant to his position.

Is this "emperor" truly clad with extraordinary superpower garments?

 It is true that by lies and cheating he achieved victory in the 2016 referendum campaign. We could ignore this result in the light of the methods used, but let us accept it for now. We are not in a referendum campaign any more. The Tories should not be campaigning, but should be governing.

(But does Cummings treat government just as a campaign, focussing all the time on what will earn votes?).

Apart from that there is very little evidence of Dominic Cummings’ ability. Indeed there is strong evidence of the opposite 

 He claims to have exceptional insights as to what Britain needs. He lays great stress on “super forecasting“. But it’s always instructive to respond to lies and deception by examining what they tell us about the person. People confident of their position do not need to lie; the truth will serve. Why did Dominic Cummings lie about having predicted pandemics in his blog last year, whereas in fact he had inserted the entry in April this year, with the obvious benefit of hindsight? What this tells us is that he is particularly insecure about his ability to forecast. This is not about anybody else’s criticism of his blog; this refers to his own implied criticism, because he felt that what he had written was inadequate.

Many of us have subjects upon which we are more expert than 99% of the population. These may be hobbies, skills, subjects we have studied. By chance, some of the areas in which I do have that specialist knowledge, and have proved it by earning my living over my the course of my career by using that knowledge, happened to be subjects that Dominic Cummings talks about a lot as well, for example mathematical modelling, and large-scale change management. This enables me to say that he has not convinced me of his knowledge of these subjects, with an attempt to impress in his blog that may fool some of the people some of the time, but lacks substance. The use of the slogan “Get Brexit Done” (see below) demonstrates either that he misunderstands change management or else was attempting to mislead the country.

 Let us get into the specifics of his incompetence, however. For the purposes of this blog post, I am going to temporarily accept his message that he is the “genius” behind everything that the government does, echoed by reports from Cabinet Ministers that they do not even attempt to put forward ideas if they would not be accepted by Dominic Cummings.  Judging by his Rose Garden “Tell All (not quite)” session, and what he then told us about the day when he broke lockdown rules by going back into 10 Downing Street after seeing his coronavirus-affected wife, his presence was essential in order for the government to make any decisions.

 Very well then. In that case he is accountable for the major decisions of government.

 Let us examine some of these decisions against what would typically be in the first chapter of management books for beginners on particular topics.

 In “Negotiation for Beginners“ it would explain that it makes sense to work out what your own side will accept before doing a deal. Theresa May and Boris Johnson would have done well to heed this advice. Indeed Boris Johnson appears not to have even known what he himself would accept before signing the withdrawal agreement.

 In “Programme Management for Beginners” it would explain that the business change is only “done” when the new business model is operating. “Get Brexit done” was always misleading, even before it started unravelling. At the time of the Withdrawal Agreement, in terms of outcomes it had delivered nothing.

 In “Systems Implementation For Beginners” it would explain that if you have a target end date, you will need to work backwards from it in order to see what the necessary preparatory steps are. The date of 31st December 2020 was set completely arbitrarily, without any investigation of the necessary work, and therefore as a result we will be a million miles away from being ready for either any Deal or no Deal at 31st December

 In “Systems Development for Beginners” there would be some reference to understanding the requirement before you start promising to shower money on firms that can deliver it, otherwise you will pay through the nose in terms of changes. We have three months to go until the implementation deadline, and the requirement is clearly not understood, because no deal has been done with the EU, nor has a decision been made publicly to proceed on a “No Deal” basis.

 In “Operations Management for Beginners”, there would be suggestions about matching the level of resource to the level of work required, even possibly with some buffer capacity, but not recruiting 25,000 people all at once so that most of them spend the next few weeks watching Netflix.

 In “Project Management for Beginners”, it would explain that if you do not understand the work involved in a project, then it is worth talking to the experts, those with experience, who can advise you. The usefulness of experts has not decayed.

 In “Leadership for Beginners”, it would explain the need for honesty, and to admit one’s mistakes. The Tory rejoinder is more akin to the Monty Python line of “Don’t let’s bicker and argue about who killed who, this is supposed to be a happy occasion”. (“Clap for Boris”, one might almost hear next)  (“This is not the time to apportion blame”, they say, and then in the next breath sack a Public Health Chief Executive with 41 years experience to replace him with someone who clearly has no understanding of sensible operations management)

  In “Doing Deals for Beginners”, it would explain that your ability to make new Deals will depend on how trustworthy you are seen to be on the Deals you have already made. And yet the UK is openly, brazenly, legislating to break the Withdrawal Agreement made with the EU, despite the clear and obvious warnings that this rules out any future Deal with the EU, and Deal with the USA, and probably with most of the rest of the world. This is the most self-destructive and UK-destructive action yet. All living previous Prime Ministers condemn it, and Margaret Thatcher clearly would too judging by her published speeches. 

These are not marginal errors of judgement. These are fundamental mistakes, which even a first year MBA student would be able to identify quite rapidly.

 I am giving Cummings the credit here for assuming that he has objectives that are beneficial, which of course he is massively failing upon if so. Alternatively, if his intention is to create a merry hell in the UK, with escalating levels of coronavirus, financial turmoil, unemployment, poverty and starvation, then he is going the right way about it.

 Now, all the subjects are very complex of course and involve cooperation from a number of other people. Let us look at a situation where everything was under his control. The organising of a lockdown in an empty cottage. Presumably the objective was to go to the cottage, avoid being seen, stay put, recover, and in due course return to London.

Fairly straightforward you might say. Not difficult. But Cummings didn’t achieve it.

Part of the issue in that case may be that for a grown man he seems particularly insecure, hence perhaps the need to throw his weight around a lot, and in situations of stress tends to return to his parents, in some cases for extended periods. There is nothing wrong with spending time with your parents (outside of lockdown) , but if you’ve decided, for example, on your illicit return to collect your wife and child, that you’re not going to go out for a walk in the woods and you’re going to stay absolutely out of sight, then you should probably stick to that even if your parents say “Come on let’s go for a walk in the woods”. Fair enough,  I’m indulging a little bit of speculation there, but undoubtedly his track record in terms of aligning his actions to his objectives was dreadful on his time in Durham.

So - organisationally and personally incompetent, and insecure. But what about the bullying? Isn’t he quite good at throwing his weight around?

Well, if the man-baby in 10 Downing Street gives you the privilege of being able to field armed police to back you up when you have illegally sacked a special advisor, taken her phone and are escorting her off the premises, then it’s understandable that you are obeyed. I don’t think that’s particularly surprising. I don’t think that shows any particular skill, in fact I think it shows a marked lack of emotional intelligence.

So let’s sum up.

·         He can campaign effectively if he cheats

·         He can bully effectively

·         He is dishonest.

·         He has shown himself spectacularly incompetent at everything else.

This emperor has no clothes, and courtiers should stop marvelling at his extraordinary garments. 

And his assistant is not the Messiah.