Conspiracy of Inertia

You don't get much more metropolitan liberal elite than former UK PM, Tony Blair. Since being turfed out of office, becoming extraordinarily rich advising the governing class across the globe. Many as reprehensible as they are immune to any ballet box, given his game on how to approach the way they govern.

That is not to say there isn't the occasional insight for our solution sell endeavours that emerge from his preachings. Take this, from a panel appearance widely reported at the first SXSW London event. About the British civil service;

"it's a conspiracy for inertia, it has got a genius for absorbing the impetus for change and suffocating it".

Ouch. I too have felt the excruciating pain of dealing with this body. Who hasn't?

His litany of fixes proffered is well-known. Focus on delivery, bring in outsiders, decentralise, streamline, take calculated risks. If only any of those (and more) had ever been planks of policy, hey. Doge, if you dare?

Yet the problem ever swells.

You can't help but try suppress the memory of several distressingly similar sounding prospects too.

Yet we have the same empirical data on which to draw. We can also run background checks within our prospects. We must gauge their 'conspiracy for inertia' reading for ourselves, as early as feasible.

As a corporate body, their 'whole' may indeed show 'genius for absorbing the impetus for change and suffocating it'. We've a pair of angles;

What change has taken place lately?
What invitation to change got declined?

Probing both these forks in their roads will provide evidence of why recent proposals came about, how they were received, and perhaps most insightful of all, who made it so.

If you spot the soaked status quo sponge, if you can loosen the threat of asphyxiation, if you know from where oxygen emanates, you might just be able to best apply your sales effort.