6 Comments on Suffolk against the state

ad on Fri, 17th Jul 2009 8:59 pm


“the majority of the 120 strong public sector audience plumping for the egalitarian (we must change the way we live) option ”

How many of these people had changed the way they lived?

Clearly, most people have not; which suggests that if large numbers of people are saying that in public, it is because they want to maintain the right image in public.

Andrew Carey on Tue, 21st Jul 2009 4:51 pm


It partly depends on whether and when you introduced the H word. I think most people know they’re supposed to disapprove of hierarchy now (though I’m putting a pro-hierarchy message on my honey labels this year to try and aggravate any flatorgs who eat it).

But I’m assuming that you used a formulation like the one you tested earlier in the month (which didn’t mention hierarchy and was strong on decisive global leadership). If so, I think it’s to do with the sorry culture and accepting responsibility. Because we all know that we’re supposed to hate Sharon Shoesmith for not saying Baby P was all her fault, we also know that we have to accept responsibility for the climate.

Either way, you’re right that how we want to be seen (and to see ourselves) is a powerful and constant engine of disingenuousness.

Fourcultures on Sat, 15th Aug 2009 11:34 am


I was on holiday in July and totally missed your experiment, but it’s been fascinating catching up at last. Your idea was a lot like the a href=”http://fourcultures.com/take-the-fourcultures-survey/”> poll on my website which asks ‘how much is there?’ and then offers four simple grid-group answers for respondents to choose from. You can see the results so far for yourself (about 40).
Both my own unscientific experiment and yours certainly raise issues about the way the framing of the questions influences the answers people give. I’m still not happy with the ’stock answers’ in my poll, but since the replies seem fairly evenly spread, maybe they’re not too far off the mark. In the light of my own experience I have a couple of comments about the framing of your questions. It appears you may have more than one opportunity to finesse them, so here goes:
On Hierarchy, your question focussed on an institution (Government) rather than a mode of organisation. I think a government could be dominated by any one of the four cultures. It also mentioned ‘global leadership’, which could be construed as an Egalitarian idea (‘think globally…’; ‘we’re all part of One World, the global village’ etc). I think I prefer my focus on ‘information’ and ‘management’, but on reflection, I would have mentioned ‘experts’. Reflecting on why people stayed away from your Q2, perhaps it would have been more acceptable if you’d suggested leaving climate change to the experts rather than to governments.
Secondly, on the fatalism question, I think this is seriously skewed in the sense that it’s the only one that smells of climate change denial. This aspect should be toned down in the question. Further, the way you frame it makes it sound very negative compared with the others. My own Fatalist answer was more upbeat: ‘we could get lucky’. I think the answer should convey more of the sense of ‘cheer up, it may never happen’. I also toyed with trying the following to convey a sense of the Fatalist spirit: ‘Lighten up! Why can’t we talk about sport and fashion?’ Sorry to be long-winded, but one further thought: your answers read to me as though they’d all been written from an Egalitarian point of view. Could you get someone else to write them from a different perspective then compare notes?

matthewtaylor on Mon, 17th Aug 2009 2:43 pm


Thanks for this. Really good points. I’ll make sure I participate in your survey – you’ve clearly done better than me at phrasing the question. On fatalism I think it can be put positively but I also think that the fatalist position will always be one people are more likely to adopt than to own up to. I want to return to all this in the autumn. I used the categories for an event in Suffolk and I learnt quite a bit from what went well and what didn’t.

Victoria Taylor on Thu, 27th Aug 2009 6:03 pm


Sorry for being hopelessly late on this. I was present at your talk at Suffolk County Council. What I saw was an outright rejection of the hierarchy option (it’s up to Government to act) – which is interesting in an audience made up of local government officers! Parallels (and drive for?) in an answer the new-ish Chief exec gave – ‘I’m not interested in rules and regulations. I’m interested in opening up a creative space for people to have ideas’. So I think that there is a move here, for ‘leadership thinkers’ to align themselves with the rejection of the percieved paternalism of a regulatory approach. However, this was NOT reflected in the mass-take up of an individualist option

matthewtaylor on Fri, 28th Aug 2009 12:46 pm


Thanks Victoria. I suspect you are right; people in authoritiy may not want to seem hierarchical but it isn’t yet clear what is the alternative.

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