Purposeful Policies - Purposeful Enterprise

Purposeful Policies - Purposeful Enterprise

Britain stands at a crossroads. We can continue to process failure, tackle symptoms, and profiteer from destructive/extractive practices. Or we can build a Purposeful Britain, focused on social justice, opportunity, and environmental responsibility, and together co-create step change improvements in motivation, engagement, trust, and meaningful growth. We choose the latter.

Purposeful Britain includes Purposeful Governance, Purposeful Policies, and Purposeful Practices - all embedded in the DNA of our economy, our organisations, and institutions, our public services and government.

Here are five simple and powerful examples related to enterprise.

Principles and Policies that reward real value-creation over short-term extraction.

Policies should positively incentivise/reward value-adding enterprises that add real/productive value to the economy over those that do not, and worse still, those negatively extracting from the economy and creating significant damage to communities and the environment.

Purposeful Governance in Public Services, Institutions, and Government.

Purposeful Governance embeds values and purpose into the DNA of an operation and is able to create a 600% increase in levels of motivation and employee engagement. It exposes the root causes of problems and eliminates them - boosting efficiency, effectiveness, productivity and innovation, and superpowers meaningful sustainable growth. This policy will create a platform of world-class public services supporting individuals, communities and organisations, and provide cost effective world-class outcomes at less than half the cost. Purposeful Governance will be applied across the civil service and to all essential services under state control, including the NHS, education, defence, the home office and public transportation (including the railways).

Purposeful Governance applied to business critical services.

Essential services not under state control will be incentivised/regulated to apply Purposeful Governance and embed values and purpose into the DNA of their operation - to create step change increases in levels of employee engagement and embed world-class management practices. This includes essential services such as water, energy supply, electricity generation, and roads, and outsourced services including adult social care and children's services, to disincentivise extractive practices and profiteering from failure. Enterprises applying Purposeful Governance would be incentivised to do so by incentives partly paid for government savings and by those not applying Purposeful Governance and producing significant negative externalities.

Purposeful Governance applied to enterprise.

Enterprise will be incentivised to apply Purposeful Governance and embed values/purpose into the DNA of their operation to create transformational increases in levels of employee engagement and to drive step-change improvements in productivity, innovation and growth. Enterprises applying Purposeful Governance will be incentivised to do so by incentives partly paid for by those who do no not and who are producing significant negative externalities which government currently has to increase taxes to fix (e.g. waste, pollution, ill-health, stress related illnesses). When enterprises are purposeful they help to stop problems from occurring, rather creating more problems and/or profiteer from processing problems. Purposeful Enterprises collectively solve wasteful problems at source and are incentivised to do so.

Water back into public hands.

Water companies have profiteered from dumping raw sewage into our rivers and seas, killing wildlife, destroying eco-systems, and endangering life. Their shareholders have extracted profits and saddled their companies with debt, exposing at that is bad about extractive forms of capitalism. The true nature and liabilities of these companies now to exposed, and as they declare insolvency, need to be taken back into public hands and with minimum cost to the tax-payer. Once this is done Purposeful Governance can then be applied so they provide a world-class service at world class cost, without polluting our environment.

Electricity and Energy.

An effective, sustainable, readily available, and resilient electricity/energy supply is essential for enterprise to compete effectively in global markets. Clean, green, and competitive electricity generation (and distribution) are increasingly essential, yet in the UK the price of electricity is artificially/dysfunctionally pegged to the price of fossil fuels (gas) through marginal pricing. This is anti-competitive practice makes electricity artificially inflates prices and creates huge price volatility due to geo-political tensions (e.g. war), global market speculation, and corporate profiteering, when the price of power from wind and sun does not change and its price to use is low and continuing to decrease. This artificial peg must be be removed immmediately to free up cost effective clean electricity for value adding enterprises to sustainabily flourish in global markets. Excessive and extractive profiteering must also to be addressed and regulators, producers, distributors and retailers should collectively be incentivised/regulated to ensure adoption of Purposeful Governance and world-class management practices. Community ownership should also be encouraged.

National investment in digital infrastructure.

Digital infrastructure is now vital for enterprises to flourish and purposeful policies will need to ensure the development of this as a critical national infrastructure. This is increasingly the case with the growing influence of social media, misinformation/disinformation, cyber-attacks, and the application of AI and robotics in enterprise. We must not be reliant on other nations in these areas and must ensure we have home grown capability (alongside international alliances) in these areas. Tax and regulation should address extractive practices (e.g. by increasing digital service taxes) and the revenues generated used to build national capabilities and home grown enterprise. Likewise this national infrastructure increasingly needs to be owned by its citizens, future proofing the wellbeing of citizens in an increasingly digital/AI world.

Purposeful policies applied to remove bureacracy and layer upon layer of failed policy.

Policy failures and ineffective policies result more and more policy - layers and layers of ineffective policies that do not work and result in bureaucratic stagnation. Purposeful Policies will be introduced that are both simple and effective. Built using world class policy design, and systems thinking to reduce the risk of unintended consequences, they will be designed to tackle root causes of problems, to prevent problems and to avoid/remove any cost of failure. Good policy means less policy, and incentives will be used to drive good practice and the avoidance of negative externalities that need to be fixed. Regulation will support this when needed, and only when needed. Reducing unnecessary policies and micro-management of enterprise will create a vibrant environment for purposeful enterprise to flourish and in a sustainable way.

Purposeful policies to reduce negative externalities, extraction, and non-value adding activity.

Purposeful policies to need to be applied to properly account for the cost of any negative externalities, including the creation of unnecessary waste, unsustainable resource extraction, and stress-related illness created by poor management practices. Policies also need to address asset accumulation, hoarding, corporate capture and rent extraction (e.g. related to land, property and other assets) and properly address huge profits being made from lending, gambling, and money for nothing loop-holes and schemes (e.g. by increasing taxes on gambling, trading, land ownership, asset hoarding, property portfolios and all those actively involved in land banking). Housing should no longer be seen as asset class (housing 'units' for investors to profit from) and once again become affordable homes for hard-working people to live and bring up their family. In similar way banks should once again focus on supporting value-adding businesses, with bank managers returning closer to the coal face, rather than seeking easy money from lending money to property speculators and asset/derivative traders.

There's obviously much more in terms of principles, policies, and practice, and the above provides just a little of what a Purposeful Government would do to create a vibrant, sustainable and thriving environment for enterprise, communities, and nation.

A summary can be found here.

David Clift

Purposeful Ambassador®

Founder, Good Turns Foundation

Founder, The Purposeful Policy Forum & The Purposeful Governance Forum

Co-developer of Purposeful Britain and a Purposeful World

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