Article By Mark Fenton, Transformation Lead at Optima Systems Consultancy
An independent assessment of the recently published Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy and what it means for UK businesses.
The UK Government recently published the Integrated Review of Security, Defence, Development and Foreign Policy. The Integrated Review sets out the UK Government’s vision, commitments and priorities for the country in the coming years. This was closely followed by the Ministry of Defence’s publication, , setting out how they will contribute to the objectives of the Integrated Review. Together these documents cover a broad range of topics and have wide-reaching implications.
These implications need a careful examination within the context of a VUCA (volatile, uncertain, complex, and ambiguous) world that surrounds us. From the ongoing pandemic, changes to the geo-political balance of power, climate change challenges, and a growing range of non-state threats, to the increasing power of global corporations and the rapid evolution of technologies, we must take action to ensure the UK remains sovereign, secure and prosperous.
The following analysis from Optima Systems Consultancy highlights the key commitments, priorities and their potential implications with steps that that organisations need to take to meet the needs and challenges of the coming years.
Constant Competition
The underpinning theme of the Integrated Review is one of constant competition. Standing still or dreaming of glory days of the past is unlikely to serve us to best advantage in a world where both our allies and adversaries are constantly evolving.
In a defence context, our focus is brought to the need to adapt to a continuum from ‘operating’ to ‘warfighting’ to keep our people secure. The Integrated Operating Concept published last autumn recognised that historical approaches to defence are not sufficient in the information age. As adversaries increasingly and continuously employ activities below the threshold of war to their advantage, we must adapt to meet the evolving threat in addition to remaining capable of defeating more traditional threats. This is further challenged by the growing technological capabilities of both state and non-state adversaries which have reduced or even eliminated our historical technological advantages.
In a climatic context, the UK’s ambition is to be a world leader in climate action, striving to achieve national environmental objectives and focusing global action on tackling environmental threats. Achieving reductions in carbon dioxide emissions and tackling biodiversity loss while ensuring that our energy and resource needs are satisfied is a significant challenge. The COVID-19 pandemic has also demonstrated that many of us can adopt new working arrangements that offer the potential to reduce travel and hence reduce carbon dioxide emissions.
In an economic context, emphasis is placed on promoting the conditions for free and fair international trade to flourish, in order to ensure the prosperity of the nation. In a world where protectionism is more and more prevalent, China frequently seeks to project its influence internationally, and the Indo-Pacific region becomes increasingly important to the world’s economy, the UK intends to employ its diplomatic capabilities to promote the merits of economic openness.
Underpinning the security, environmental protection and prosperity agendas are the needs to establish strong alliances and partnerships, lead and influence the development of international rules and norms, and invest in and leverage our science and technology expertise.
Our scientific and technological capabilities are world-leading and provide us with leverage to influence others. As other nations increase their abilities to compete with the UK in scientific research and technological development, we need to invest in key areas to sustain strategic advantage. The growing prevalence of information systems brings huge benefits to people and organisations across the UK, demands that we continually enhance our information systems and infrastructure. The growing cyber threat presented by state and non-state adversaries requires us to continually enhance our cyber capabilities. The global climate change challenges also present us with an opportunity to lead the development of green technologies. As space becomes an increasingly important domain both economically and militarily, we need to develop our sovereign UK space capabilities to our national benefit.
Implications
The objectives and commitments laid out in the Integrated Review have an impact across government and industry organisations. Here we consider some of the key implications of these objectives and commitments.
Collaborative Working
As more is demanded from available resources, we will need to increase collaborative working both across – and within organisations to more efficiently deliver desired outcomes. Efficient collaborative working does not just happen. It requires effort to be put into establishing lean value chains that cut across intra-organisational and inter-organisational boundaries. This is particularly true where there are contractual interfaces between organisations. Technical systems often break or exhibit poor performance as a result of interactions across interfaces and the same is true of organisational systems. Establishing effective and efficient operating models requires the investment of effort and, often difficult discussions over who is responsible for what. Inefficient organisational structures, processes and governance arrangements may prevent us from achieving our objectives. If effort is not spent up-front in developing and agreeing ways of working, there is a risk that desired outcomes will not be achieved or not achieved in a timely, cost-effective manner.
Skills and Organisational Capabilities
The emphasis on investing in science and technology to the advantage of both the UK and the wider world is laudable. Our nation will be at the heart of achieving this advantage. To succeed we need to establish a talent pipeline of people with the required Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) knowledge, skills and experience. Recent surveys and studies have shown that STEM jobs have been increasing more rapidly than non-STEM jobs. This trend is expected to continue as information systems increasingly play a major role in our personal and professional lives. At the same time, studies and surveys show the number of qualified British STEM graduates leaving education, combined with existing STEM practitioners in the UK marketplace is insufficient to meet employers’ needs. To bridge the skills gap, employers have been turning to recruits from overseas to help meet their resource needs.
While the UK government’s new Office for Talent and Global Talent Visa provide mechanisms to try to attract and make it easier to recruit overseas STEM practitioners, this alone is unlikely to overcome the shortfall. The Integrated Review only briefly covers the professionalisation and training of practitioners to meet demand from employers. This is an area of critical importance. The development of more STEM practitioners in the UK is paramount to ensuring the achievement of the objectives and commitments set out in the Integrated Review. This not only includes newly qualified STEM practitioners leaving education, but also the upskilling of existing STEM practitioners.
Real organisational capability comes through the combination of knowledge, skills and experience. Organisations need to both improve the transfer of existing knowledge and wisdom from more experienced practitioners to less experienced practitioners and also to develop new skills. This requires more careful and deliberate planning than simply scheduling people onto training courses.
As both organisations and technology become more complex, the types of skills required are evolving. There is a growing need for systems thinking to cope with this complexity and help to understand and manage uncertainty. Systems thinking is not currently a major part of the curriculum in education. Growing awareness of the potential benefits of Agile delivery is resulting in an increasing number of people seeking and achieving Agile qualifications. However, this is an area where qualifications alone are not enough. Agile delivery requires a fundamental change in mindset and behaviours compared to more traditional project delivery approaches that is often not taken into account or adequately addressed.
The evolution towards Agile delivery approaches also impacts on organisational governance arrangements. It is challenging to employ traditional governance arrangements around Agile delivery projects. Organisations that don’t adapt their governance to Agile working practices constrain the realisation of the benefits of Agile delivery. Both programmatic oversight and reporting and commercial contracting arrangements need to evolve to enable Agile delivery to fulfil its potential and prevent delays in roll out of new technologies and ways of working.
Continious Improvement and Change Management
In a hyper-competitive world, it is essential that organisations continually evolve to realise opportunities and mitigate threats. The COVID-19 pandemic has been an unexpected stimulus, driving many organisations to transition to new ways of working more rapidly than may otherwise have been considered.
More emphasis needs to be put into innovation, continual improvement and managing change. The pandemic has shown that many organisations were quickly able to adapt to continue operating. Many of the changes that have been made would have been beneficial before, and will continue to be beneficial after the pandemic. The concern is that it took a global pandemic to get some organisations to change. While the changes made have largely been beneficial, the roll-out of changes could, in many cases, have been better managed. The people-related aspects of change management are at least as important as the technological aspects of change. Organisations only truly transform when all the people within them have accepted and adopted change.
Conclusions
The Integrated Review provides a vision for the UK over the coming decade. The volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity that we are seeing today is only likely to rise as we live in an increasingly inter-connected world. UK organisations need to take positive action to be able to take advantage of the opportunities in a competitive world while ensuring the UK’s security.
In this response to the Integrated Review, we have identified three key steps that organisations can take to prepare:
- Improve collaborative working by establishing leaner organisational structures, processes and governance arrangements.
- Developing skills such as systems thinking and Agile delivery will help organisations to develop and deliver solutions to complex challenges and manage uncertainty.
- Improving change management will enable organisations to continuously adapt to meet emerging opportunities and threats.
How can we help?
Optima Systems Consultancy can help your organisation to review the strategic implications of the Integrated Review on your business and co-create solutions to be better placed for the future.
Our Optima Connections™ approach reviews your organisation’s capabilities against your strategic direction and together we can set out and embed improved ways of working.
Contact me to discuss how we can help you.
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