Returning from the Summer, this week I'm talking to Sir Michael Barber, the man who Tony Blair appointed to create and then run his Delivery Unit at No. 10.

While not overt, there's lots of behavioural science going on here: creating repeatable routines, fear of and resistance to change, influencing and persuading intransigent individuals. A great part of Michael's work after all is understanding people, with all their biases and preconceptions, and then reorganising them.

Show notes

What Scafell Pike walk teaches you about problem solving
Why did Tony Blair ask Michael to set up his Delivery Unit?
What was the civil service doing before the introduction of the Delivery Unit?
Changing real people’s lives in a very visible, meaningful way
How boring and radical government must hang together
Why delivery is like a soap opera as well as a documentary
The importance of a guiding coalition in government to make policy happen
Government by routine vs. by spasm
Buy-in is overrated, or why you don’t need it at the beginning
Reaching irreversibility
How intrusive press blurs the line between transparency and privacy
Excuses that ministers throw up to resist change
What Michael advised Boris Johnson in 2019
The next frontier in Delivery – using real-time data

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26/10/2025

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