by Tim Dickson | Jul 3, 2025 | Articles, Fourth Edition
Opportunities to adapt – and to improve lives In the private sector, ‘transformation’ consultants and chief executives of beleaguered companies often talk about ‘burning platforms’, dire situations they can turn to advantage by requiring obstructive employees and... 
by Lucy Smith | Jun 30, 2025 | Articles, Fourth Edition, International Perspectives, Policy Insights, The Budget Collection, The Top Articles of 2025
Lucy Smith, this year’s Heywood Fellow, says other countries may be leading the way Short-termism, blind spots, lack of planning by the British state. These are not new problems. In his 1946 essay In Front of Your Nose, George Orwell wrote of the widespread habit in... 
by Susan Acland-Hood and Simon Blake | Jun 25, 2025 | Articles, Data, Tech and Innovation, Fourth Edition
Susan Acland-Hood and Simon Blake explain how Covid prompted a new approach to tackling absence rates in schools in England “It was identifying the leaves that helped us see the wood for the trees,” says Beth Gibson, assistant principal of the Queen Elizabeth Academy,... 
by Matt Bland | Jun 17, 2025 | Articles, Data, Tech and Innovation, Fourth Edition, Policy Insights
Matt Bland highlights examples of evidence-based innovation on the front line, and what policy professionals across the Civil Service can learn from this experience In 2021, Kent Police faced a pressing challenge shared by all forces across the UK: how, in the face of... 
by Catriona Laing | Jun 11, 2025 | Articles, Fourth Edition, International Perspectives, Policy Insights
Catriona Laing describes how we can learn from the thinking and actions of Joseph Nye and Jeremy Heywood In an age when hard power seems to be in the ascendancy, soft power might feel like the diplomatic equivalent of handwritten letters – elegant but outdated. And... 
by Peter McDonald | Jun 2, 2025 | Articles, Fourth Edition, Interviews, Leadership and Reflections, The Top Articles of 2025
In this edited summary of an extensive discussion in Spring 2025, Peter McDonald talks to one of Whitehall’s most senior civil servants of the last 15 years about the lessons she took from being at the centre of government, and having a ringside seat during Brexit and...
