Prosperity in Every Postcode

Inside the book

An operating philosophy for delivering devolution - built from thirty years of practice, original research, and the constructive lessons of four decades of policy.

The premise

The places that succeed are the places whose leaders can answer five questions, honestly and specifically, about everything they do: what is causing the problem, what is possible, what you will build and what you will stop, why delivery is not working, and how you will know it worked and who it benefited. This book is about building the institution that can answer all five.

It is honest about the lessons of the past, national and local - and constructive about every one of them, because the point of understanding what has gone before is to do better.

A leader who can answer none of the five questions is announcing, not leading. A leader who can answer all five, about every major commitment their institution has made, is running a great economic development organisation.

Start by scoring yourself

Chapter 9 makes an argument that applies to this book as much as to any programme: record the baseline before you spend. So the Introduction closes with a self-assessment. Five capabilities, four levels each - absent, emerging, working, great - with a sentence describing each level, and the chapters that address it.

Ten minutes, scored honestly rather than aspirationally. Better still, ask three colleagues to score it separately and compare: where you disagree with each other is itself a finding. What it tells you is which chapters to read first, and where to reflect in more depth.

  • What’s the cause - and are you sure you know?Chapters 3 and 4
  • What’s possible?Chapters 5 and 6
  • What will you build - and what will you stop doing?Chapter 7
  • If delivery isn’t working - why?Chapter 8
  • How will you know it worked - and that it benefited who you said it would?Chapters 9 and 13

The chapters

The Reckoning

Learning from the past to be great in the future.

  1. Intro
    Do You Want to Be Great at This? You Will Need to Be - the ten-year test devolution now faces, and and the self-assessment that starts the work.
  2. 1
    We Can’t Go on Like This - 40 Years of Failure - four decades of policy experience, distilled into lessons you can use.
  3. 2
    The Habits That Keep Places Poor - honest reflection on the field’s habits, turned into better ones.

The Truth

Diagnosis before prescription - always.

  1. 3
    Understand How Your Economy Got Here - beyond the dashboard: analysis that explains, not decorates.
  2. 4
    What’s the Cause? - causal knowledge, account management, and relationships that reveal what the data cannot.

Discovery

Generating solutions worth delivering.

  1. 5
    Foresighting Means Solutions Discovery - thinking several steps ahead, backing the businesses that are the future of growth.
  2. 6
    Ambition With Realism - credible ambition: grounded in real assets, costed against real delivery solutions, staged so progress is provable.

The Work

Delivery is where great places earn their results.

  1. 7
    Build the Impactful, Stop the Rest - the pipeline, the filter, and the discipline of saying not yet.
  2. 8
    When Delivery Stalls, Ask Why - diagnosis over defensiveness when reality pushes back.
  3. 9
    The Learning Organisation - evaluation that changes decisions, memory that survives reorganisation.

Leadership

What makes all of it work.

  1. 10
    Partner Like the Economy Depends On It - real partnership changes budgets and behaviour, not calendars.
  2. 11
    The Organisation and Its People - from the author’s doctoral research: why management, staff and culture decide what structures cannot.
  3. 12
    Leadership - Taking Everyone With You - culture, scrutiny, and the lessons of Singapore’s EDB.
  4. 13
    Prosperity in Every Postcode - created, shared and sustained: the standard the book is named for.
  5. End
    Conclusion: The Ten-Year Test - three things first, then the ninety-day, one-year and five-year plan.

What you do with it on Monday

Thirty-six tasks across the book, three to a chapter. Each one names the output you will hold at the end of it, who owns it, roughly how long it takes, and the first step. Some take half a day. Some take three weeks. The book says which.

The pipeline register

Output: every live proposition, its honest stage, the date its costings were last refreshed, and what it needs next to progress. Owner: the programme management office, or the person who will become it. From: Chapter 7.

The account management audit

Output: a twenty-row table of your most important employers, each with a named account manager, the date of the last structured conversation and one decision it changed. From: Chapter 4.

The stewardship account

Output: an annual public account of your economic stewardship, honest reds included. Owner: the chief executive, published in their name. From: Chapter 9.

What great looks like, and five steps to becoming great

Every chapter closes with a standard: the features of a great economic development organisation, written so you can hold your own institution up against them and answer yes or no, followed by five steps you can start this quarter. The Conclusion then prioritises on your behalf: three things first, in order, then the first ninety days, the first year, and years two to five.

An appendix of links and resources takes you to the government guidance you will use in practice: the Green, Magenta, Orange and Aqua Books, the MHCLG Appraisal Guide, the grants standard and the subsidy control regime.

Organisational failure is an under-diagnosed cause of policy and delivery failure.
From Chapter 11: The Organisation and Its People

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