Hello, everyone. Kumar Dattatreyan here with the Meridian Point. And today we're joined by Vijay Luthra, a strategic advisor who spent over two decades helping public sector organizations navigate transformational change. With experience spanning the NHS, UK Ministry of Defense, and Saudi Arabia's health economy, Vijay brings a unique perspective on human-centered transformation that enables government services to deliver more with less. His approach combines creativity with strategic rigor to help organizations not just survive disruption, but emerge stronger. So without further ado, excuse me, let me welcome Vijay to the stage. Hi, Vijay, how are you doing?
Hi, Kumar. Yeah, I'm great. Thank you. And thanks for the invitation to join you.
Of course, of course, it's been a pleasure. You know, before we started this, we were chatting about the sort of this tension between fiscal responsibility, especially for government service organizations and the need to be nimble and agile. Can you maybe say a few words about what we were just talking about?
Yeah, of course. Let me go a bit bigger picture first. I think, you know, they say that the UK and the US are two nations, and they say we're divided by a common language, but I think in many respects we're sort of very close in the way we see the role of government and public services. And I think my sense is things are undergoing a change. It's a generational change in a way that we perhaps have never seen before. One of the ideas that I like to discuss with my clients is this idea that we're in a fifth industrial revolution or a fifth technological revolution, however you want to refer to it. But in essence, we're at an inflection point, a very big inflection point. Where the world is changing dramatically, we obviously all think about AI. It's more than AI. It's also about convergent technologies, so robotics, for example. And robotics, AI, big compute power, those are all going to change our world immeasurably. And in terms of the conversations that you and I are having with our public services clients. And of course, it's not just changing the world for government and public service, it's changing the world for everybody. But I think some of the private sector organizations, we might reflect, are perhaps a little bit further ahead of the curve than public sector organizations often are, and there are good reasons for that. Public sector organizations work within fiscal and political constraints that private sector organizations do not. But this fifth industrial revolution is going to change the world, it's going to change employment, it's going to change how people consume and engage with public services. It's even going to change the shape of the services that we need to have. And some of the problems that our public services are engaging with, aging population, for example, is something that's common in both the UK and the US. And certainly in the UK, we are struggling with our aging population. You can see it. That tension that you referred to, which is the need to not just survive, but to thrive in this disruptive era, while also being able to meet some very, very demanding financial constraints. It's made even more difficult by this pressure on services. So in the UK, for example, it's a very different system to the US, of course. For example, we have something called the Department for Work and Pensions. Work and Pensions is what pays, they administer and pay benefits, so disability, social security, social protection, those kind of things. The biggest proportion of what they administer and rising is our state pension and it's a very, it's the most significant portion of that department's budget and it's rising. Our national health service, what is sometimes referred to as socialized medicine in the US, is under a great deal of pressure, not purely because of our aging population, but to a large extent because of our aging population. We have the same challenges as in the US. People are living longer, but they're living longer in poorer health. Yeah. And then our local authorities and you know more or less these are on a much smaller scale than you would typically see in the US but still you know they discharge very considerable and significant responsibilities so we have what we call adult social care which you know is again a large proportion of that is care of older people and again those budgets are under pressure as well. So we see this very disruptive dynamic environment we've probably never seen anything like it. This convergence of challenges of crises, what you may have heard some people refer to as a polycrisis, convergence of crises. So while you've got this aging population challenge to meet, we've also got probably the greatest threat of a global war for the first time in a generation. We've also got challenges of economic instability, et cetera, et cetera. I could go on. And I think it's very difficult to create stable, agile, resilient, successful organizations in this very dynamic environment.
Yeah. Yeah, I'm sorry. Go ahead. Finish your thought.
No, and I think a lot of the conversations that you and I are both having with the organizations that we work with, they're very much focused on both the past and the present, because in the present, they have to meet these often immediate and quite challenging financial savings requirements. In the US, you obviously have DOGE at work across the federal government. In the UK, it's not quite the same, but we certainly have a centralized program being driven out of the UK Department of the Treasury, or Her Majesty's Treasury, as it's called, to find savings across central local government and other parts of government. So I would liken it to being or trying to spin two plates at once. You've got a short-term plate and then you've got a long-term plate. You're a leader. I think that's an incredibly difficult, dare I even say, invidious position to be in.
Yeah. Yeah, you bring up so many interesting points about the state of our culture, our environment, how people access public service, what the expectations are, the aging population of the world in general, especially in more developed countries, US, UK, Japan, even China. China is going through the same challenges, I would say, because their population is aging and they're not making enough babies to sustain the kind of growth that they've enjoyed over the last twenty, thirty years. And of course the organizations that we serve, as in, as part of the transformation work that we do, they're being pinched, right? Ever so. They're forced to be ever more nimble and agile with constrained resources to constrain funding. And a lot of times the funding isn't even known because things are moving so fast and so rapidly. I would almost argue that you need to be even more agile and sort of, you know, more nimble to be able to sort of react to the types of changes that are going on in the environment, especially for, well, any organization, but I think even more so for public or, you know, the public, the people that serve the public. What would you say?
Yeah, I don't disagree with that sentiment at all. But I think the challenges for many public sector organizations are, again, much greater than they are for others, certainly in the UK. One of the things that distinguishes us very strongly from the US and in fact from many nations from a political cultural perspective is that we have very centralized power in government so you know we don't have very much devolution at all whereas in the US it's you know almost not the opposite the federal government obviously controls vast amounts of spending but you know local and regional government in the US is tremendously powerful too. But you know for example tax raising powers in the UK only sit at the central government level. Our regional mayors can't, as yet, raise taxes in their own right. So we have a very centralized state. We also, dare I say it, have a very hierarchical state. Decision-making is very concentrated, again, in central government. And that manifests itself in some very peculiar ways in that policy is made very far away from the people who it impacts and you know that happens in the US too it happens in other places you know it happens in Saudi Arabia, but it really depends on context. And I reflect that the US have traveled extensively across the US, and it's such a diverse and complex nation. I can't imagine that a system like we have in the UK would work in the US because you just wouldn't be able to cater for the needs of all of that diversity. You know, what Texas needs is going to be very different to what New York needs, which is going to be different to what, you know, Iowa needs. It's all different. But even in, you know, a country as small as the United Kingdom, so England, Scotland, Wales, Northern Ireland, we have differing needs. My wife's Scottish. We spend a lot of time in Scotland. Scotland is a sort of geopolitical and cultural system, if you will, is pretty different to England. Population is much less. Population is much more broadly spread. Public services are much more spread, but bigger public services, big hospitals, for example, are concentrated in a way that they might be anywhere else. So your distance from public services can be quite far, which I imagine is often the same in many parts of the US, particularly in more rural places. So I think there's a really big challenge for public services in how we adapt to this new environment. And I think a lot of it starts with the cultural and behavioral change. When we talk about leaders being hierarchical, that's partly about process and policy. But it's also a lot about culture and behaviors. As a leader, I talk to my clients about the challenge of leadership these days is to do as much as possible to shift away from that command and control model, the Taylorist model, as the academics might call it, the command and control model, and to shift more towards a model where you're an architect, your job is to create the conditions for success. And that means pushing authority resources down the chain to the people closest to where the problems are. And I think it's probably, to some extent, a universal principle, both in the UK and the US, and certainly I've seen it in Canada and other places. We instinctively feel that we can't do that. And I suspect that's a little bit to do with politics, but it's also a lot to do with, well, this is the way we've always done things, so we'll continue to do them in this way.
It's interesting. In my last episode, we talked about this sort of the rise or the almost natural rise of silos, you know, within organizations and how that limits, severely limits information flow, authority flow. And, you know, just in general, how effective and nimble an organization can be, whether it's private or public, right? I mean, with a public sector organization, it's reflected in poor services, right, and high costs. Same with a private sector organization. It's poor products that don't quite meet the needs of the people that want them and buy them. Or buggy products, right? Microsoft of the two thousands, maybe early two thousands where the software products that were produced were, or, you know, they weren't that great. You know, they've made incredible strides in the last ten years or so, but it wasn't that way in the early two thousands. How do you, how do you, you know, you and I have talked before about this sort of this notion of human centered transformation and you mentioned it just in your last about the need to move to more, move away from command and control structures, sort of move away from the Taylorist model and treat people like people, not like horses.
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I would quite agree. I think one of the many things that distinguishes the fifth industrial revolution from previous revolutions is humanity has more or less adapted to technology as it's changed so you know we adapted our ways of working and living to the advent of electricity we adapted our ways of working and living during the age of steam. I think actually this revolution is more about adapting systems, processes, technology to people rather than the people adapting to those technologies. And I say that for a number of reasons. I think one, we probably for the first time ever actually have the ability and the foresight to be able to adapt those technologies to humanity so that's one aspect of being human-centered. And you know we have the ability to be able to canvass views perspectives needs we have more data than we have ever had and we have the tools to be able to analyze and understand that data. But also we need, I believe, to be able to construct a world in which there's hope. I think one of the most troubling things I see is an adoption of technological absolutism. And, you know, you may have seen this perspective adopted by certain individuals associated with the current administration in the White House, which is, you know, technology is the guiding light and we should surrender all to technology. Right. My view is we need a much more balanced approach otherwise the fallout could be severe you know globally significant. I mean for example what do we do in a world where technology may have dramatically reduced the number of jobs available in previous industrial revolutions. More or less more jobs have been created than were destroyed by whatever the technological intervention destroyed. So, you know, the famous English example is the Luddites who destroyed the steam-powered weaving looms and mills in the eighteenth century in the UK. We don't tend to get the same these days. And I think the lesson of that time was that steam probably more or less did end up creating more jobs than it destroyed in the railways in manufacturing etc. But I think this technological revolution AI robotics probably won't create as many jobs as previous technological revolutions have. And I think that's a very, very significant issue for a number of different things. And I think it's one of the major factors that will reshape government and public services. How do we, for example, maintain economic growth in a world in which we perhaps have only forty percent of the jobs that we did a decade before. You know, we've got a fairly stark set of choices ahead of us and, you know, that human centered aspect has to be front and center. It's sort of slightly alarming to see some of the moves that some of our community of global billionaires seems to be making. It suggests that they've effectively given up and they're you know they've accepted the inevitability of this world in which technology governs everything and you know that feels to me like a pretty bleak place to be. We have a choice to be able to control and shape the future that we want.
Yeah yeah absolutely I totally agree and a lot of what you say is resonating powerfully with me personally. So what are some of the things that you're advocating for and the work that you do with the public sector company organizations you work with?
Yeah. So, I mean, we tend to focus on two problems where we're asked to come and help clients is usually when they're undertaking a reform or transformation and it's maybe gone a little bit wrong. And then we also help people where they're just starting out with a reform or transformation initiative and really where we usually ask people to sort of start is to look at holistically look at their operating model so the operating model is the lens through which you tie together your people your process your data your technology. But we invariably advocate for looking at technology last. I was talking to a client only last week who's contemplating undertaking a very big technology transformation. And my advice to that client was, don't not do it, but do it last. Do everything else first. There is, in my view and our view, very little point in undertaking an ambitious technology transformation if your organization isn't ready for it. So are your people ready for this new technology? Are your processes ready for this new technology? Is your data ready for this new technology? Invariably, the answer is no. I think we tend to get hyped up by the idea that we've got these shiny toys. If I think about a lot of the hype around AI, I see many people rushing to implement without thinking more broadly, more strategically about what the impact of just bolting something onto your organization might be. And it doesn't help that there's a lot of vendors out there who want you to buy these products that they're bringing to market. Those companies are all driven by the need to get their consumption to high levels so that they can drive the next round of investment or whatever is driving them. But my counsel to my clients is always to wait, be patient, understand the bigger picture. I find that gets some traction, but I find it doesn't always get traction, but we generally then find that people go away, they make the mistakes, and then they come back to us to say, can you help us rethink this? We've made an error.
Yeah. Yeah, that sounds like a really good example of human-centered design or human-centered transformation, where you're looking at going in, people want to transform the digital transformation or whatever it might be. And you're taking a very or you try to take a very human approach to that, you know, what's the impact on the people, the services you provide when you incorporate said new technology. And to your point also, you know, a lot of places, people are impatient. They want to employ these technologies as quickly as possible because there's this promise of reduced costs and greater efficiency at the expense possibly of some people's jobs right. How do you again given your broad experience and the clients that you serve what how do you deal with that sort of that tension there and I was like You know, what's the true purpose of this transformation? What is it you really want to accomplish?
Yeah, yeah. I mean, our starting point when we're invited into these conversations is invariably to encourage people to park the drive for short-term gain, often monetary gain, to the extent that we can. What we're doing a lot of at the moment with organizations is we're helping them spin the two plates, the short-term plate and the long-term plate. So one, we're working with an NHS organization at the moment and we're helping them spin sort of short-term savings play to identify some fairly tactical initiatives that they can undertake to generate a bit of efficiency but those are all relatively simple what we would call no regrets initiatives so they're things that are relatively low complexity but relatively high benefit you know they're the kind of things you wouldn't argue with doing. And if you do them and they don't quite deliver what you expected to, well, that doesn't matter either. Or at the same time, spinning the plate of higher complexity transformation initiatives. I can't emphasize enough that it's really critical to be able to do those two things. The short-term driver make X amount of savings is unlikely to go away. In both the UK and the US, that's to a large extent being driven by the political realities that both countries find themselves in. But, you know, we always advocate for what's that longer term perspective about where the organization needs to be in, say, a decade's time? What will the organization do? How will it deliver services? What shape does that mean the organization must be? So it is difficult. It means having two sets of conversations at once. So you've got to have a set of short-term conversations. You've got to have also a longer-term conversation. One of the advantages I think we bring to the table is that we can facilitate and help structure those conversations, which if you're a leader in an organization and you've also got to you know make sure that you know the organization keeps delivering while all of this is ongoing and you you know perhaps don't have the cognitive capacity to be able to drive those two conversations at once so we can help I mean we don't do the work for those organizations, but we facilitate, we can help drive, we can provide tools and that creates a bit of capability and capacity within the organization itself to be able to spin those two plates.
It sounds very good that you're able to help these organizations think in terms of both short and long term. I don't know what the sort of the cycle is like in the UK politically and certainly in the US. It's every four years potentially the focus changes, right? The investment changes, the politics change. And so I think that in the public sector here in the US, especially in this latest cycle of change, it's been quite drastic. And so, again, I don't know if there's a – before we got on live, you mentioned that the UK is going through some, I'd say, generational changes. So maybe it's similar. I don't know. And I'm curious how you're advising your clients to think more strategically, more long-term, if the long-term is less clear or maybe not clear at all, right?
Yeah, yeah. And what it's about. It's not necessarily about understanding that there is a single answer. I think one of the other challenges of modern leadership is about being comfortable with ambiguity. And I would say that's pretty essential these days because the world is so disrupted that we might never know what's around the corner. So I think one, being comfortable with ambiguity, but then two, being in a position where there's flexibility and agility within your organization. Lots of people talk about it. What does that look like in real life? Well, for example, we're working with one organization at the moment. They have lots of very highly specialist resource and so some of that resource does need to be highly specialist and you know you can't just get rid of it or ask these people to take on a broader set of responsibilities but a proportion of it can be made more flexible you can ask people to manage across a broader set of disciplines for example and that you know that's one. It's a very small way of giving your organization a bit of agility, a bit of flexibility. One of the other things that we often help organizations do is to put services into mothballs in the same way that the US Navy mothballs ships from time to time. You don't get rid of these services completely, but you ramp them down. You may part company with the people who deliver those services, but you also create enough resource so that if those services are then required in the future, they can be spun up again relatively quickly. So that's sort of another practical way of giving an organization a bit of agility and resilience. In terms of being future-facing, I'm always keen to emphasize to leaders that there isn't really a way of definitively seeing into the future, but I'm a big fan of tools like scenario planning, you know the three horizons model is another tool and what's the benefit of these tools well it's about moving into a thinking space where you are considering what are the things that might change in the future nine times out of ten you're probably not going to be looking at scenarios that will unfold in the future. But it's more about the discipline of thinking through how you might address a given scenario, a change in the external environment, for example. And so having been through that process, you've then got a set of tools and techniques that you can apply. As the ambiguity starts to reduce, you can then start to use those tools and techniques to navigate the organization to its next step. But there are no definitive answers.
Now, that makes a lot of sense. And really, to your earlier point, you're helping your clients build these capabilities in-house within their people, the way they do their work and so on. So I think that's a good thing that you're showing them these tools, you're helping them understand how to use them. And while the scenarios may never play out, or maybe some of them do to a certain extent, the benefit is in doing, is in the planning, is in the work that they do to think about what would we do in these scenarios, if we have the funding or not. And that way, they're more resilient when the time comes to plan for these things. So I totally agree with that. We're getting a little short on time. So I want to turn it to you and ask you, what have I not asked you that you'd like to convey?
I've really enjoyed the conversation. We've had a great conversation. I think my concern, I mean, it always comes back to the future of humanity. And one might be inclined to feel a bit bleak about how things are going to unfold in the future. I don't necessarily think that we have to be that way. I mean, again, there are a number of scenarios that might unfold. So I think there's definitely something to be said about a positive, proactive mindset being another sort of strength that I counsel people to adopt in these times of challenge. But my takeaway would be, I think more than anything, it's about culture. It's about behaviors as individuals and as groups. And I think it's more than ever, it's about creating that human-centered world.
I love that a lot. And I'm wondering if you could think about what, or maybe you have, counseling people that are afraid about losing their job to AI. Maybe that's not a sort of an articulated fear, but maybe it's in the back of their mind somewhere, right? So what is it that you tell people that may be feeling this anxiety or pressure because they're behind the eight ball, if you will?
Yeah. Well, look, there will be some jobs lost for sure. I mean, I suspect I've probably got about a decade left as a management consultant, right? Because, you know, we already have large language models, which more or less hold the sum total of all human knowledge. And, you know, if you, once you learn how to prompt those large language models the right way, well, you know, they can replace a lot of what a junior consultant does. I still think there's a big role for judgment, for creativity, for critical thinking, which is the domain of humans. But I also think we may perhaps undertake a shift back towards a sort of a more, perhaps a more trade-based economy in many parts of the world. And I would counsel people to think creatively and imaginatively about where their future might take them. I talked to my seventeen-year-old niece. She wants to go to medical school. We're all very proud of her. The first person in our family to go to medical school hopefully the first to become a doctor. So in the UK that's five years of university and then you know it can take ten sometimes fifteen years to actually qualify as a consultant. There are some professions I think medicine will be one of them all or disciplines within medicine that will endure. Nursing I think also may endure there will be some other jobs lower skills which I think may go. You asked me to counsel people in a positive way. So, you know, my exhortation to people is always to consider, you know, what else would you do? And it's never too early to act. You know, I jokingly said to my wife a couple of weeks ago, maybe I should retrain as a plumber. Perhaps I'm only half joking because, you know, that sort of future where we are all doing things that, you know, machines, technology can't do. And I suspect it might be quite a while before we have machines that can do things like plumbing, for example. That's the future for humanity.
You know, it's interesting. I had a plumber do some work in the house and I have a new appreciation. I mean, I always did, but I'll have a new appreciation for plumbers in general because of how much knowledge they have to have to be able to go into a home, analyze a plumbing system that you have, the problem that you possibly have to be able to pinpoint. And this was sort of a leak under the floor to be able to pinpoint where the leak was possibly emanating from and get it right and that he got it right and it's amazing. I can't see an AI replicating that knowledge in that person anytime soon anyway.
All right. Well, thank you so much, Vijay, for joining me today. It's been a really interesting conversation. I can see where maybe we could delve a little deeper into some of the topics that we cover today in a future conversation, if you're open to that.
Certainly. I've really enjoyed it. Thank you for letting me waffle.
Of course. No, this was great. Thank you so much. I hope you all enjoyed it. Thank you again for watching, and we'll see you next week. Bye-bye.
