Jeff Randall:

If only running the country were as straightforward as managing John Lewis.

It’s actually even easier. A very few strategic decisions need to be taken. The rest of it is hiring the right people and letting them get on with it. Running the country is such a vast task that it has to be easy, for 99% of what people try to do while doing so makes things worse. Thus, do less.

Another way of putting this is that John Lewis is an organisation of a size that can actually be managed effectively…and even there there is a huge amount of delegation. The country is simply to vast to be ‘run’, so it should in fact be even easier. Simply delegate everything except those very few strategic decisions (shall we go to war? Yes? No?) that cannot be.