Five leadership lessons from the UK's Industrial Strategy

It turns out talking about growth and delivering it are two very different things. While first quarter GDP growth hit 0.7%, it’s likely that second quarter growth will be closer to zero. How does the recently published UK Industrial Strategy address these growth challenges and what lessons can C-level leaders learn from it as they chart their own courses for growth?

Lesson #1: Situational Awareness

Before we can think about solving the UK’s growth problem, we need to understand how we got here. The prevailing narrative is around the past 15 years since the 2009 financial crisis and the need to pivot in a changing world.

What’s Missing: While the need to pivot is right, the causes run far deeper (and longer) – the UK’s GDP/Capita has declined consistently over the past 40 years (World Bank, 2025).

Lesson Learned: For any leader, acknowledging and understanding the deep-rooted nature of the present situation is key to successfully navigating out of it.

Lesson #2: Understanding The Problem

When the UK’s growth is viewed through the prism of structural challenges and long-term secular shifts vs. short-term events (e.g. Financial Crisis, Covid, etc.), our response to the problem changes. In the UK’s example, a confluence of 3 factors is at play:

1. Ageing Population: 40.1 years +6.1yrs vs. 1984 (ONS, 2025)
2. 59% of workers require reskilling by 2030 (WEF, 2025)
3. 19% of the working age population has a work-limiting health condition (The Health Foundation, 2025)

What’s Missing: The above data suggests focusing on people vs. “industry” could yield a greater benefit – imagine the opportunity had the UK created a “People Strategy” vs. an “Industrial Strategy”, designing the future with, and for its people vs. using them as “inputs” to a broader system.

Lesson Learned: Taking time to fully understand a problem is critical – that enables leaders to make more thoughtful design choices as they craft the most impactful solutions, leveraging their best asset – their people.

Lesson #3: Prioritization

Focusing limited resource / investment for maximum impact is key. The UK has done this by focusing on 8 industries that make up 1/3 of the economy but drive 2/3 of current growth:

• Advanced Manufacturing
• Clean Energy
• Digital & Technology
• Creative Industries
• Defence
• Financial Services
• Life Sciences
• Professional & Business Services

What’s Missing: Assumptions around what happens to the 2/3 of industries that aren’t a focus – will their productivity remain stable or decline? Will that decline consume and exceed any gains from the prioritized industries?

Lesson Learned: Leadership is having the courage to state what isn’t a priority vs. what is, and to be realistic and transparent about the consequences of those choices.

Lesson #4: Outcomes vs. Outputs

Any successful strategy needs to be assessed in terms of the tangible benefits or outcomes that are delivered – how do we know we’re succeeding? The UK’s Industrial Strategy is full of target outputs:

• Cheaper electricity
• More nuclear power to accelerate net zero
• Increased exports from free trade agreements
• More defence spending
• Improved access to capital

What’s Missing: Linking desired outputs to tangible growth outcomes. The outputs are disconnected from the original problem statement (i.e. growth). How much incremental growth will each initiative deliver (e.g. GDP/Capita improvements) remains unclear.

Lesson Learned: Any successful strategy needs to be tied to tangible growth outcomes that evidence progress has been made and the original problem statement addressed.

Lesson #5: You Get What You Measure

The UK’s Industrial Strategy is focused on driving growth across the next 10 years, but we can’t wait that long to understand if it’s working. How can we measure success / course correct as needed if the strategy isn’t delivering as planned?

What’s Missing: A “scorecard” of leading indicators that tells us what parts of the strategy are working and the outcomes they are delivering, with progress assessed through robust governance

Lesson Learned: Good leaders embed accountability within their strategies, identifying and tracking key metrics so they can evidence outcomes (e.g. we improved our metrics from “x” to “y” during “z” timeframe.) They then establish transparent governance forums to objectively assess progress over time.

Whatever your feelings about the wisdom of government-backed industrial strategy, every company or country needs to prepare for the future. Having a plan is better than not. That said, to unlock growth, organizations need to ensure those plans are based on sound situational awareness and are targeted at the right problem spaces. Only once that foundation has been laid, can organizations prioritize their investments to deliver tangible outcomes that can be objectively measured to demonstrate progress.

At EA, we’re helping our clients unlock growth in a rapidly changing world, by partnering with them to understand and address their unique challenges. Our sole focus is on driving business outcomes, designing and deploying growth initiatives and measuring their quantitative impact. Find out how we can help your organization deliver incremental growth today.

Tom Harris, Partner, CCO

July 28^th, 2025