Even though the General Election took place over a month ago, many people are still talking about how it was such compulsive viewing, with many staying up until the early hours awaiting the result.

The fascination was watching all of the opinion polls and predictions fall by the wayside as the losing political parties accepted their fate graciously. How did these parties get their strategy so wrong, why did it not deliver the clear objective to win the election with an outright majority?

Commentators gasped as the charts changed to a sea of blue and the Labour party were in shock as they saw virtually all their Scottish seats lost to the Scottish National Party in one night. Surely if the Labour party had been close to their customers and understood what they needed to do to get their vote they would have changed their tactics to secure those votes.

What was their strategy and did they have the right culture within the party to question the tactics to deliver that strategy? How would it achieve the end goal?

If people are afraid to speak their mind and go with the majority to keep the peace that is a culture that doesn’t work in either politics or business. If the public didn’t see Ed Miliband as a strong credible leader, why did the Labour party not see that either? If they were in touch with their customers surely someone would have stumbled across it.

It is the same in business – we set a goal, we put together a strategy to achieve it and then look at the tactics required to deliver that strategy. As always it is the team that you build around you that adds the magic required, they need to feel valued and listened to, their views are important to ensure you get the tactics right.

Once the team understands what is required of them and why their role is so important to deliver the overall strategy you have a good chance of achieving your goal. Setting the right culture is in my view essential, and putting the customer at the heart of the business is a culture that works well and leads to success. We have seen what happens when you don’t!