An invented national productivity panel has praised pumpkin portraiture as a rare British project with a comprehensible purpose, visible progress and an outcome recognisable from a reasonable distance.
The panel’s imaginary report contrasts the method with conventional delivery programmes. Rather than commissioning a vision, a roadmap and a second vision to explain the roadmap, participants place vegetables where the face is supposed to go.
Each pumpkin has a defined role. None is acting head of strategic alignment. A green squash contributes to the background without requiring a separate steering group to establish what background means.
Consultants initially warned that the process lacked a formal transformation narrative. Observers replied that several thousand pumpkins had become a face, which seemed quite a substantial transformation. The consultants offered to document this discovery over eighteen months.
The fictional panel is now investigating whether the approach could be extended to infrastructure. Early trials suggest that laying out a clear picture of the intended result helps people notice when they are constructing something else. This has been described as promising but culturally challenging.
There are no immediate plans to replace public administration with pumpkins. Officials say vegetables have limited accountability and eventually decay. The panel has requested a more distinctive objection.
