Advantage West Midlands' latest attempt to transform the region makes for depressing reading.

Its newly revised Regional Economic Strategy - officially launched yesterday - shows we are just not moving forward sufficiently as a region.

All the old problems are still there - a massive productivity gap, low rates of innovation, a poor record on skills, a largely unqualified workforce, lack of graduate retention and uninspiring leadership.

As if we need to have our noses rubbed in it yet again.

We all know the issues; the question is how best to tackle them. And if I hear that dread word partnership one more time I shall scream.

But there it is.

In the introduction to the strategy document, AWM chairman Nick Paul and Councillor David Smith, chairman of the West Midlands Regional Assembly, state: "Success for the region can only be achieved if we work together in partnership."

Why?

There is a place for partnership; I don't deny it.

Sometimes with Government red tape, bureaucratic structures, and a forest of strings around every financial initiative there is no choice.

There are times when partnership is sensible and practical.

But there is also an agenda for men and women with vision to bulldoze through their ideas, chucking suffocating partnership to the wind.

If AWM was a school pupil the end of term report would say: "Plodder. Could do much better."

It sometimes seems you can turn a cruise ship quicker than AWM can galvanise itself into action.

Maybe instead of partnership it would actually do better if it developed a nasty streak, offended a few people, kicked arse and was more brutal in the way it seeks to achieve its objectives.

Because the trouble with partnership is that it breeds compromise and it eats time.

What's wrong with stepping on a few toes occasionally?

And like partnership AWM's other mantras need to be challenged.

Let's look at uninspiring leadership - I have long argued that this region lacks leaders.

But what do we do about it?

That too is dumbed down by the ghastly spectre of partnership.

It is made very clear to aspiring individuals that they do not speak out, they must never rock the boat, they should not challenge decisions the partnership has come up with, and, if they stick their head above the parapet, it will be shot off.

Mavericks are marginalised instead of encouraged. Industry players who might be able to offer their expertise take one look at the mess and stay clear.

The next generation of leaders are caught up in a fog from which there is seemingly no escape. And the result is that big projects are assessed amid timidity of approach and the overwhelming fear of failure.

Nobody dares to be brave; it is the antithesis of the business risk culture.

And so we end up with dogs dinners like the New Street station Gateway project.

If we only aspire to the ordinary we will never succeed.