Tag Archives: BBC

Would the real Nigel Paine please stand up?

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If anyone is thinking of attending this year’s “Learning Live” conference I wonder if you would be so kind as to do me and the rest of the learning profession a favour, would you?  According to the programme they have a Nigel Paine speaking (see blurb below) and I would like to know if that is the same Nigel Paine who I met at the BBC back in 2003? It can’t be can it?  The one I met showed no signs of “understanding and talking the language of business” and his leadership programme cannot possibly have won any awards because both I and another independent evaluator’s report declared it to have absolutely no connection to the BBC’s business whatsoever (“no specific and measurable business objectives were subsequently required to be met” according to the report).

Also, while you are there, be a love and ask the chairman of The Learning and Performance Institute, Donald H. Taylor, on what principles and criteria his ‘Institute’ is based, what evidence they use for ‘accreditation’ and ‘certification’ and whether he bothers to check his speakers’ credentials?

Thank you so much.

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NHS – A terminal case of management cancer – Part 3

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Click here for Part 1 and Part 2

Andrew Lansley was interviewed by the BBC’s Nick Robinson just 2 days ago about changing the NHS.  Lansley says that introducing competition into the state-run, taxpayer-funded NHS is about “competition for quality not competition for price”.  What Lansley should be saying is competition for value, which is an indivisible combination of price and quality.   If anything, the NHS should determine quality standards and allow competition on price.  This would be entirely consistent and coherent with what they already do with drugs companies and any other organisation wanting to supply health services; who cannot compromise on quality and so have to compete on price,

Lansley further declares that the NHS is “driven by evidence” and that it “establishes an NHS price”.  Economists, competitive capitalists and even the ordinary ‘man’ in the street know that when price is determined by a politicised bureaucracy, rather than a free market, poor societal value is likely to be the outcome.

There is still, of course, a serious question here about the most appropriate economic philosophy, organisational entity and HR strategy for running the NHS but Lansley has obviously not come up with the answer yet.  So, rather than resuscitating the NHS, when a Health Secretary utters such nonsense we are more likely witnessing its final death throes.

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Does anyone know where I can find an infinite supply of monkeys?

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You are probably well aware of the theory that given an infinite supply of monkeys, with an infinite supply of computers, one would eventually produce, purely through random keystrokes, the entire works of Shakespeare.  Bob Newhart famously skewered this notion by pointing out some basic practicalities that the theorists did not take into consideration: like who is going to check on what the monkeys have produced? (see ‘The Button Down Mind Strikes Back’ or hear it here if you have Spotify).

The theory itself is not really open to dispute because it is just probability taken to its logical (some would say absurd) conclusion.  However, whoever dreamed up the monkey scenario must have accepted that it was a theory that could never be tested in the real world.  The most dedicated, pragmatic, evidence-based learning manager would certainly not try to.

They would readily acknowledge the existing evidence that shows we have only witnessed one William Shakespeare so far from an entire population of X billion human beings who have inhabited our planet.  They would also quickly dismiss the monkey theory as having no chance of producing another one.

Yet that doesn’t seem to stop many learning ‘professionals’ and ‘leadership developers’ from being active members of the Monkey Club and sending numerous management cohorts to the ‘monkey rooms’ at Ashridge and elsewhere.  The evidence-based learning manager would not entertain that idea.

First, they are painfully aware of the huge gulf that exists between certain academic theories (165,000 books thrown up by searching ‘leadership’ on Amazon.com), the harsh realities of organisational life and what makes for effective practice. They also know that there is absolutely no point trying to prove a theoretical, academic construct that was never intended to be proven in the real world.  Instead they would opt for a much simpler, more obvious and more credible alternative – they would gather enough convincing evidence to demonstrate the efficacy of their practices in a particular context, for a particular purpose, at a particular time.

Leadership development, using evidence-based learning principles, does not inflict a pre-determined ‘leadership course’ on a group of hapless managers. It does not cobble together a random selection of leadership models either; especially as most of these contradict and conflict with each other. The probability of such random leadership development (sic) producing a better ‘leader’ is negligible.

Evidence-based learning managers do not run leadership courses.  They do not even regard leadership as being objectively verifiable; simply because there is no single definition of what a good leader looks like.  Nevertheless, they certainly aim to build on and enhance any latent, leadership capability as a direct by-product of a well-designed, as opposed to random, experience in which managers move onto a higher plane by achieving results that would not be attainable through management practices alone.

For example, if the BBC really wanted to develop leadership they should have concentrated on improving programming, production and audience responses beyond the expectations of budgets and schedules and then drawn their own conclusions about who had shown those rare signs of leadership that mark out the exceptional from the ordinary. In other words they should have kept their gaze firmly on the sort of outcomes and value the organisation needs and then created an environment in which effective leadership, defined by those same criteria, could be recognised and allowed to blossom.

In the meantime there will still be plenty of non-evidence-based ‘learning professionals’ plonking an almost limitless number of confused managers in front of an infinite number of screens, books and presenters labelled ‘Leadership’; vainly hoping that one of the little monkeys does a bit more than just sitting there scratching themselves.

For personal development linked to this topic visit the Consummate Professional Series – Module 2 and Module 3A

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CEOs have been getting away with belittling HR for far too long

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When I was young and innocent I held, what I now know to be, a very naïve belief that anyone who was given the title of CEO must -

  • a. know what they are doing and
  • b. be significantly more intelligent and effective than the people they employ

With a few, very rare and notable exceptions this is no longer a belief that I hold to be true.  No, I am now absolutely clear in my own mind that whatever it was that got the CEO to the top it wasn’t necessarily anything to do with indicators a. or b. above.  This is particularly true of CEOs in the public sector (for obvious reasons) but, alarmingly, it is also true of the private sector.

Obviously, if I aimed this accusation at any particular CEO they would probably regard it as a ludicrous statement, until I add that my definition of an effective CEO is one that gets the best possible return  from all of the resources and assets at their disposal; and that has to include their human capital. This was always the only standard worth having for assessing CEOs but it is even more appropriate now having learned that profits and ‘performance’, especially during the bubble years, are neither valid nor accurate long-term indicators of a CEO’s capabilities.

If you ask the average CEO what their view is on strategic, HR management (and you manage to get past their indifference and ignorance) what range of perceptions and perspectives would you expect to hear?  Here are some of the responses I have personally witnessed over the years and not one of them is encouraging -

  • They vigorously support their HR Director, and everything they are doing, not because they see any value in it but because they realise it would be pretty stupid to admit they have no interest in HR strategy and don’t have a clue what it is really all about
  • They tolerate HR because they are under the misapprehension that it helps them to keep the troops happy and the company out of the employment courts
  • They don’t see people as capital.  In fact they are affronted and go all touch-feely on you, all of a sudden and totally out of character, for even suggesting such a thing
  • Duh – what was the question again?

Yet surveys, too numerous to mention*, from the last 20 years or so have indicated very clearly that HR is not respected in the boardroom and CEOs have generally been dissatisfied with what the function offers in terms of added value.  This view was probably best exemplified by entrepreneur and venture capitalist Luke Johnson in a diatribe he launched in the Financial Times (29 January 2008) saying that -

“HR is like many parts of modern businesses: a simple expense, and a burden on the backs of the productive workers …. Managers too often think their company isn’t grown up unless it has all these important-sounding departments.”

Some of you will be old enough to remember that this is the same Luke Johnson who, infamously, couldn’t take the heat in his own Belgo kitchen and left in a decidedly, un-grown-up, hissy fit on the BBC’s “Back to the floor” series in 2000.   So don’t expect CEO’s to be mature adults either, they can be emotional too you know.

So why don’t we set an example and take emotions out of the equation.  No one can deny that Luke Johnson is a highly intelligent and very talented ex-investment-banker turned-entrepreneur but that does not mean that all of his ventures are a success, nor that he has any more of a clue about human capital management than I have about astrophysics.  Each to his own, horses for courses and all that, but HR directors do have to know about the strategic management of human capital if they are going to help to get the very best performance from their CEOs.  They cannot do that unless they have evidence of how well they are managing this particular type of capital.

Who knows, by helping the CEO and the company to perform at their best they might even stop acquisitions by unscrupulous and immoral private equity partners who have often placed their own huge “burden on the backs of the productive workers” by loading the company with debt in order to acquire it?

For personal development linked to this topic visit the Consummate Professional Series

*One survey of senior business executives in particular was Deloitte’s “Aligned at the top” in 2007 that found that “63% never consulted HR leaders on mergers and acquisitions”, only “19% saw people management as valuable to the ambitions of the business” and a mere “5% described the HR function as ‘highly effective’ in addressing business needs (Personnel Today, 19 June 2007).

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Is the BBC a stupid organisation?

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Update: December 2012 – The long term effects of dire leadership at the BBC

Original post: Not if we judge it by any conventional criteria.  It employs some of the brightest, most talented people in the media industry.  It makes many award winning programmes and films and you don’t do that with stupid people.  But then the question is not about the people at the BBC, per se, but the way the organisation behaves as a corporate entity – a very different question and one that can only be answered by looking at some less conventional evidence. It might help to define our terms first though.

We tend to call people ‘stupid’ if they do not have much in the way of mental faculties or they do not use their innate intelligence and yet perhaps a better definition of stupidity is when someone does not learn from very clear evidence placed in front of their eyes.  Based on this definition it appears that the BBC does indeed qualify as a stupid organisation. Perhaps a bit of background might help explain.

Back in 2002/3 the BBC, under the then Director General, Greg Dyke and Director People, Stephen Dando, decided to run a very costly Leadership Programme in conjunction with Ashridge management school. I was asked to advise on how this programme might be evaluated but very quickly it was obvious that no one at the BBC knew why they were running this programme. To cut a very long story short my views hit the headlines.

Jump ahead to 2010 and I obtained a copy of the ‘external’ evaluation report that was produced after the programme had been running for some time (extracts from which can be viewed here BBC Leadership Programme – Evaluation report extracts).  The discerning reader does not need to have this document spelled out, it speaks loudly and clearly for itself (a full version can be obtained from the BBC under the Freedom of Information Act).  However, the covering letter that came with this report BBC Final response to Leadership Evaluation request provides the most worrying evidence of all.

First, note the general resistance to measurement that still exists 4 years after the report was written and the comment that the BBC’s concern for ‘Public Value’ started in 2004 (during the leadership programme that wasn’t measured for value) and you can see how organisations refuse to learn from their own evidence.  This is a disturbing feature for an organisation spending £3.5 billion a year, where the bulk of the income comes from a compulsory licence fee.

When challenged to provide evidence of value many organisations, particularly in the public sector, resort to the type of ‘auditors report’ that Robert Johnston refers to as though the National Audit Office has answers to HR questions that no one else has managed to fathom. As we shall soon see, in associated articles in this series, we cannot rely on any auditing body to produce evidence of the value of HR but if Robert Johnson has great faith in the auditing profession then maybe he should move over and let one of them become Director People at the BBC?

As a footnote, before anyone thinks this is just about the public sector, it is worth noting that Stephen Dando worked for Diageo before joining the BBC where, presumably, the Chief Executive was quite happy with this non-evidence-based approach to leadership development? Moreover, he subsequently moved to Thomson Reuters where he has probably carried on with such practices? As for Greg Dyke – his success in leadership development at the BBC has earned him a seat on the NHS’s (National Health Service) Leadership Council which is trying to lead its 1.3 million employees – a topic that we will also cover in some detail.

For personal development linked to this topic visit the Consummate Professional Series

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