Last week on the motorway up to Bristol I was listening to John Humphrys on the radio interviewing Michael Grade, who famously jumped ship from the BBC just under a year ago to become the head of its commercial rival ITV.They were discussing the ITV phone-in scandal that has engulfed the network and Grade’s brave decision to call the scandal a “serious cultural failure” in which there would be no witch hunt but instead people would be encouraged to come forward and voice their opinions.
As Grade recently said in a press statement,
“I don’t intend to take a couple of scalps in expatiation. That would not solve the problem.”
Instead it was very clear that a line had now been drawn underneath the affair internally and everyone working at ITV was explicitly aware that any further breaches of the company policy would lead to drastic and final action.
And yet today during the interview Humphrys was like a broken record; “Heads must roll”, “What went wrong?”, “Who is to blame?”.
It is always the same with the media when things go wrong. Formulaic, dull, boring and wrong.
It is an issue that has continued to plague the BBC and is symptomatic of the public sector. They always, always, always look to point the finger and fire the scapegoat.
Does it fix things? No.
In fact, it frustratingly remains the main distinction between the public and private sectors.
Measurements of success in the private sector remain much clearer; profits and share prices. This has enabled private organisations to measure the effect of sacking a prominent figurehead like the CEO after a damaging episode such as the phone-in scandal.
What has been found is revealing. If you fire a CEO, invariably the shares and profits of the company drop, meaning that there is almost always a better way to deal with the problem.
First you should look to provide support, then attempt to fix the problem and finally do a post mortem and work out how to avoid it in the future. It is exactly what Michael Grade is doing at ITV and exactly what happened with Northern Rock.In both cases it didn’t start with a sacking and they have handled their spiralling situations well. In the BBC’s case with their own phone-in scandal “heads have rolled” and with it has come panic, uncertainty and universally bad press.
Their “head” this time was Peter Fincham, who ended up “resigning” over the Queen’s storming out saga. It had absolutely nothing to do with phone-ins but he was the person that had the profile to match the scale of the phone-in disaster.
So I ask the question again,
What has this done for the BBC? Nothing.
Has anything changed? No.
Has it helped their credibility? No.
They have instead lost a brilliant controller for BBC1 that was universally admired by everyone who worked for him.
Mistakes will always happen but progressive companies deal with it openly and honestly. Those that fire the figurehead create a climate where nobody takes any risks. In short it creates a blame culture.
In ITV’s case Michael Grade is absolutely right. It’s the culture that’s broken.
Fixing culture is not about firing people; it’s about the leader being brave enough and big enough to accept that there is something wrong, then reprimanding all involved and finally protecting his people so that they can then be caught doing things RIGHT.
Grade has taken ownership of the issue and now nobody has an excuse in the future and can try harder without fear.
Now that’s what I call leadership.
