Best practice

The BBC Trust has held five meetings so far this year, and the minutes and summaries so far published make no mention of the fact that a process is underway to recruit a new Director General.

This strikes me as odd. Maybe, as is sometimes the case in the BBC, there's already bumper book of procedural guidelines and case-law, presented in deferential, un-minuted silence to Lord Patten on a velvet cushion by The Director of The Trust, with the Deputy Director of The Trust in attendance, flanked by the Head of Governance, whose coat-tails are held up by two Senior Advisers, Governance, as the Head of Public Services Strategy and two Senior Strategy Advisers nod on approvingly from the cheap seats, and numberless Advisers Strategy in mufti listen at the door.

Or maybe the process has been dragged into the 21st Century by Lord Patten himself, non-executive director of international recruitment consultants, Russell Reynolds Associates ?  Will there be an old-fashioned formal interview panel ? Psychometric and personality tests ? An assessment centre, with team tasks ? Candidate profiling, with measurements of unconscious bias ? You can perhaps tell how excited I am by all this. I have visions of the three final candidates standing by in Nando's next to the Trust offices, after a day of interrogation, waiting for their mobiles to ring.

Sadly, we'll probably have to wait for memoirs to find out what really went on...