Second thoughts

Former BBC HR Director Lucy Adams has been reflecting on leadership and trust, on her blog. The whole thing is worth a read, but Beeboids will enjoy these bits, the first about emails sent to all staff.....

One day at the BBC, I got a call from a guy in News who wanted to be helpful by explaining to me that “my emails were crap” and I should “get someone else to write them for me”. I was slightly taken aback as this was precisely what I had done. My emails were usually written with several other people – people in HR, people in Legal, people in the press team and people in Internal Communications. As I re-read the most recent communications I realised with dismay that he was right. My emails were crap. They seemed pompous and sterile, lacking any humanity or humility. I had adopted the royal Executive “We” and, in an effort to be accurate, I had “lawyered-out” any personality.... 

During the period when we were trying to communicate the need to reform the BBC’s final salary pension scheme, the trade unions’ leaflets were so much more powerful than the corporate line. They created images of fat, overpaid BBC executives who cared little for the poorly paid BBC staffer who would suffer in old age. They produced caricatures of the Director General and his team with an almost pantomime villain quality. We talked about mortality rates and interest rate risks. During the severance scandal, the press had a field day with images of overpaid executives receiving enormous amounts of money. One entire page in the Daily Mail was devoted to my supposed obsession for designer labels and expensive handbags – despite me being a TopShop regular ! The corporate response tried to explain what we had been doing by talking about contractual entitlements and payback periods leading to savings of £20m a year. A futile attempt to combat emotion with analysis....

In every period of difficult news “Hunt the missing Exec” is a favourite pastime and yet this disappearing act damages their faith in us to do the right thing. One of the bravest leadership acts I’ve seen was Tim Davie who, on his first morning as Acting Director General of the BBC during the Savile crisis, went straight onto the Newsroom floor to meet with the journalists. Most senior managers would rather go and visit the staff in Gaza then make an appearance down there during a crisis. That one act earned him a huge amount of respect and trust....

In recent years the BBC started publishing all of the expense claims of its senior leaders. Whilst the press focused on the more luxurious claims – a bottle of champagne or a posh dinner – what annoyed the staff most was the smaller claims – the postage stamp or the cappuccino – by people who were on six-figure salaries. We’ve all seen these small abuses of privilege and some of us have been guilty of doing it; the demand for a good parking space, the slightly better stationery than everyone else, no hot desking for the Execs. It does us no favours and we come across as mean-spirited. You wouldn’t trust a mate who demanded petty privileges so why would you trust your leader ?..... 

So many of our HR policies [I don't think she's being BBC-specific here, but...]have been developed because someone did something bad once and a rule was developed to prevent anyone doing it ever again. We all have the “Stop Them” Policies and indeed hours of our time go into enforcing them. Think about your employment contract. This tells us how much we are going to be paid, the hours we are expected to work and the 30 policies that if breached, will result in us being fired. Hardly the opening gambit for a trusting relationship !