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 !

Modern Scottish Writing

Never mind Gary Barlow and BBC promotion. We warned you to watch out for more Jim Naughtie than is reasonable coming in February, to coincide with the publication of his "sophisticated" Cold War thriller, The Madness Of July.  Now we have an alert for chef, break-dancer and tv mogul Kirsty Wark, who's been using train journeys between London and Glasgow to write her first novel, The Legacy of Elizabeth Pringle, "a multi-generational story of love and belonging set on the Scottish island of Arran". This will be published in March.

We're told she's already started on a second book.

Kirsty's publishers are Two Roads Books, an imprint of Hodder & Stoughton, who are also publishing Sally Magnusson's book about her mother, Where Memories Go: Why Dementia Changes Everything.

Spinning

Compare and contrast.

The Times: Overall, the BBC’s top bosses spent £170,975 on costs such as flights, taxis, hotels and entertaining in the period. That was up 1.6 per cent from the three months immediately before Lord Hall took over, and an increase of 1.3 per cent compared with the same quarter of the previous year.

BBC Media Centre: The figures show that spend on expenses is stable on the previous quarter and the same quarter last year.

One of these is right.

Protective

You have to say that Shield must be an appealing name for a BBC spinner in current times. After an uncomfortably long trawl, Tony Hall and James Purnell have opted for John Shield from the Department of Work and Pensions as their Director of Communications. There he's been providing clarity, or not, for Ian Duncan-Smith's welfare reforms.

John has previous BBC experience, working for News for two years from 2008, before being seduced to communicate success for amusingly-named rail and bus provider, Go Ahead. In earlier times he was a press officer in Downing Street, followed by various Whitehall roles.

Julian Payne, who's been minding the BBC shop as interim comms boss, gets an interesting consolation prize - working on the review of how the Trust and Executive might tell each other the whole story in future. 

Two of us ?

Congratulations to Sally Osman, (hard not to write "Little" in front), former BBC comms chief, now heading to St James's Palace to look after the reputations of Charles and Camilla.

But will she be on her own ?  At the BBC from 1999 to 2007, she's been happy to reveal she was "coached" throughout.  Support included BBC-go-to-provider Jenny Rogers, who's probably heard more secrets from Auntie than anyone....

News vendor

I had a gut feeling this would provide pickings as soon as it got Tweeted - a vacancy has arisen for a publicist for BBC News.

Annotated highlights from the job spec...

The post-holder will provide 360 degree [?] campaign planning and execution on priority and proactive [?] content for BBC News, through its full public service lifecycle [?] and irrespective at [?] to which medium it plays out on (including broadband, mobile phones, on demand etc as required). Campaigns could include programme publicity, relevant web or interactive content, relevant BBC Learning content, relevant opinion former activity and some event planning.

Future focus is fundamental within Communications, therefore all staff are expected to actively explore [1st of three split inifinitives] and identify new and interesting avenues for communicating effectively and imaginatively with audiences.

Apparently, you also have to be good at crisis management. Can't think why....

Team George

The BBC Trust has, on legal advice, told George Entwistle that it won't be seeking to claw back any of his pay-off for resigning as Director-General.

We are not, at this stage, told whether or not he has spend all of the £10,000 agreed to cover “reasonable, professional communication support" that was also part of the package.  The Evening Standard reports that George turned to Portland Communications for that back-up - their advisory board includes Michael Portillo and Alastair Campbell; past and present clients include Tesco, Facebook, Google, McDonalds and The Scouts.

It's easy to see how you might rack-up £10k quite quickly - For each client and each project, we create a bespoke team. Drawn from across our communications, digital, public affairs and international practices we consistently deliver results for the world’s most demanding clients.

Consiglieri

We noted that George Entwistle had tried to hire PR support during his 54 days in the Ssun, and may have got close to the services of former Sun editor David Yelland, now working for Brunswick. All too soon, the BBC said it was "inappropriate for the BBC to contract an external agency".

The Spectator claims that Acting DG and Chief Grip Tim Davie is getting advice from Matthew Freud, son-in-law of Rupert Murdoch. It's not clear whether this is help as an old friend from the world of marketing, or via a contract.

Geezer PR

Cicero Consulting are having a busy start to their tenure handling public affairs for the whole Barclays Group. They won the contract in March, from previous incumbents Weber Shandwick, and beating off pitches from Portland and Lansons Communications.

Is it possible the Diamond decision came shortly after a run-through of likely MPs questions for the CEO, including the basic what-he-knew-and-when ?

Here's some of the findings of a May research report by Cicero - the result of 102 interviews with UK finance services professionals.

• 94 per cent of those surveyed believe the UK retail banking sector is negatively or very negatively portrayed by the media. Just 1 per cent think retail banks are positively portrayed by the media.
• 71 per cent of respondents believe there is a degree of hysteria in the media’s portrayal of the UK retail banking sector. Just 8 per cent disagree with this view.

Power cut

On the day that PR Week launches its 2012 Power List of the UK's most influential spinners, comes the news that Dick Fedorcio has resigned from his job running PR for the Metropolitan Police - we predicted he might not make it to the 2012 list back here. In 2011, Dick was at number six in the list of public sector comms leaders.

Here's the overall 2012 top ten, with last year's positions in brackets.

1 (3) Roland Rudd, co-founder, RLM Finsbury
2 (1) Matthew Freud, CEO, Freud Communications
3 (2) Alan Parker, founder, Brunswick Group
4 (4) Craig Oliver, Director of Comms, 10 Downing Street
5 (new) Jackie Brock-Doyle, Director of Comms and Public Affairs, LOCOG/London 2012
6 (new) Jenny Grey, Executive Director of Government Comms, Cabinet Office
7 (6) Lord Bell, chairman, Chime Communications
8 (8)  D-J Collins, vice-president, Public Policy and Comms, EMEA, Google
9 (7) Lord Chadlington, CEO, Huntsworth Group
10 (9) Max Clifford, founder, Max Clifford Associates