The former director-general of the BBC's 'incurious' attitude proved disastrous in a crisis. The same is even truer of political leadership
When you're in a crisis, you can either rise to the challenge and get on top of it - or you can block your ears , shield your eyes, hide in a cupboard and hope it goes away.
The recent travails at the BBC appear to be a version of the latter. Nobody really wanted to know, everyone left things to others, management systems were assumed to work, nobody took responsibility.
Former BBC director-general George Entwistle, in the excruciating Today interview with John Humphrys, seemed determined to paint a picture of a man in a big office somewhere, who only responded to things or even knew about them (be they tweets, Guardian front pages or Newsnight plans) if a minion came along, interrupted him and told him about them.
Clearly that is not the way to do things. In my time as a government political adviser there were, you may be surprised to hear, many crises of different types. These ranged from the tanker drivers' strike in 2000 to the loss of the disk with all the child benefit data on it towards the end of that decade. In addition, two of the people I worked for resigned, so that was fun too!
Some crises were handled well (often no thanks to me) and some very badly. And it feels true that the better handled ones were characterised by ministers who avoided hiding, hoping, or just blurting out a line to keep the hacks happy - and instead made an attempt to really get on top of things, understand what had happened and take full control.
One such crisis happened was when I worked at the Department of Education and a major issue about sex offenders blew up from nowhere. Naturally one's first instinct is to try and work out how on earth this happened and have a go at the culprits. But this does not get you very far.
You need to understand the scale of the problem, the likelihood of it happening again and resist the pressure for crazy, emotion-filled solutions called for by those at the sharp end and the press (the so–called ‘mad dog syndrome’, named after reflex, hurried legislation that does not work at all) and get a grip.
And it is no use leaving it your underlings. Not only because it is unfair, but because only an organisation's leadership can bring to bear all the resources and focus needed to get that grip. Indeed, in my experience all but the best civil servants headed for the hills when the kitchen got too hot.
The boss simply has to be on top of things. In fact, when my boss in a department was under pressure, my job sometimes became to try and keep the rest of the show (outside the crisis issue) on the road, as they could not be excepted to be on top of that too.
Avoiding crises through proper management accountability systems is of course the first best solution, along with a serious bit of risk management (looking over the cliff edge to see what would happen in the worst-case scenario).
But when the inevitable ‘events’ happen, the nature of good leadership it to envelope yourselves in it. Let's hope the next head of the BBC understands that.
