Cutting bureaucracy at the BBC

I notice that BBC director general Tony Hall has committed to cutting bureaucracy.

Top of the agenda, apparently, is to tackle the BBC’s meeting culture – halving the number of boards and steering groups. “We spend far too long agonising over decisions that other organisations have learned to make much more efficiently,” says Hall.

Sounds like a good start.

A useful follow-up would be to light a bushfire under the forest of processes and procedures, rules and regulations, that were set up, one by one, on the basis that they would increase control, reduce risk and facilitate progress, but actually just get in the way.

Creating wealth: getting back to basics

Lunch yesterday with an old friend, the brilliant Australian winemaker, Julian Castagna (left).

He has always been uncompromising in his pursuit of excellence – that’s why his wines are so highly regarded. In recent years he has pioneered the introduction in upstate Victoria of traditional Italian grape varieties to Australia – a market still swamped by shiraz and chardonnay.

We reminisced about a campaign we worked on together (in previous lives) in the late 1970s for the Institute of Directors in London. We’d been hired by the then Director-General, Jan Hildreth, to communicate to the Great British Public that, in order to pay for public services – education, health, defence etc – the taxes that paid for them were only generated from continuously created wealth. And that the only way to create wealth was to sell goods and services profitably.

We didn’t pursue the project when Mrs Thatcher’s Conservative Party co-opted the thinking into the core of its 1979 campaign – the one that swept her into power – and then into all the changes that kick-started the British economy again through the 1980s.

I keep thinking that we might usefully resurrect it now. People do seem to have lost the plot again, not least our Conservative/Lib Dem government in Britain. They appear to know that getting the economy moving ahead is top priority.

But liberalising the planning laws as the main event? I don’t think so. The answers lie in substantially greater incentivisation and reduced bureaucracy for entrepreneurs and innovators.

Educational standards “woeful”

Perhaps the most successful leader of a major British company, Tesco’s Sir Terry Leahy has criticised educational standards in the country. “Woefully low,” was how he summarised the situation, adding: “We depend on high standards in our schools as today’s schoolchildren are tomorrow’s team.”

Singled out as an underlying cause by Leahy was “reams of instructions to teachers, who then get distracted from the task at hand: teaching children.” Bureaucracy certainly seems to have increased exponentially over recent years.

His main area of concern is focused on basic numeracy and communication skills. I often hear similar comments from colleagues at City University – but with the rider that there are also serious issues with school-leavers in the areas of creativity and problem-solving skills.

I wonder what the answer is? And is this a worldwide phenomenon?

My own experience in Asia (India, Singapore etc) would indicate that they are the ones we might be learning from these days.

Mavericks – for us or against us?

A qualitative research programme I did for a major multinational demonstrated that the original ideas behind all their significant innovations of the previous decade were attributed to people who might best be described as hero mavericks.

What’s more, although they may well have disliked each other, these mavericks had much in common. They hated bureaucracy, were disruptive, found it very hard to conform to corporate rules, were seen as difficult to work with, and they kept rather odd hours – you could never be sure where they were. They were the ones who were happiest going on long and lonely journeys in search of the Holy Grail.

One other thing: they had all left the company – some deciding for themselves to go, while others had been pushed out.

And it was generally agreed by their former colleagues that their departure was better for all concerned – for the mavericks and for the company.

Of course, this begs the question: if the way we’ve got breakthrough ideas in the past is from mavericks, and the ones we know about have left the building, how sure are we that we’ll get new disruptive ideas in the future?

Most of the large companies that I know could easily accommodate these creatures. After all they are always a small minority. But in order to do so, they need to be recognised, succoured and supported, not just tolerated.

What's your view - nurture or eject?