Sir Gerry Robinson launched this year’s Human Resources Forum on board the Oriana cruiseliner in Southampton, ahead of its mini-cruise to nowhere, with an entertaining keynote address on leadership.
The former chairman and chief executive of Granada and TV troubleshooter of Can Gerry Robinson Fix the NHS? entertained delegates with anecdotes about his time troubleshooting in the NHS and with his straightforward approach to management.
“Change management” he judged to be tautology, believing that management by definition involved managing change, before giving 10 key attributes he believed to be crucial in good leadership.
1 First up included an immediate gibe at the HR audience: clarity. “…and I say this particularly to the HR people here today, don’t waffle”. His remark resonated later when a question, if you can call it that, from an HR professional in the audience was delivered in a manner as “waffly versatile” as Birds Eye potato waffles themselves.
Clarity said Sir Gerry was the most important issue about good leadership and he borrowed a quote from Michael Portillo: “By the time you are absolutely sick to death of explaining how something’s got to happen, people are just starting to understand what needs to be done.”
2 Vision. The organisation needs to know where it's going.
3 Passion came after that. If you don’t believe in what you’re doing then those around you are guaranteed not to…
4 Courage. “I’ve worked with people who won’t take risks at all, they analyse everything to death,” said Sir Gerry and that leads to stagnation.
He described his time as chairman at the Arts Council and how when he wanted to get some better quality, and by definition better paid, senior staff he received an hour and a half lecture from ‘Colin’ at the Department of Culture Media and Sport about pay grading. “After that, I thought bo**ocks,” he said, put an ad in the Guardian for four off-the-DCMS-pay-scale execs. “Not once since has anyone from DCMS come back to me and said, ‘What about the rules?’”
Another element of courage was what he described as the singularity of leadership. “Courage is when you know the decision you need to make is also the decision that will go down like a lead balloon.”
5 Follow-up. Criticising many public sector managers for their failure to follow up on things.
6 Don’t try to do too much… delegate. People who cannot get away from work are kidding themselves or are disorganised.
7 Be consistent. “The worst thing that people can ask is, ‘What sort of mood are you going to be in today?’”. You can be grumpy said Sir Gerry, just make sure you’re consistently so.
8 Look out for talent. "Some people can be footballer, some people can rock stars but anyone it seems can be a manager." Sadly, he said, not everybody is up to it.
9 Have a clear chain of command – there has to be buck-stops-here culture where leaders are decisive.
10 In answering another question from the floor, Sir Gerry made it clear that you had to get the best leaders into an organisation you had pay them well. For an organisation as big, complex and important as the NHS you should be paying some £10m to run it, and you should be paying executive £1-2m to be running each hospital.
Those sort of salaries are needed to get the best people in to the role and in the scheme of the NHS’s multi-billion pound budget, it is of course a drop in the ocean or, given the HR Forum's venue, the English Channel.
