14th June 2010 | Posted in Latest news, Mediation, Organisational Development
“I hate politics”. Anyone who works with organisations will have heard this. A lot. When faced with Senior Managers who say it, alarm bells ring loud since it is usually a prelude to a resignation at best and some entrenched organisational sabotage at worst. Why? Well, partly because ‘politics’ is part of a Senior Manager’s job and partly because, as one combatively cynical CEO mentioned to us last month, “the only people that say that are the ones who have lost the argument”. As long ago as Aristotle we knew that organizations are political. As Charles Handy points out there are good politics – the healthy competition of ideas which drives positive change – and bad politics which you could more usefully describe as conflict. “I hate conflict” is easier to agree with and easier to support people in finding solutions to.
When it comes to the current US Administration and BP, we are bound to wonder whether Charles Handy’s good politics or bad politics are at work here. In an excellent FT article this weekend , Christopher Caldwell points to the political causes of President Obama’s yobish treatment of BP over recent weeks. Like all left of centre governments (think New Labour’s ‘tough on crime; tough on the causes of crime’) this Administration needs to prove to the tattooed drunk at the bar that wearing a pink shirt doesn’t make them a soft touch. Picking a fight with Tony Hayward might have been easy (see this blog ‘Mispeaking and dresscode’ 8 June) but, like all bad politics, the conflict is getting in the way of the endeavor.
The President swearing in public about BP doesn’t distract from the fact that his energy policy is in tatters over this and his election rhetoric promised much more in this key area for America’s future. The role of government is not to make shareholder’s decision for them over who should CEO their business and Director’s decisions for them over how they should spend their money. Americans, of all people, know this and public opinion in the US has not been taken in any more than the employees of a business are taken in by slickly presented nonsense from their Senior Managers at times of change or crisis.
This is a disaster of unprecedented scale and BP may have done some things wrong. They may equally be a bunch of people doing the best that anyone can to fix it right now so let’s stop the oil first and then learn what we can. The leader who indulges in the witch hunt while the crisis is in full flow fools no-one. As Harold Macmillan pointed out when asked about the most challenging aspects of leadership it is “events, dear boy” which prove the test.
