The Dutch have a nice saying. In its slightly sanitised version, it goes, "If my Aunty had a beard, she'd be my Uncle". I have been reminded of this in the wake of the surprise resignation of BBC Director General George Entwhistle.
Amongst everyone else, his mother, and Uncle Tom Cobley, veteran presenter David Dimbleby has been putting himself about in the media on the subject of the Entwhistle resignation, appearing on the Today programme this morning and writing an article in the Torygraph. I always thought of Dimbleby as an archetypal paternalistic Corporation Man, but apparently not. "The trouble is", he writes, "that the BBC in recent years has throttled itself with its own bureaucracy . . . It is over managed and badly managed so that no one knows how or where decisions are taken . . . George was a product of that bureaucracy - had risen speaking its language - and that language was his downfall".
It's that last point which rings a bell. If you have an organisation which dedicates itself to management speak, to becoming a blue-skies-thinking producer-choice best-practice human-resources kind of organisation, inevitably the people who rise to its top are the kind of people who thrive in that environment. They must be willing not just to go along with all the balderdash - that's not enough - they must believe in it. Entwhistle evidently believed, and that's one of the reasons why he got to be D-G.
But almost by definition someone who believes can't really lead, because leadership is often the antithesis of this touchy-feely let's-have-a-brainstorming-session-in-a-country-house-hotel way of management; and that's why, at the first sign of trouble, Entwhistle has been found out.
As Dimbleby says, Entwhistle shouldn't have resigned. He should have pointed out that he didn't make the Newsnight programme, or put in place the regime under which it was made. He should have pointed out that Newsnight staff were simply guilty of bad journalism. He should have got the culprits into his office, locked the door, banged their heads together, given them the hairdryer and sent them out a quarter of an hour later mute and shattered with a boot up the backside. Told to do better or else.
Had Entwhistle been this kind of person of course, he wouldn't have got the D-G's job. "If my Aunty had a beard, she'd be my Uncle". And there's the rub. People who adhere to the Alex Ferguson school of management do not, I suspect, prosper at the BBC. And of course had he actually done what I've suggested, the programme makers would have filed a complaint against him, resigned, sued for constructive dismissal and then been compensated handsomely.
And funnily enough, that's exactly what has happened to Entwhistle. He has been given a year's salary - £450,000 - to cheer him on his way.
Just think of the programmes you could make with that.
