Perhaps it’s because I’m an engineer. Whatever the reason I’ve never quite understood the popular media mantra that somehow equates "resignation" after a cock up as "taking responsibility". To my mind taking responsibility for a problem is to deal with it, not walk away.
I was somewhat incensed, therefore, to read Sue Cameron write in yesterday’s FT about how the Chairman of HM Revenue & Customs (HMRC) should be lauded for resigning over the child benefit data loss scandal and is something of an example over Sir Iain Blair, London’s beleaguered police chief who stubbornly refuses to resign over the killing of Jean-Charles de Menezes. Personally my inclination is always towards the determined fighter over the quitter.
I’m not completely against politicians and senior civil servants resigning. Estelle Morris famously felt she wasn’t capable of doing her job as Education Secretary. Fair enough: get out of the way. But resigning/sacking after a scandal should really be if the person was directly responsible, culpable or negligent in some way.
For example, if your trusted engineers tell you that the space shuttle will explode because the O-rings won’t function properly after freezing over night and you don’t listen to them you deserve to be fired. If your security controller comes to you and alerts you to a shortcoming in your security procedures and you twiddle your thumbs then again it’s your fault.
If a junior member of staff ignored procedures and, in doing so, caused a cock-up I’m not really sure that it’s the fault of anyone senior. Now, you could say the procedures were lacking. Maybe. In the real world you can’t procedurise the minutiae of every little sub-task an individual does: the civil service is already suffocated by too much bureaucracy. The weak point in any security system is always going to be human error. You can manage that risk (security vetting, training, monitoring, etc.) but you can never fully eliminate it. Even with the best will in the world there will be cock ups. The goal can only be to minimise the chances of them happening and to minimise the impact when they do happen. If you have put in place all reasonable procedures based on what you know at the time, then I don’t think much more can be asked of you.
Would it be too narrow-minded of me to write that journalists and politicians, often with no experience of doing a "real job", no experience of management and a very academic education with no practical grounding call so easily for resignations simply because they don’t know what it is to take responsibility?
This isn’t just a public sector cancer either. I remember very vividly a discussion on the Today programme a couple of weeks ago about how British universities are trying to emulate the entrepreneurial success of Silicon Valley. An American commentator’s views were incisive. He argued that the major difference was one of culture: in California if you screw up, that’s okay, people realise you will learn from your mistakes and do a better job next time round; in Britain if you screw up you are derided for even trying in the first place.
Update: Since I originally drafted this article it appears some correspondence has been published showing that, despite what the Chancellor reported to Parliament, senior HMRC managers were involved in authorising the insecure data transfer. There’s probably much more to this yet to come out. Nevertheless my general point about responsibility and resignation stands.
“you can’t procedurise the minutiae of every little sub-task an individual does” – you’ve never worked in pharmaceutical manufacturing then. It’s almost unbelievable the level of control – Chemistry graduates sitting in a lab following PC instructions requiring them to click “ok” on a message window for every little task from adding x qty of substance A to shaking. And with specifications on exactly how to shake it. But I digress.
You make a good point about allowing people to learn from failures. And one that’s oft forgot. Another thing is when people who’ve made one cock-up are appointed to a new post and people (well Private Eye!) protest – perhaps the learnings from that mistake make them superbly well qualified.
The Jean Charles de Menzes thing still doesn’t quite sit comfortably though. It wasn’t a cock-up like losing a CD or even anything as ‘benign’ as a fatal accident – it was one person dying at the willful hand of another. Usually the punishement for this is imprisonment.
Resigning (the polite version of being sacked these days) is all about punishment rather than solving the problem (which as you rightly say is what taking responsibility is about). The state punishes people who commit murder for 3 reasons (that I can think of) 1. as a disincentive to anybody else thinking of committing murder, 2. to rehabilitate the offender and 3. to allow the victim’s lovedones to feel some level of justice has metered so they don’t feel the need to carry out vigilante revenge attacks. 2 probably doesn’t count here, 1 probably counts a bit but 3 definitely does. I can’t see his family being satisfied with the response that people are reviewing procedures (although in *addition* this clearly needs to happen).
“you can’t procedurise the minutiae of every little sub-task an individual does”
I guess I could have worded this better. Obviously you can. But you can’t cover every single possibility, however remote, of what might happen when something goes wrong or when those procedures are broken (inadvertently or otherwise).
but then how do you punish mistakes and wrong doings?
when we made spelling mistakes we got crosses and deductions. When we are lame we should unoccupy the seat we sit in in recognition of our lamoness.
Yes for continuitys sake convey what you know of the cock up action situation to your successor and help them out.
This is no challenger disaster scenario, and i find the idea of falling on one’s sword ala Estelle Morris/Sonia Gandhi (BLESS) very chivalrous and humble and a lesson to us all that power pursuit isnt all that important.
Fuad, I don’t mean that we shouldn’t punish mistaked and wrong doings. Simply that every time a junior minion messes up we shouldn’t hang their master out to dry.