The Apprentice Style of Management I hate “The Apprentice” There, I’ve said it. I know it is great entertainment. I know it has won, or at least been nominated for, loads of awards. Yet to me it represents the worst of reality TV because people watch it and actually believe that is how management of businesses should operate. Whilst no-one actually thinks you should behave in the same way as the participants in “Big Brother” and no-one truly wants the “celebrities” in the jungle to ever be “got out of there”, the idea that shouting, back-stabbing, intolerance and bullying is modern business school theory, seems to have gained a frightening level of credibility. In a recent episode the contestants (all ideal employees I am sure) were split into two teams. I am not precisely sure what they were required to do, I think it was to obtain chemicals to create a weapon of mass destruction and then market it to a rogue state. Anyway, the team that won apparently remembered to do the initial market research, albeit by telephone (due to sanction restrictions), whereas the losing team had failed to confirm the purchaser was a wealthy rogue state. Back at Bunker Sugar (the Sugar cube?) the losing team fell on their leader, blaming him for the collective failings. “But we told you Zimbabwe was a bad choice of customer…”Collective responsibility is clearly a thing of the past. This approach to management is not new, I remember that a few years ago, a management book was released called “The Leadership Secrets of Attila the Hun”. For a while, I toyed with the idea of producing a series of such eyecatching titles. “King Herod’s Book of Child Care” maybe, or “Vlad the Impaler’s little Book of Calm”, but the moment passed. I am sure that there are a significant number of very successful business leaders who are loved by their shareholders whilst at the same time their staff were sticking pins in voodoo dolls of them. But to idolise such leadership styles as models to be looked up to, is repulsive. Yes I know a decent boss makes boring TV, just as a Big Brother household full of normal people managing to get on for a few weeks wouldn’t even draw an audience from their parents and that the Jerry Springer show “Married, five kids and happy” had significantly fewer viewers than “He may be a serial killer but I love him”. But this is reality TV not real life (and no, Jerry Springer is not real, unless you live in Alabama). Let’s face it some of these “celebrities” wouldn’t even get a hit on even if you Googled them. As regards these shows we (well most of us) can spot the difference. Somehow, The Apprentice crossed the line. In Gibraltar, like everywhere else, there are good bosses, bad bosses and wholly indifferent ones. The Government subsidises training in things such as “Investors in People” to try and improve the overall quality. As regulators we regard management and management style as a key part of our risk assessment when we visit licence holders. Bullying, controlling, bosses historically represent a higher risk of failure (remember Maxwell). sacred staff are more likely to cover up errors. However the right culture encourages people to take responsibility and to be accountable. It is no wonder that, in surveys of the best companies to work for, those at the top are also amongst the most successful. Toughness, credibility and operational skill depend on what you say not the volume or invective of how you say it. The creation of a climate of fear and mistrust may allow a weak manager to temporarily control an organisation but the absence of cultural cohesiveness and the lack of a system of checks and balances will, inthe long term, undermine him or her. No company that gets people to work in teams then encourages them to destructively criticise their fellow team members could last, even with the ever decreasing staffing costs associated with “The Apprentice” school of management.Team work has to involve trust. If you believe your colleague will stab you in the back and steal a team idea and portray it as their own, then there is no chance of the team working. One of Gibraltar’s great strengths is its ability to work as a cohesive unit. Government supports and encourages the financial sector. The financial sector delivers income and employment. The regulator helps as and where it should. There is not merely consultation, but participation. Of course there is not always agreement, nor should there be, but the team dynamic works. In keeping with this, the new Financial Services Commission Act has created a statutory obligation regarding senior management being responsible for running the company. This may seem obvious but, guess what, it is not always seen in practice. Yet to operate in any other way has as much chance of success as the UK has of winning the Eurovision Song Contest. Internal loyalty comes from trust both of onesbosses and ones peers. Debate and disagreement must be open, not subversive. A perfect example of this is the “BCC” one-mails. For those not knowledgeable on this (including me until recently) this is where you can send an email to X and copy it to Y without X knowing.The “B” apparently stands for blind. I alwaysthought it stood for another word, also with a B at the beginning and D at the end, but with a couple of A’s, a T, R and an S in there somewhere. Now I understand you may occasionally want to email a client and let a colleague know what you are doing. That is fine. What gets to me is the use of the BCC to quietly let your boss or boss’s boss know that you are in dispute with a fellow worker (or your immediate boss). This, in the mind of the sender (or grass), will show his boss that he is the loyal worker and is therefore worthy of vast praise, promotion, pay rise, etc. Rubbish. It shows he has as much guts as a disembowelled weasel. If he had any strength of character he would have let his boss or colleague know by openly “cc”ing it. Similarly, any boss that accepts such an approach or, even worse, encourages it, deserves the kind of loyalty normally reserved for leaders of the British Liberal Democratic Party. It is only for this one event that I would recommend they follow Sir Alan and simply hit the reply button, type “You’re fired” and send. Oh, and don’t forget to BCC it. by Marcus Killick.

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