One of the best pieces of advice I ever received – in the days when I worked in ‘organisations’ – was to find a public telephone box and call yourself up. Pretend you are a customer, ring in, and make some enquiries, perhaps a complaint. You will then obtain a very different perspective on your organisation to the one that you see from the inside.
This sound advice comes from the management guru Robert Townsend. He was writing in the 1970s but his advice is no less relevant today; and to large public organisations as much as small private ones.
From the comfortable, leather-upholstered chairs, clustered around the boardroom table, life tends to be painted in the colours the directors would hopefully wish it to be. It is easy for them to be taken in by their own importance.
The surroundings in which major public and private leaders live much of their lives – induces its own ‘folie de grandeur.’ So common sense occasionally flies out of the window. And symbolism flies in to replace it.
Especially prone to this madness are those in the higher reaches of government, perhaps because such people live in a rarefied atmosphere free from normal constraints.
Staff are always on hand to organise and prepare and shield; to write speeches, brief on meetings, organise food and refreshment, to set the diary, to arrange travel and generally to insulate the office holder from the routine pressures of life.
This apparatus of power sets the same seal of approval on all decisions and perceptions. Symbolism and substance can thus become easily confused. The public, however, is rarely duped. As Lincoln’s saying implies – you can only fool some of the people, some of the time.
