It was clear from the outset that any gathering of world leaders that excluded Bono was destined to failure. This week has been the time for politicians to show some leadership, and generally it has made dismal viewing. The photocall summed up the whole process. The various leaders were placed in position, coiffed and powdered, and the snappers snapped. Then some bright spark noticed that one leader was missing. Here is a group planning to hand out trillions of dollars, and they can't even count up to 20. As Mae West might have said, a good leader is hard to find.
It occurs to me that this whole economic crisis has been a failure of management. Those appointed to lead have been found wanting: it is not enough for managers to make sure they are the best remunerated characters in the office. They must also keep the workers productive and ensure that the company does not go bust in the meantime. Look at any of the titans on Wall Street. Feared managers to a man and woman, and while their companies were falling apart, they were either playing bridge or redecorating their offices. Emperor Nero, famous for fiddling while Rome burnt even though fiddles hadn't been invented, is presumably their patron saint.
I have managed a team of journalists on at least two occasions and each time it has been an enervating experience. Those you cajole and encourage leave within six months; the ones you force to work harder turn resentful and plot your downfall in dark corners. Why anybody wants to be a leader is beyond me, although presumably the advantage is that nobody can tell you what to do and you can take your holidays whenever you choose.
Not that good managers don't make a difference. We have all seen football teams languishing in the league, losing late goals, playing their strikers out of position, seemingly unable to find a winning formula. Then the manager is sacked, a new man is found, and before you know where you are, the team is top of the table and winning in Europe. A colleague of mine was fond of saying, before I sacked him, that many offices, especially public schools, are like fish: they rot from the head. I sat next to Richard Cairns, the headmaster of Brighton College, last week. You know you are getting old when headmasters start looking young.
In his youthful way, he was extolling the virtues of Brighton College to me, pointing out that its exam results were the best for any co-educational school in England. The Times speaks highly of it; so does The Telegraph. This amazed me. When I was at school in Kent, admittedly a few decades ago, Brighton College is where the "thickies" were sent. "Absolutely right," said Mr Cairns. "But we have managed to turn it round." He gave credit to his predecessor for starting the process, but introduced his own methods for hiring and managing his staff. Teachers, it appears, are as difficult to manage as journalists. "It is like herding cats," he said.
Mr Cairns says the only way to manage them is to make sure you get good people at the beginning. He likes to get his staff young. Brighton is lucky in that respect, because it is a fun city on the south coast of England. It is reputed to be one of the sunniest places in the British Isles, but that's all relative. What that means is that it only rains 300 days a year, not 350. Staff are lured to the school with incentives such as a £500 (Dh2,660) book token. But before they can go down to WH Smith's to spend it, they have to overcome a rigorous selection process.
The first step is rather cunning. As they are shown round the school by one of the boys, they probably don't realise that they are already under scrutiny. But said boy or girl's first task when that finishes is to scuttle off to the headmaster's study and tell him what the prospective master was interested in. Was it the quality of the lunches or the good looks of the matrons? Was he genuinely interested in the pupils, or did he talk mainly of the quality of the surf by the Palace Pier?
I am not sure a headmaster should be encouraging sneaks, but hats off to him if it works. Having passed this test, followed by a lengthy interview with other teachers, the prospective employee is then asked to teach three classes under observation. So, do many fail this test? "Oh yes," he says. "You'd be amazed." It is such an obvious thing to do, but one that few employers follow. He has high hopes for his pupils, who he says are a bright and motivated bunch. Who knows, one of them might be able to lead us out of this economic mess.
There was only one thing that I disagreed with Mr Cairns on during our entire chat. He said that the Brighton College in Abu Dhabi would have a uniform, topped off perhaps by a straw boater. At my school in Tonbridge we wore boaters for the first year or so until the aged headmaster was wise enough to abolish them. Boaters are itchy and uncomfortable. Even worse, they are impossibly attractive items for local youths. I learnt to fight on the bridges over the Medway, for as we went down to the town to buy provisions, we were often ambushed by pupils from other schools.
There may be a less yobbish element in Abu Dhabi, but on such matters you can never be too careful. Show a truculent youth a boater and he cannot control himself. It is just as well Gordon Brown, that prime minister, didn't make the world's leaders wear boaters for the photocall: it could have been the last straw for the protesters. rwright@thenational.ae
