When Greg Dyke resigned from his position as director general of the BBC in January 2004, thousands of his former employees took to the streets to protest. Some even cried.
Dyke, you may recall, was effectively forced out after the Hutton enquiry criticised him for defending the BBC in the face of government complaints about a news story concerning weapons of mass destruction in Iraq – without first fully investigating whether there was any merit to those complaints.
Not only had he cut costs – he did so while raising standards and incurring the devotion of the workforce.
Whatever your view on the issue, it's a shame Dyke left the BBC, because many think he was the best director general it has had for half a century. When he arrived in 1999, it was a demoralised, unfocused organisation in the grip of accountants and managers. Administration accounted for a quarter of its revenues. Audiences were sliding, funding was being questioned and it seemed an increasingly irrelevant institution in the new multi-channel world.
Within three years, however, Dyke had cut administration costs in half to 12 per cent of revenue, audiences were on the increase (albeit at the cost of accusations of dumbing down), the BBC had one of the busiest websites in the world and morale was high.
I realised I would have to try to change the relationship between the director general and the staff at every level of the organisation.
Despite his less than glorious departure, Dyke had achieved the apparently impossible. Not only had he cut costs – he did so while raising standards and incurring the devotion of the workforce. And remember this wasn't some corner shop – it was a huge juggernaut of an organisation with 30,000 people and an annual budget in excess of £2bn.
It's the sort of performance most managers would give their eye teeth for. The implementation may have been complex, but the guiding principle was very simple says Dyke. "It comes down to treating people properly, as decent human beings, which means communicating with them, respecting them and showing you value them. Simple as that."
By getting staff on his side supporting his vision of how the BBC should work, he effectively recruited 30,000 cost cutters.
In fact internal communications have become possibly the most important subject for senior managers these days, he says. "I remember Sir Martin Sorrel saying once that when he started in business, five per cent of his time was spent on internal communications. Now it's twenty-five per cent. He's dead right."
So when Dyke first arrived at the BBC he went on a tour of offices, some of which no director general had visited for decades. "Many of the staff I met felt unloved, unwanted and unnoticed. But worst of all was the climate of fear I found everywhere. From the very beginning I realised I would have to try to change the relationship between the director general and the staff at every level of the organisation."
At the top, this meant getting rid of the executive obsession with report writing at the expense of action – or "paralysis by analysis" as he calls it. Further down, by getting staff on his side, supporting his vision of how the BBC should work, he effectively recruited 30,000 cost cutters.
It comes down to treating people properly, as decent human beings, which means communicating with them, respecting them and showing you value them.
This allowed him to implement simple housekeeping measures that might otherwise have been blocked. "We saved £20m a year on outside consultants, we reduced the number of business units that could invoice each other from three hundred to sixty, we replaced taxis with staff buses to get between sites, we halved the size of the finance department," the list is endless. Crucially, all the savings – and a substantial amount of borrowings – were channelled into programme making, which, after all, is what the BBC is for.
Today, after 28 months on the sidelines, Dyke clearly hankers after a return to the big time. His current activities include ownership of two golf courses, a hotel and a property development company, and chancellorship of York University. He's also chairman of Brentford FC and of TV production company HIT, which owns the rights to Bob the Builder.
But he was deeply frustrated by the failure of his recent £5.3bn bid for ITV, which was roundly rejected by the ITV board in March. "ITV has had a desperately bad decade, its main channel is in a pretty bad way. We offered 130p a share. What is it now?" he asks, knowing full well that at the time of speaking it was hovering round 104p.
So, where next? "I don't know," admits Dyke. "I enjoy difficult challenges and I don't think I really like the portfolio life, but for the moment that's what I'll do," he almost sighs. In the meanwhile he will soon be back in the public eye as host of Channel 4's new reality show called 'Get Me The Producer' which has been described as "The Apprentice for wannabe tv producers". But with a track record like his you wouldn't bet on him remaining self-employed for long.
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