Peter Kent-Baguley

Transfer list merry-go-round?

With the resignation of the City Council's Manager/Chief Executive with effect from 1st October the special Full Council held last Tuesday established an Appointment Committee of 7 Councillors. Full powers to make an appointment were delegated to the Committee. Surely, by now, word will have buzzed round the national transfer circuit that a golden opportunity awaits the right candidate in Stoke-on-Trent. The Appointment Committee's most difficult task will be to ascertain precisely that, the right candidate. Criteria employed last time, hardly two years ago, will be refined no doubt but will one element be a commitment to actually stay for more than two years? I gather that, of fourteen local authorities in the West Midlands, our departing Council Manager, Steve Robinson is, incredibly, the second longest serving Chief Executive!

What is going on? Has the process degenerated into little more than tribal trumpery? With each move, we hear the clarion that we must pay the top price to get the top person so each time the salary is increased. But with what effect? Have we all been deluded into believing that there is such a tiny pool of talented professionals fit for the top job that extravagant salaries are essential?

Of course, most of us have been seduced into the belief that organisations must be structured in a hierarchical way, with the top person with the top salary sitting in the top job without whom chaos and calamity would surely ensue. What amazes me is that despite the continuing and widespread evidence which undermines the bureaucratic ideology it nevertheless continues to flourish. And the really odd thing is, that although few people would say we need a dictator to run the government, the prevailing view is that we do need organizational dictators. History may be the graveyard of elites but there's no shortage of new ones!