Sometimes the most dangerous words in an organisation are everyone knows. Everyone knows what they’re like. Everyone knows not to challenge them. Everyone knows they get away with things other people wouldn’t. And yet, somehow, nobody quite knows enough to do anything about it.
That’s what I found most uncomfortable about the BBC review into Russell Brand’s conduct. Not simply the allegations themselves, but what the review revealed about the organisation’s response to concerns. A formal complaint made in 2007 was not investigated as it should have been. Some people felt unable to raise concerns because they believed Russell Brand would “always get his way”.
I don’t believe those running the BBC should somehow have known everything that would emerge years later. That would be hindsight masquerading as insight. But the BBC didn’t need to know everything. It needed to act properly on what it did know. And that raises a much broader question about leadership. How often do organisations really not know enough to act, and how often is “not knowing enough” simply more comfortable?
Organisations rarely make a conscious decision that somebody is above the rules. It happens more subtly. Someone delivers exceptional results, brings in significant revenue, has the ear of the chief executive, is loved by clients or becomes so central to the organisation that imagining life without them feels difficult. And gradually the language changes. That’s just what he’s like. She’s difficult but brilliant. You need a thick skin. We can’t afford to lose them. Everyone knows.
It’s that last phrase I find particularly troubling. Because when everyone knows, at what point does that become something leadership has chosen not to know? Not knowing every fact is one thing. Knowing enough to be uncomfortable and deciding not to look any harder is something else.
And sometimes organisations become remarkably sophisticated at managing around the problem. People are quietly warned about a particular individual. Colleagues learn which subjects to avoid. Teams are rearranged. Managers spend time smoothing things over. HR deals with the consequences. People adapt their own behaviour to accommodate someone else’s. Eventually, so much effort goes into managing the individual that nobody stops to ask why everyone else is having to change. The organisation has learned to accommodate the behaviour rather than confront it.
Of course, some people recognise what’s happening and try to challenge it, only to discover they lack the authority or support to make anything change. A culture where concerns can be raised but go nowhere is not much better than one where nobody feels able to speak.
Russell Brand is an extreme example and the allegations surrounding him should not be equated with everyday workplace difficulties. But the underlying organisational dynamic is hardly unusual. Most of us have encountered someone who gets more latitude than others because of the value they bring. Someone whose behaviour is excused, whose mistakes are overlooked or whose colleagues are expected to make allowances that would never be made for anyone else. Underneath it sits a dangerous bargain: we will tolerate more from you because you give us more.
That’s where I draw the line. Talent can earn opportunity. Performance can earn reward. Success can earn influence. But none of them should earn immunity. The moment we apply a different standard of behaviour because someone is commercially important, exceptionally talented or difficult to replace, we have decided whose discomfort matters more.
And those choices rarely feel straightforward. Challenging someone valuable can damage relationships, create commercial problems and put the person raising the concern in a difficult position. Fairness and due process are essential. But there’s an enormous difference between refusing to rush to judgement and refusing to ask questions because we might not like the answers. Sometimes the problem isn’t that leaders don’t know. It’s that knowing would require them to do something they’d rather avoid. And that is precisely why this is a test of leadership.
So perhaps we should spend less time asking whether our organisations have speak-up policies and more time asking harder questions. Who are we reluctant to challenge? Who gets away with behaviour that somebody less valuable wouldn’t? Who gets a third or fourth chance because losing them would hurt? Whose behaviour have we learned to manage around rather than confront?
Culture isn’t ultimately defined by what an organisation says it believes. It’s revealed when doing the right thing becomes inconvenient, expensive or personally difficult.
The real test of leadership isn’t what you stand for when nothing is at stake. It is what you are prepared to stand up to when everything is.
And the most uncomfortable question any leadership team can ask is also the simplest. What are we pretending not to know?