With the sacking of Jeremy Clarkson by the BBC – the sacrifice of one of its prime cash cows – a message has been thrown out across the creative industries: “artistic temperament” can no longer be accepted as an excuse for bullying or aggressive outbursts.
It’s long overdue for those industries to recognise that creative talent isn’t an excuse for simple poor people management either. In times past it was considered necessary to separate management and creative functions, an approach that has its merits but is labour intensive and less suited to modern, less compartmentalised working. Far better to invest a little time and resource into leadership and management training for lead creatives, build some formal communication channels and a supervision system amid the hubbub of expressive energy.
Of course the BBC has a huge bureacracy and ironclad communications channels. But Top Gear had clearly become a small, self contained – and largely self policing – unit; in effect a small creative enterprise like any other independent media business from Leeds to London. And like many such compact enterprises, it fell down on a simple communication issue – perhaps if prewarned that the chef had gone home, Clarkson and his gang could have stopped the helicopter off at a chipshop on the way back to the hotel.
For me, the BBC has earned its licence fee this year with this timely message for creative companies: get some help in to look at your basic, “boring” internal comms; and get in some peoples skills training for your teams while you’re at it, before somebody gets hurt and the legal bills start coming in.
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