Summary
Bad behaviour and big mistakes can destroy careers and even entire businesses if they're not addressed quickly, so why do some companies and their leaders try to downplay or even deny them?
Evan Davis and guests discuss the culture of defensiveness and denial that exists in some organisations, from the private to the public and charity sectors.
A former Oxfam worker describes how she was forced to blow the whistle on widespread sexual exploitation and abuse inside the charity, and the panel explores the ways in which leaders can tackle wrongdoing and encourage their teams to call it out.
Evan is joined by:
Helen Evans, former head of global safeguarding at Oxfam, now CEO of Cavernoma Alliance UK: John Higgins, researcher on workplace activism and author of “Speak Up: Say What Needs to Be Said and Hear What Needs to Be Heard”; Sarah Miller, CEO of Principia Advisory.
PRODUCTION TEAM:
Producer: Simon Tulett Editor: China Collins Sound: Graham Puddifoot and Rod Farquhar Production co-ordinators: Gemma Ashman and Sophie Hill
(Picture: A businessman with his head in the sand. Credit: Getty Images)
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | BBC Sounds, Music, Radio, Podcasts. |
| 0:05.4 | Hello, welcome to the programme. |
| 0:07.0 | I think you've heard about Lucy Lettby, |
| 0:08.9 | the nurse employed in the neonatal department |
| 0:11.1 | of the Countess of Chester Hospital, |
| 0:13.8 | who became a serial killer of babies under her watch. |
| 0:17.4 | She's been convicted of seven murders |
| 0:19.2 | and six other attempted murders. |
| 0:21.7 | It's been a shocking case, and there are still ongoing investigations. Her story is not one for the bottom line, |
| 0:27.6 | but there's one aspect of that case, which is the motivation for today's program. It centers on |
| 0:33.3 | the allegation by certain hospital colleagues, quite senior some of them, of how their alarm |
| 0:38.6 | that something was wrong, how that was battered away by hospital management, that their |
| 0:44.0 | warnings were not heeded. Now there's a police corporate manslaughter investigation into those |
| 0:49.2 | events. We're going to leave them alone. But the suggestion is there more generally that managers, when confronted with |
| 0:56.4 | difficult problems, have a tendency to deny things, hope they're not true, or that they may just go |
| 1:02.1 | away. The NHS has been accused of having a culture of defensiveness and denial, as is the |
| 1:08.3 | Metropolitan Police, the BBC too, in some cases, |
| 1:12.3 | and you don't have to try very hard to think of corporate scandals where similar allegations |
| 1:17.5 | have been made, from the post office and its horizon system to the flight software that |
| 1:22.6 | brought down the Boeing 737 Max aircraft and the German company behind the drug thalidomide. Something in human nature, |
| 1:30.2 | especially perhaps when it's found among employees of large organisations, makes us defensive, |
| 1:35.9 | not curious as to what's been going on. So today we'll look at why we're prone to deny or |
... |
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