The pandemic has shone a spotlight on the lack of experience among some of those in key public sector roles. From the US jeweller who was paid by the taxpayer to broker PPE contracts to Sir Gordon Messenger, the Royal Marines general called in to lead the biggest review of NHS management in 40 years, the experts have often been left out.
“Messenger was a very distinguished Royal Marine. However, perhaps we have to ask ourselves as a nation, whether it would be natural to have a review of the Royal Marines led by a medical doctor,” Andrew Oswald, a professor at the University of Warwick, recently argued in a letter to the Financial Times. Dr Michael Head, a scientist at Southampton University, last summer called the hire of ex-TalkTalk and NHS Test and Trace chief Dido Harding to the new National Institute for Health Protection akin to “Chris Whitty being appointed the Vodafone head of branding and corporate image”.
It is not just the public sector. George Mitchell, who ran collapsed lender HBOS’s corporate division until the start of 2006, said years after the 2008 crash that “more directors with direct banking experience may have been beneficial as the financial crisis took hold”. Andy Hornby, the lender’s boss leading up to the crisis, was at first hailed as a marketing wunderkind when he joined the bank from Asda with no banking training in 1999. His impressive CV mirrored many others in power in the corporate world. A degree from Oxford, a stint as a management consultant, an MBA at Harvard. Consultancies such as McKinsey have long been described as chief executive factories due to the sheer number of people who go from advising big businesses to running them. Aside from his lack of banking experience, Hornby ticked all the chief executive boxes.
