I recently made a rather waspish comment about Paul Deighton, lately Chief Executive of LOCOG, but after reading a long interview with him in The Times of 15 September I became more of a fan.
First because he prefers to describe himself as lucky, rather than successful, (not an attitude one readily associates with a multi-millionaire beneficiary of the Goldman Sachs flotation), who believes that rich people should spend less time worrying about how they are perceived & concentrate instead on thinking about how they can make a contribution. Doubtless however he recognises the force in Gary Player’s remark about the relationship between the time & effort put into practising & the amount of luck which comes ones way.
Secondly he is not a subscriber to the belief in the automatic superiority of the private sector. After [7 years] sitting in the middle of the ‘massive public-private joint venture’ which was the Olympics he is clear that the best resources may lie in either – there is no clear superiority – but what is clear is the need to have good people leading at the top of each individual venture.
And thirdly, both banking & the Olympics have taught him the overwhelming importance of teamwork, collaboration (rather than winner-take-all competition, red in tooth & claw): “If you can make that happen then the energy & power you unleash is extraordinary".
And that G4S debacle? Turned out to be a blessing. The public loved the military. The situation played to their strength of going in quickly, for them it was just business as usual, not business unusual as it seemed to an organisation like LOCOG.
I turned to the Minutes of Evidence for his appearance before the Select Committee, which took place 4 days before the Times interview was published, & only two days after the Paralympics closing ceremony, in the glow of all-round congratulations for a job well done.
The Committee made some attempts to gain an admission that the G4S problem should have been recognised earlier, but on this occasion failed to make headway with a man these political & diplomatic skills.
He slipped in a reminder to the Committee that the ultimate contractual responsibility for a safe & secure Games lies with the Government since ‘nobody but the state can really guarantee to provide safety and security’, as well as reference to the fact that LOCOG had managed to hire 70,000 volunteers, seven times as many as the security guards for which G4S had the contract, during the same period. Nevertheless he was careful to mitigate the case against the contractor, who didn’t give up despite the difficult position in which they found themselves, & indeed by the time of the Paralympics were meeting virtually all their obligations (a fact which has not had much publicity): “The thing I would say specifically about G4S … is that they created a special unit to deliver this project, because this project is unusual in its size and temporary nature. Their inability to get this bit right doesn’t necessarily reflect on the capability across their standard operating business”
If only he can negotiate the shoals of Westminster & Whitehall to help restore confidence & pride in a much battered civil service, that will be contribution indeed. It will be a very hard job, without that card which trumps all argument – commitment to a fixed, unalterably removal date, on which the events being planned for must take place at (almost) whatever the cost.
Link
Olympics Security: Uncorrected Transcript Of Oral Evidence
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