MICHAEL DEMPSEY - Cranfield University

Managing action - leadership
One officer spoke to me a few weeks ago and made this sort of
angels on a pinhead distinction; senior managers and the Senior
Management Team. Which is a bit nuanced but I think I know
what the person was driving at. What we've got is that we've
obviously got the National Executive. Some of the National
Executive and some officers think, why do you need a Senior
Management Team? (Interviewee B)
Individualistic traits became apparent even when the original Senior
Management Team was meeting:-
Though we started with good intentions for the senior
management team, it was never conducted in the right spirit in
my opinion. It became dominated rather than seeking opinions
and contrary opinions tended to be squashed. Seems to me that
if you have a senior management team you need to respect the
views of senior managers and allow them to express their views.
You need to give a sense of direction but on many of these
issues you need to brainstorm through them and then gain their
confidence in support. (Interviewee O)
Many CWU managers talked about the teams they were part of, in their
functions or departments. Many used the term more loosely, talking of
the ‘team of people’ in the department without seeming to denote any
formal team. Others had aspirations of meeting as a team more
formally. So the impression was often there that teams were somehow
a desirable thing. But, compared with other unions, there was no
overwhelming feeling that teamwork was institutionalised.
Managing action
5.14. As discussed above, in trade unions, the distinction between ‘doing’
and ‘controlling’ – perhaps between leadership and operational
management – can be difficult to draw. This can be particularly difficult
for a trade union ’leader’ and therefore contrasting those roles is of
interest. In the CWU, it seems certainly to be that the distinction is
problematic at some levels:-
When you have had predominantly sector based unions, you
know, if you are the General Secretary of the NCU, you get
involved in lots of industrial negotiations in telecoms and the
same way postal; once you are integrated the General Secretary
should not really deal with a great deal of industrial negotiations.
It should be big picture stuff. You shouldn't get involved in the
detail of admin. You should be pushing the union in the right
strategic direction, checking every so often it's delivering against
that and then having the big picture direction. So I think because
D was the first General Secretary in the new structure he
couldn't stop being an industrial General Secretary. That wasn't
so much of a problem on the telecoms side because he didn't
know too much on the telecoms side but of course he knew
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