The BBC faces existential tremors; a long-cracking institution straddling huge fault lines…
The BBC faces existential tremors; a long-cracking institution straddling huge fault lines. Its latest Panorama failings sat with the governors for six months. They did nothing. They went quiet. Until it exploded. Now it’s too late for cries of “putsch” or mealy-mouthed apologies. Lets face it the BBC has been battling negative headlines for years.
The BBC epitomises the pathology of big institutions and the poor EQ of the modern story cycle. They believe they can stay in control of their destiny. When under fire, they retreat behind process, not principle. The reflex is to hunker down, issue holding lines, and pray the storm moves on. Leadership has become an exercise in strategic hiding.
We now need to breed resilient strong voices the ones who face the mob, not feed it. Most executives don’t understand the new cycle of fury or the pack instinct of social hyenas who smell weakness faster than truth. They manage optics instead of outcomes, hoping delay looks like deliberation. It never does. The real story isn’t about a broadcaster that forgot its purpose, but about the impossibility of leadership itself.
Institutions built for the analogue age committees, codes, consensus now operate under total surveillance, feeding a culture that prizes outrage over understanding. The BBC was made for the age of reason and now finds itself trapped in an age of emotional velocity.
Leadership once meant conviction and resilience. Now those traits are liabilities. We recruit for comfort, not courage. We no longer shape history; we manage fallout. Bureaucracies move too slowly to act and too quickly to think.
Influence no longer flows through corridors of power; it surges through digital chaos, a stampede of opinion led by people who don’t read past the headline. Yet headhunters still search as if nothing has changed. We confuse charisma for substance, composure for strength.
What we get is paralysis dressed up as care, meetings about meetings, therapy-speak for accountability inquiries instead of decisions, “learning opportunities” instead of accountability. Leaders chosen precisely because they won’t scare anyone, then blamed when nothing changes.
To lead now is to be permanently wrong to someone. Every act offends. Every compromise betrays. No wonder so many hide behind the beige shield of “process,” seeing it as a soft landing and a place to hide.
The architecture of authority has collapsed, but the expectations remain. We demand courage without risk, reform without pain, change without loss.
Real leadership means standing before the noise before the data is perfect, before the crowd is sympathetic, before the institution is ready. Not booking a podcast to discuss the noise while interns moderate the comments.
Until we value that again, our institutions will keep mistaking apology for integrity and motion for progress wobbling politely as the ground collapses beneath them.