When Fred Goodwin steered clear of risk
Howard Williamson
Tuesday, March 17, 2009
As young people walk into my cottage in north Wales, they see a poster of the ocean with a solitary boat tossing on the waves. On it there are the following words: "A ship in the harbour is safe, but that is not what ships were built for." My view of youth work is that it is quintessentially about "pushing the boat out", stretching young people's imagination, competence and experience beyond their comfort zones but not so far as to engender panic (and thereby cause them to retreat back to the safety of where they came from). For me, that is the fundamental skill of the youth worker in dealing with both the mental and physical activities of young people. When executed effectively, young people come to understand and consider risk and make informed choices accordingly.
Much has been said and written over recent months about Sir Fred Goodwin and the Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS), of which he was chief executive. Too many risks were taken, ultimately producing a "toxic" outcome that led to the bail-out of the bank with public finance, just before its imminent collapse. Sir Fred had orchestrated the biggest financial loss (around £24bn) in British corporate history.
But little has been said or written about Sir Fred and The Prince's Trust. In January, it was announced that he would step down in June, after six years as its chairman. Over that time - and this is the huge paradox of Sir Fred's two roles - the trust had, according to many observers and insiders, become absurdly safe and, arguably, lost sight of its founding philosophy and principles.
Until quite recently, I had maintained some relationship with The Prince's Trust ever since it was established in 1976. I sat on the Council for Wales for some six years. Once a year we visited the RBS offices in London to see Sir Fred preside (the perfect word) over a gathering of the great and the good, and the staff of the trust, to congratulate itself on its prudence and self-discipline in its management of what is now a multi-million pound organisation.
In Wales, Sir Fred was a distant but omni-present and controlling figure. The raincheck on any idea put forward for development or consolidation was always: "How would Sir Fred react?" And trying to second-guess that reaction always ended up at the bottom line - were there fully-costed resources to take a project forward?
Of course, no youth projects can be run on an empty tank but, for me, the character of The Prince's Trust was always defined by its capacity and courage to move, albeit with some care, into uncharted and possibly turbulent waters (youth business and the original version of the Team programme are great examples). The bizarre thing about Sir Fred's character is that while in his public role with the trust he seemed to want to anchor it in the calm waters of the harbour, in his private sector life he ended up sailing too close to the wind.
Howard Williamson is professor of European youth policy at the University of Glamorgan
