What? Were they thinking?

You've probably read about this summer's tour to New Zealand by the West Indian cricketers. If so, I wonder whether you've also shaken your head in disbelief at Dunedin's planned welcoming call: "It's all white here." Let's leave aside for a moment the rush of blood that generated such a catch-cry, with excuses that it's a contrast to Dunedin's traditional "Black-out" campaign for the All Blacks (the West Indians can be expected to be up with the play on local rugby traditions - yeah, right)... or that it refers to the players' test match uniforms - yeah, right again.

This little example seems to confirm the view that common sense really is an oxymoron (a bit like fun run or civil war). Where was the plain good sense when the City Council was discussing it? Did nobody stop to consider how it could - almost certainly would - be interpreted? Would they have used the slogan if, say, it had been the English cricket team instead of the Windies?

What were they thinking? Or, rather - What? Were they thinking?

Why I mention this today is that it reminded me of a question someone on a directors' course asked a few weeks ago: What is the most important skill for a director to learn? I don't claim to have a simple answer for this, but I thought of a couple of possibilities that I've gleaned from other, more experienced directors, including "To object without being objectionable," or that "Dissent is not disloyalty."

What I replied was, "To ask the second question". The reason I think this is such a valuable skill is that it's easy to ask the first question about something, for example "Have we chosen a slogan for welcoming the West Indian cricket tourists?" More likely, in the boardroom, it'll be a question of clarification on a topic the Board is dealing with, or a challenge to a proposal from the Chief Executive. In the latter case, especially, it is quite common for the CEO to push back quite hard: he or she has probably thought through their case in some detail, and has anticipated the first round of questions. I've seen instances where the CEO's immediate response was sharp enough to deter further questions from any but the bravest Board member. This is when it helps to have thought through the issue before you ask the question: if I get this response, that will prompt a further question, and so on...

I don't have a transcript of the Dunedin City Council's meeting, but I can imagine the discussion may have gone something like this, after the "All white here" slogan had been announced:

1st question: "Don't you think that might be a little inappropriate?"

Pushback response: "Don't be so sensitive and b..... PC [politically correct]!"

... Silence, end of discussion.

On the other hand, what if somebody had had the common sense, wisdom, or guts to ask:

2nd question: "Never mind what we think of it, how are we and Dunedin going to look when this is spread across the front page of the world's newspapers?" (in case you can't guess, read the answer here).

Then again, this seems so numbingly obvious that perhaps there was a bigger, more devious game being played, in line with the old cliche that any publicity is good publicity. Was it all just a set-up to gain attention? If so, they should all stand in the corner for twenty minutes, just like any other four year old trying the same trick.