Global Values in Business 377blockade, but of course the government knew that to be quite untrue.
This was an extraordinary statement as I, and I imagine everyone else on
the oil company side, knew perfectly well that Alistair Campbell had
been feeding the press that line. It was inconceivable that Blair did not
know that. Had Blair started the meeting by saying that a few days earli-
er we had all been trying to protect our own patches, but the time had
now come to stop these games and work together to solve the crisis I
would have had some respect for him. As it was, he was being at very
least disingenuous, which was not a good start. While Blair was saying
this I stared at Campbell, who managed to look completely innocent and
unconcerned.
What followed was almost equally disturbing. We were discussing
practicalities of maintaining supplies in various eventualities when John
Prescott’s mobile phone went off in his pocket. Somewhat embarrassed
he took it out, fumbled with it to turn it off and put it back in his pocket.
Almost immediately it rang again. Tony Blair remarked that John was
somewhat technologically challenged and the whole government side,
including civil servants giggled. I think if John Prescott had had a knife
he would have stuck it in Blair. On the business side of the table there
was embarrassment. In most responsible companies if a member of the
team does something inappropriate, you deal with it afterwards. You do
not humiliate them in from of the rest of the team and visitors. That is
just bad management. Some people may regard these two instances as
minor, but they made an impression on me as indicative of the values of
the Prime Minister.
29.3.3 Values in Multinational NGOs
One of the most difficult things in a corporation is to ensure that the
values are absorbed by all and applied by all. This is of course an almost
unachievable ambition. I recall once being at a meeting discussing the
governance of NGO’s. One Chief Executive of a major global NGO