9512 CAREER DESTROYED – MILLENNIUM

  

Almost a decade before the Millennium, in 1993, I made my one and only political move in the OU and indeed my one and only political move in 20 years of working life. We in OUBS, as a body, had decided to change the governance structure of School.  Thus, the academics were going to be organised under 5 different centres.  There had been much debate about this, since some of us wanted these to be centres equivalent to the disciplines in the rest university and some wanted them to be cross discipline. In the event, we compromised by having a couple which were cross discipline and three which were based on disciplines.  I was in the one called 'strategy and policy'; which also included marketing. Each of these centres, which comprised 5-7 academics, was to be managed by a ‘head of centre’.  This was an elected position. 

 

Accordingly, when it became obvious that David Asch was going to run for Dean of the Business School which was to be decided at the same time, I put my name forward for head of centre.  I did this because I essentially thought that this was a management role where, although wielding some influence, I would be able to avoid the politicking which was starting to happen. I assumed that, as an academic role, it would be above such things.  How wrong could I have been?  Universities are full of politics.

 

Even so, I then – for once - played a political game myself, since I asked David Asch to second me.  David needed me to support him for his run at the Deanship, but he also wanted -- as a backstop -- to have the position of head of centre in his pocket.  I knew it would be a difficult decision for him, but I also knew he would take the decision needed to guarantee my backing for the deanship; and second me for head of centre.  Accordingly, I was made head of centre without any opposition.

 

It was, though, the worst decision I ever made at the OU.  David hated me for it, and all his friends -- who made up the majority of members in the centre -- hated me for it; and made me pay for it for long afterwards.  They were constantly sniping at me as head of centre and David, as my boss, backed them up to the hilt. Consequently I only stayed around in that job for just over two years, until I found excuse to leave the post.

 

The interesting thing about the OU, at the time, was that the deans of all faculties, and a number of their subordinates, were elected by their members.  In the case of the deans themselves, the electorate comprised the academics, of course, but also the associate staff who in those days included course managers but only representatives of the secretaries. Thus, at that stage, the voting was dominated by the academics and course managers.  Later on, as far more admin staff were admitted and were allowed to vote in the leadership elections, the core vote of academics was swamped by everyone else.  This was played upon by subsequent deans who got elected on the basis of the peripheral voters not on the wishes of the core voters.

 

Up to that time Andrew Thomson had been respected by all of us as an excellent Dean.  As such, he would normally have been automatically re-elected.  The problem was that for the previous year he had been spending all his time pushing the OUBS into supporting the MCI initiative on the Certificate -- against the academic wishes of the school.  The school, therefore, moved against Andrew simply an order to get the academic standards back up  again; where, in those days, the majority of academics were working on the MBA rather than on the lower level courses -- though this position was reversed in later years

 

In talking with Andrew I said that I would personally support him, which I would have done, but that I thought he'd probably would lose by a whisker.  Unfortunately, he tried to retain power against David Asch -- a move which I later on wished he had succeeded in -- by aligning himself with Rob Peyton as his choice; offering himself some form of partner to Rob.  This simply didn't make sense, and my intervention in the election was simply, but very powerfully, to point out that this was unworkable. Accordingly David Asch won by a landslide.

That was in many respects the beginning of the end. David Asch moved, over the next five years, to centralise power under the Dean.

 

Prior to this, as I have said, OUBS was a collegial institution -- where power was shared by all of us.  All decisions were, in theory and practice, decided at the School Board; in which everyone participated. Later on this became just a rubber stamp for the decisions made by the Dean.

 

At that stage I was at the height of my power, though this was not by design but merely by accident.  I was just launching one of most successful MBA electives, B885. I was now head of strategy, and I was running the Ethiopian project.  In addition, supported by these achievements, I was the first of the lecturers -- after Rob Paton who had been in the university for a long time -- to be promoted to senior lecturer.  I enjoyed my position of power, and my popularity. 

 

Regrettably, though, this meant that I was seen as a massive threat by all politicians who wanted to gain power in the OUBS: not least role by the new Professor of IT, Roland Kaye, but also by David Asch who saw me as a threat to retaining his position.  Thus began a decade of politicking against me, which saw me reduced to being just about the most unpopular person in the School. 

 

Returning to the earlier times, however, at the beginning of the 1990s I was in the unusual position of being just about the most popular person in the business school. This was partly due to my work in Ethiopia, though most of that had to be confidential. Only the senior lecturers and professors who taught there really knew what was going on; and they were sworn to secrecy.

 

But I was also involved in the school social life and was very active on the School Board, not least in reining in Andrew Thompson's most ambitious projects. It was even the case that I was invited to the course managers annual lunch, being the only male in sight there!

 

Things started to go wrong precisely because I was so popular.  Even worse, partly as a result of my involvement in Ethiopia and partly because I had a finger in most other pies, I was powerful - though that was never my intention. But I also was found myself as a leading defender of OU values.  In the early 1990s we started to have debates about the future of OUBS and in particular about its future values. I fought strenuously for the maintenance of OU values. In particular I opposed those who wanted to reduce standards, at least in terms of image, to those of a supplier of executive training.  I pointed out forcefully that, no matter what we said, people would still know that we were a university department and would accept all the values that implied.  There was no way we could hide that. Indeed, I was one of those who moved to change the name from the Open Business School to the Open University Business School -- or alternatively the Open University School of Management.

 

As a result of all these matters I was, I later realized, coming to be seen as a threat to the management of the school -- or at least to David Asch -- who was then the new Dean. I first met David -- when he was on the appointments panel which appointed me to be a lecturer.  I remember going home and saying to Pat that I liked everybody who I had met; and the OU was going to be wonderful place to the work. But, as a caveat, I commented that there was just one bastard - David Asch – who I would hate to work for.

 

Thus started a period of the most subtle form of bullying.  In the beginning it took the form of David calling into his office and explaining what a bad job I was doing as the Centre Head. This was ostensibly because his friends -- who were still in the Centre -- were complaining to him about me. This was where I made my second mistake, for I never really challenged this. There was an area of doubt, because some of his friends in the centre really were arguing against the things I was doing and I didn't want to just pulverize them, but that was probably what I should have done.

 

Even so I didn't really give in as much as David Ash would have wanted, so we moved on to a less direct form of pressure.  First, I was the subject of an accusation by the girl who I had brought onto my course team as deputy chair. I had done this because, as a trainee, she needed the experience. In addition, as we were coming up to the appointments of the new lecturers, I suggested that for, a while, she took over as Course Chair. I was astonished when she rushed off claiming that I was pressurising her, bullying her.  I later learnt that David had already promised to give her a lectureship, something he should never have done, and she thought I was trying to take this away from her.

 

This was godsend to David Ash who then proceeded to use this accusation of ‘bullying’ to harass me for the best part of the next decade; although he well knew what was really going on. Hence, he brought in his cronies, especially Roland Kaye, to put pressure on me and claim that I actually was bullying this girl.  What was even more effective, from his point of view, was that he did this clandestinely.  He called me in and -- as if written by Kafka - accused me, without any evidence, of an unspecified crime.  He then persuaded me that - should I keep a low profile - he wouldn't do anything about it. Of course, as I now know, he then spread rumours which undermined my reputation; even though there was no truth whatsoever in what the girl was claiming. The girl, incidentally, left the school soon thereafter and I discovered that she had made similar claims against the number of other academics - though David Ash had not chosen to inform me of this.

 

I lay low because I well knew that any exposure, no matter how unfair, might damage my reputation. But that too was a major mistake, for bullies like David Asch take this as a sign of weakness - which of course it was. I was already on the slippery slope. If I surfaced the problem I would immediately be faced by the fact that I had already accepted the guilt. Accordingly, over the next year or so, David Asch ratcheted up the pressure by progressively accusing me of half a dozen more incidents. There was some justification for this, since, in 1993, each time when I got back from Ethiopia it took me 2-4 weeks to recover from the stresses involved and I was – for this time – more touchy than normal. But there was no justification whatsoever for the accusations David Asch built upon these minor incidents.

 

However, the original charges originally launched against me on these flimsiest of excuses, implied racial and sexual  harassment but (as I was a founder of student anti-apartheid movement and later a promoter of the ‘woman's century’), they were later changed to bullying. Once more, on each of these occasions, we went through the farce of my being accused – without any details and no evidence – of being guilty; and, once more, I was persuaded to reduce my profile. Yet again, of course, the rumours – which I could not answer – were spread. Thus was my reputation destroyed – such that, a decade later, even an Employment Tribunal was persuaded that there was some truth in these baseless rumours.

 

They were brought to a head when another academic announced them to the OUBS panel considering my application for the new Marketing Chair.

 

I immediately started a defamation suit against him. Even though it was a classic case of slander, I eventually decided to drop it since it threatened to damage OUBS (where a similar event in Social Sciences had recently torn apart the Economics Department). Once more I was promised that he and the Dean would tell everyone that the slander was false – and restore my reputation. Of course, once more, nothing was done; and my reputation was ruined for ever. So my mistake then was to consider the good of the OU above my own position.

 

This was the worst period of my OU life in the 1990s. David didn’t attack me in the same way again, not least since my behaviour was whiter than white, but he didn’t have to; he had destroyed me, or as he said later “You think I have marginalized you, don’t you?” You bet!

 

Events only came to a head in 1998, when I learned that he was plotting to get rid of a number of academics – including myself. That was the final straw and I submitted a – damning – confidential grievance to the VC. David Asch did not stand again for Dean and soon after left the OU.

 

Having resolved my problems with David Asch – by my complaint to the VC - the Deanship became vacant.  The new problem was that nobody wanted to run for it.  We were academics and our prime focus was on research and teaching in our own area. Moreover, David Asch had made the Deanship so political that we all recognised that we would immediately come under attack -- and the job would be a real pain. 

 

The even worse problem was that Roland Kaye, unlike the rest of us, was very keen to get the job.  He had always sought power, and accordingly I had clashed with him on many occasions. Being a forgiving and forgetting person, however, I didn't register that this was potentially a major problem for me and the rest of the school.  Even so, I thought he was very much less than ideal for the job -- not least he had never succeeded with anything he touched within the Business School -- so I desperately looked around for alternatives. 

 

Another academic, who was almost as ambitious Roland, stepped forward.  But it was obvious from beginning that she was a non-runner and would have been almost as bad in the job.  With increasing desperation, I approached all the academics, including the best qualified professors, to see who would stand; and nobody would.  I tried my best persuasive powers, but all to no avail whatsoever

 

Eventually, I begged the one person in the school who was as loyal to it as myself, Sheila Cameron, to stand.  And eventually, albeit very grudgingly, she did stand.  The problem was that she clearly wasn't very enthusiastic and didn't throw herself into task -- and I didn't blame her for that. 

 

Roland, on the other hand, conducted an almost presidential campaign. By that stage a number of other members had been added to the School Board.  Not least of these was a large contingent of sales staff and, not knowing any of the contenders, they were an impressed when Roland spoke to each individually.  He really seemed to care!  The fact was that matter of a few weeks later they were all made redundant, but that didn't affect the election, since by then they'd voted and Roland was Dean.

 

We were not exactly wiped out of sight, and Roland didn't get a significant majority, but we didn't cover ourselves in glory. So there we were, almost by default, with Roland as the new Dean.

 

To my surprise he started quite well. His problem had always been that he jumped in feet first, but now he seemed to be taking things very carefully and -- more important – he delegated.  This was unusual, since David Asch had long since ceased to delegate.  Forgetting everything in the past, I warmed to Roland and rushed to help him. I should have known better. It was the honeymoon period, and Roland made the best possible use of this.

 

When it came to promotions, or even additional increments on salary, it made no difference.  I hadn't had one in a few years, so I applied; hopeful that, having helped Roland considerably during the year, I might at last get one. I got nowhere.  Foolishly, I looked at the membership of the panel which awarded these and realised that David Asch had insinuated himself onto this.  I convinced myself that he had stopped me. Accordingly, I handed over to Roland my confidential dossier that I had prepared for the Vice-Chancellor.

 

It was yet another massive mistake. I had forgotten just how important in the earlier politicking had been Roland, and how I had extensively documented this in the early reports in the dossier -- which I hadn't read for years. The contents were as critical of him as of David Asch.  This was a disaster from my point of view, for within a matter of days Roland was trying to get rid of me; on the grounds of my (mental) health. Over the next year he worked on me, not least failing to support the massive increasing workload that landed on me. Finally he forced me into a nervous breakdown.

 

This a long sad story, which adds little to the sum of human knowledge! For the record, though, what follows is the first section of the initial evidence I gave to the Employment Tribunal. As such, it  - and the the sections on the accompanying DVD – describe in great detail, and with greater honesty than otherwise might have been possible, exactly what happened to me when Roland Kaye destroyed my career – and my life!

 

DAVID MERCER versus OUBS - SUMMARY OF THE KEY EVENTS:

 

When all the very extensive evidence is pulled together, what is revealed is a relatively simple story. Thus, in 1998 I put together a confidential grievance to the previous VC, which detailed the catalogue of whistle-blowing followed by bullying and defamation; in which Roland Kaye was intimately involved. The result of this, and my public whistle-blowing campaign against the then Dean’s plans to gain a third term unopposed, was that the Dean did not even stand for re-election. When, after a year or so in office, I was convinced that the new Dean – Roland Kaye – had stopped the bullying, and forgetting his prominent role in the 1998 grievance, I foolishly gave him a copy of this confidential material. The result, which he described in writing later, was that he immediately saw the danger to himself of my whistle-blowing. Accordingly, his attitude changed and the bullying recommenced – this time overtly and at a greater level than before. In addition, as my workload on the new Masters in Marketing grew to unfeasible levels, he ignored my demands for additional help – even as that originally provided was switched elsewhere. Moreover, despite the OU doctor’s demands that my workload and stresses should not be increased, he went so far as to even refuse to accept my input to him as my line manager. The net result was that my diabetes, which was by then insulin-dependent, became seriously more unstable and I was diagnosed as having an occluded cardiac artery. Despite the OU doctor’s frequent demands, no allowance was made by OUBS management for these increasing disabilities, and indeed extra pressure was added and my medical problems consequently escalated. More specifically, the Dean then unlawfully rigged the selection processes for the new Chair in Marketing, so that I was unfairly excluded from going before the OU’s Professorial Selection Board. As part of these machinations he even promoted a vicious libel against my professional competence. When I started to institute a grievance, and brought in the AUT, he became so angry that he even wrote to Personnel Department saying I was ‘poisonous’ and was in a ‘questionable mental state’. Furthermore, in this key email he said he was going to use an action for defamation to financially destroy me. A month later, in the resulting face to face conference, he tried to do just that; but was foiled when I publicly withdrew the innocuous statement he was complaining of. He then switched tack to denying me my agreed study leave; which he knew I was relying on to convalesce from the serious work overload and restore my mental state. In this he finally was successful, and I immediately had a breakdown with severe depression and anxiety. Having found my Achilles heel, he continued this tack through my resulting sick leave, and the following litigation. When I still refused to be forced out of the university, he then authorised the use of a false report of my retirement, which had clearly been denied by me, to terminate my employment. The outcome of all these actions is that both my career and private life have been destroyed.

 

The worst thing is that Roland got away with it. Indeed, later, as the legal case was heard, the tribunal thought it was all my fault -- and, by caving into bullying over so many years, perhaps it was.

 

It is true that, in part, my breakdown could be attributed to my treatment. Indeed, my summing up at the Tribunal started with:

 

“The evidence you have heard has, I believe, fully demonstrated that my work for the Open University over the past decade or so has been more than satisfactory – if not indeed exemplary - and undoubtedly has not justified the defamations to which I have been subjected and certainly not the Dean’s year-long campaign to force me out. The way I have been treated, indeed, has been – as my witness stated – ‘appalling’. The management of OUBS, especially its Dean, has behaved in an unspeakable manner; indulging in systemic bullying, creating a ‘climate of fear’ as a number of the witnesses have said, and breaking almost every one of the OU’s cherished guidelines on the treatment of its staff, whilst at the same time lowering the exceptional academic standards which the OU has taken decades to put in place. Thus, the moral case is proved beyond any doubt. This was described by the OU’s counsel as ‘strong management’.”

 

The main contributor, however, was my own commitment to the OU:

 

“The evidence… shows that the most immediate problem in 2000/2001, in terms of my deteriorating health problems, was the excessive workload. In this context, my commitment to the management/development of a new programme and course (Masters in Marketing and B851) eventually led to a dramatic, but unexpected, increase in my workload. In essence, my eventual workload came to represent something like five times as much new material as initially specified; supported by a team only a third of the original size and with less than two thirds of the time to complete this work!

 

Employment Tribunals were set up so that ordinary working folk could obtain redress without having to risk their life-savings going through the normal courts. My own case shows how far from this aspiration the reality has now diverged, for at the end of the day, the case was decided on the legal niceties. So complex were these legal considerations that my own legal team got the details wrong and, having I believe won the moral case, I lost the legal argument on the minute details which even my legal team got wrong. Ultimately, these lawyers had to settle with me and my costs were affordable, but I never received any damages from the OU; which could have run into hundreds of thousands of pounds. The other tenet behind Tribunals was that they should be affordable to anyone, costing no more than a few thousand pounds at the most. The reality was that, at the point where I dropped my legal team, my costs were projected to run well in excess of a hundred thousand pounds. So much for an ‘affordable’ legal process!

 

Coming to the end of your life, you sometimes wonder whether it is all been worthwhile. As such, the path of my life, dancing through the fires of time, hasn’t left me unscathed. Indeed, its ups and downs might also be described as a roller-coaster; where the final descent left the rails, with my career and much of my life destroyed. It might even be seen as something of a classical tragedy, wending its way to its inevitable conclusion. However, I have never had a particular problem in reviewing the course of my life.  I've always known that overall it has been worthwhile. My personal Profit & Loss or Balance Sheet is -- I believe -- positive. 

 

Although I have been dedicated to my career throughout my life, paradoxically the immediate object of this dedication has varied quite significantly over the period.

 

I can't remember that I had any particular ambitions much before I became a teenager.  I guess my only ambitions, chosen for me by my parents and in particular by my mother, was to ‘get on academically’. Thus, even as a toddler, I remember my mother talking about the ‘scholarship’ -- the way to get academic awards and rewards.

 

In my teens, however, I started to develop some ideas.  At one stage, for a brief moment after I had seen a lot of ballet on television, I even wanted to be a ballet dancer.  I  have always hankered after some form of creative endeavour and, later when I left school, I would very much have liked to be a film director.  It was only much later in my life that I did anything at all artistic, and that is being an author.

 

For most of my teens, however, the tacit ambition which ruled my life was that of being a scientist. More specifically, based on my reading of books about astronomy, I wanted to be what is now called an astrophysicist.  I was fascinated by the mechanisms which had created the galaxy and our solar system.  My route to this, however, was always through the more general subject of physics.  Accordingly, I was dedicated to physics; to extent that I chose to study physics at Imperial College rather than science in general elsewhere.

 

In going to Farnborough, I was -- on the other hand -- indulging my interest in engineering.  I had become fascinated with the design of rocket engines: and thought that was what I was going to do at Farnborough.

 

All of this was superseded when I fell in love with economics in the sixth form at school. I should say, though, that I had been interested in business for a long time.  I was very involved in the company set up by my parents and Uncle Bill -- G&M Chemicals.  I talked, and thought endlessly, about this; and quite often saw my future as an entrepreneur, though it is not clear how this meshed with my intention to become a scientist.

 

But, once I had stumbled on Samuelson's undergraduate textbook in the sixth form, I was hooked.  I was by then committed to going to Imperial College but, at the time, it was my intention to follow this up with a degree in economics.  Eventually I realized that I wouldn't be funded by the government for second-degree -- so that disappeared out the window. Instead, I decided to do an MBA at Harvard Business school.  Unusually for those days, I got into Harvard and was prepared to invest something like £30,000 in order to attend that institution.  It would have been a good investment. The problem was that Harvard -- in the small print -- said they wanted me only after I had undertaken five years of working in business.  When that time came along I had family, so was much less able to afford it. In particular, though, I had already run businesses with turnovers into seven figures; where the classical Harvard MBA approach involved case studies where you simulated such businesses. I reckoned my real-life experience was already better than this. In any case my career was already developing well without an MBA.

 

Thus it was that I came out of Imperial without any clear intent.  Whilst at Imperial, based on my work with the International Relations Club and anti-apartheid movement, I had dreamed of working for UNESCO in the Third World. That was never to be at that time, for I had a living to earn; though of course some 30 years later I was to achieve this dream in Ethiopia. As a result, I decided that I wanted to move into management, this being as near an entrepreneur as I could get. I did the rounds and nearly got onto several management training programmes, but ultimately I ended up at FCB in an advertising agency.  However, that was no bad move, since agencies were then the very trendy start of any career.

 

I moved from there to brand management and marketing management, as that was the career set out for me once I had chosen marketing.  It is worth admitting, at this stage, that much of my subsequent career has in fact been the result of serendipity.  I have opportunistically capitalized on directions that have been thrust on me by outside events.

 

My move to BTR and general management was, though, still in line with the career path to senior management. It was only at that time I realised the hollow nature of board level management in western market economies. Accordingly, my move out of this into IBM, on the other hand, was definitely not part of any plan. Indeed, IBM was in many respects marking time; while my family grew up. Even then, however, I took the opportunity to become a local councillor and to develop my career in this direction. My eventual escape from IBM, was of course forced on me -- another change due to outside circumstances. 

 

Equally my move to the Open University was a lucky break. It was something I had definitely wanted to do, but had never expected to have the opportunity.  Even more serendipitous was my working in Ethiopia. With my involvement in international diplomacy at such a high level, it more than met my dreams as a student. But, again, it was pure accident -- I just happened to be in the right place at the right time.

 

My work with the Futures Observatory was, on the other hand, something that I had been following for most of my life.  I had been fascinated by science fiction in general, and futurology in particular, for a number of decades. Even so, it was serendipity that it all came together with the course -- B885 -- at the Open University Business School and the Futures Observatory to which this led.

 

The final denouement, being forced out of the OU -- might be considered a low point.  On the other hand, it has at least provided me with the time and resources to bring together this book. So, in some rather perverted sense it might be considered to provide a happy ending!

 

Looking back on my career, indeed, it was made out of such a series of opportunistic spurts -- interspersed with equally dramatic failures. It has, though, covered the whole gamut of jobs, across almost a complete range of industries.  Indeed, the jobs I have undertaken at various times have been:

 

Advertising executive

Author

Brand manager

Councillor

General manager

Government agent

Group head

International diplomat

Managing director

Marketing manager

PR spokesperson

Presidential adviser

Production manager

Public speaker

Publisher

Research scientist

Sales professional

Sales trainer

Senior lecturer

Staff specialist

TV & media guru

 

 

At the same time range of industries in which I have had direct experience has included:

 

 

Advertising

Baby foods

Biomedical equipment

Biscuits

Blood banks

Computer retail

Computer software

Computer-based training

Consultancy

Footwear

Government ministries

Higher education

Hospitals

Household cleaners

Laboratories

Lifelong learning

Local government

Mainframe computers

Market research

Medicine

NGOs

Personal computers

Pharmaceuticals

Pipe tobaccos

Print Media

Promotion

Research

Retailing

Rubber manufacture

Supermarkets

Television receivers

Television media