BBC did the right thing with Jeremy Clarkson. Here’s why.

I wanted to add my tuppence worth to the controversial sacking of Jeremy Clarkson. Not much because I much like writing about this type of thing, and not that I have much authority of knowledge either. I want to try and understand the reason people (including myself at times) have reacted in such a shocking -and utterly ironic- way.

When the media (I can’t remember who) compared the sacking of Jeremy Clarkson to the Jimmy Savile case, I immediately reacted negatively. Let me say this:

The cases are completely different and there is a huge gap in their wrong doings. I am in no way comparing the two in this sense.

That established, I do want to understand how we as the public can in one instance cry and call out for people to speak out about wrong doings (I can remember speaking to multiple people about how terrible it was for the victims of Savile, and there was a public feeling of wanting to fix the problem by encouraging people to speak up). Then, in about two years, be the exact people stigmatizing (to put it lightly) someone standing up about wrongdoing.

Note: Jeremy was the first to report the incident, but Oison obviously continued it by telling the truth and standing up for his side of the story.

I read this today:

“Oisin Tymon, who was left with a bloodied lip after the 'fracas', spoke out on Wednesday about his involvement in the situation, which occurred after he failed to secure a hot meal for the 'Top Gear' star. (Huff post)

He was punched in the face, racially assaulted and left with blood running down his chin, and he had to walk himself to aid.

Try this tweet:

“Millions of people's Sunday evening viewing ruined, Oisin Tymon is a nobody and why isn't he dead yet!” (Tweet)

This is awful. But the thing is, I felt a small twinge of annoyance towards Oison when I first heard the news too. I didn’t take it anywhere near the moronic extreme’s some people have.

But why? How can we be the exact people we would have shamed in the Savile case? We are now the people shouting at the person speaking up.

I think the answer lies in emotional appeal. Aristotle came up with this model for persuasion, and I’d like to try and link it.

Aristotle said that persuasive people display all of the three elements above. Although, a recent study showed that the most persuasive people appeal to our EMOTION (pathos).

In fact, it said that you can have very little ethos and logos, and if your pathos is on point, people will like you and hear what you have to say.

I’m linking it like this: by becoming the nations ‘sweetheart’ by being his rowdy and jovial self (pathos)– Clarkson appealed to us hugely. He persuaded us over time to like him. It worked. It makes his argument massively more compelling and it means our sense of ‘fair’ logic is clouded.

Now when someone takes away that good emotion, we feel unhappy. There’s a gap in our emotion, which we want to have back… an so the uproar begins. We look for someone to take this out on. Guess who? Oison.

BUT we, together, have to realize accept that what our man Jeremy did was wrong. We’ve got to navigate our complicated human emotion and come out the other side saying something along the lines of…

I liked that guy. He was a good laugh. But what he did was wrong.

WHY IS THIS SO IMPORTANT?

Because as it says in the BBC statement:

“There cannot be one rule for one and one rule for another dictated by either rank, or public relations and commercial considerations.”

Translated into English, that means:

 If we create a culture of ‘oh it’s fine it’s just Jeremy, oh what’s he like’ what are we saying about bigger incidents. I think it’s about creating a culture of non-acceptance for acts like these.

The small ones (as this ‘fracas’ has been made out to be) are crucial because they set a tone for the big ones.

By hurling abuse at Oison all we’ve done is encourage people not to speak out about issues. Let’s change that. Pathos is a great tool but we have to understand how our emotion can cloud our judgment.

Oison made a bold move to stand up. Well-played sir. Equally, Jeremy will be missed by a lot of people, including myself, but he was wrong.

Does academic intelligence = intelligence for Entrepreneurs?

Higher education is seen as the end of our childhood. Something that acts as a ‘funnel’ to our hopeful career success. Ostensibly it is the essential step that must be taken in order to have a truly successful working life. But in a time of rapid industrial change, is it time we inspect the value that education can drive for entrepreneurs more critically? After all, these are going to be the people directing the companies of tomorrow, which every consumer will trust to run companies ethically and efficiently.

There is a paradigm within education that has puzzled me since I started my first year at University. I study Management and Entrepreneurship, and I pay around £9,000 per year to be there. That is cheap compared to the high proportion of international students that our University attracts with some paying much more than this sum. These are incredible amounts to pay to be at an institution to sit exams and study a specific subject, which is what a lot of students are exclusively paying for. The problem this creates is that we have students with degrees who have been entirely reclusive in their study of their subject, who by default outcompete people without degrees in the job market or even people with lower class degrees who have filled their time at university with extra curriculum activities. But I find myself wondering, which student would be more competent when faced with a real task in a company? Someone with ‘practical intelligence’ or someone with academic intelligence?

I would concede that this is not relevant to all subjects. Certainly, more vocational degrees such as engineering require a level of knowledge that is best learned through study and practical education. But for aspiring entrepreneurs, education beyond the fundamentals such as finance and accounting seems superfluous. No amount of PowerPoint presentations will form someone with empathy, interpersonal proficiency or the ability to deal with a situation where an angry client needs to be reassured. Short of a profound shift in the way we teach entrepreneurship, these skills come from dealing with real world situations head on.

So, can we change our perception of intelligence?

Ultimately, I think the issue lies in our employment system, which filters our judgment about how to assess a person’s skills. Some companies will disregard applications from anyone who doesn’t have a degree and rapidly this is becoming anyone who doesn’t have a Masters qualification, an increasing trend as we enter into a perpetuating spiral of ‘survival of the fittest’ (if everyone has a degree, no one does). Having met people who study incredibly difficult subjects (academically speaking) such as mathematics or science, I find it hard to support the view that intelligence is centered on academic performance, and how this somehow acts to define our competence in a potential job.

Sir Ken Robinson speaks about how in school we are benignly led away from ‘softer’ skills such as art, theatre or music, in place of what we view to be more academic, or even ‘useful’ skills. Contrast this with the fact that we no longer live in a society demanding managers and leaders to have the same skills that they needed in the post-industrial period, and where an understanding of art and culture is incredibly important to our society. Jim Davies writes in his book ‘Riveted’ that ‘the creation and consumption of art compromises a major portion of our lives. Young Americans spend about seven and a half hours every day consuming artistic media’. So overlook the ‘softer’ subjects and the skills that come with them at your own peril.

In my opinion the movement to a more holistic way of judging candidates such as test centers and personality reviews is a great thing. I can completely understand the constraints on companies’ cost, meaning ultimately candidates have to be axed by some objective measure, but I believe the real solution lies in finding cost-effective subjective judgment techniques, where we are able to include personal experience at the first assessment hurdle, instead of simply axing anyone without a degree.

In the current climate, it’s key that we continue to strive to do the best we can in university as we are ultimately forced to live in the paradigm that was created all those centuries ago. However, for entrepreneurs and managers (and I imagine for a lot of other future roles), we have to look further and think how we can generate real world experience that will truly improve our competence and intelligence.