Sun Tzu They Ain't

Sun Tzu's the Art of War is considered the ultimate philosophic treatis on warfare, and I thought that it was required reading at most business schools and for everyone who seeks position's of executive management. Apparently I was wrong.

CBC's senior management, in preparing for this lockout, apparently had extensive 'contingency plans' in place. With the way modern management works it probably took a year or more of planning to get from 'forming a committee, to examine what possible committees might be needed in order to for the committee to draft a plan' to actually having the plan in place.

After 15 months of negotiations, but with those negotiations still going on, CBC moved to implement their plan and locked out employees. That was apparently the extent of the plan, to lock the doors and wait for employees to run out of money. For added measure though they stopped topping up the benefits of their employees who were out on maternity leave. The expected reaction, from what I can gather, was for employees to walk quietly around CBC buildings waiting to run out of money.

It apparently never occurred to them that pissing off 5,500 of the most talented, creative and experienced media professionals in the country and then giving them alot of free time might result in the counter attack that has been launched via the web. It apparently never occurred to them that locked out employees would seek political remedies and go after the CBC's sources of funding and content.

While they seemed to have planned poorly for winning the battle they also seem to have done everything they could to avoid winning the peace. The well publicized memo to managers

However, there should be no other managers or other non-CMG staff visiting the line, nor should there be any attempts to "improve the mood" on the line, by providing food or drink, for example. It's very important, if there is a lock-out, that we bring a quick resolution to the work stoppage. A quick resolution will be helped by picketers focussing on the reality of their situation. Making things more comfortable for the picketers does not support this goal.

Thanks

Fred and Krista

Senior Management seems oblivious to the fact that supervisors and staff will have to work together again one day, and instead strove for the appearance of unity.

Senior management is also trying to maintain the appearance of fulfilling the mandate of the CBC

"...the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, as the national public broadcaster, should provide radio and television services incorporating a wide range of programming that informs, enlightens and entertains; ...the programming provided by the Corporation should:
be predominantly and distinctively Canadian,

After 15 months of planning senior management apparently feels that they can provide informative, enlightening, and entertaining "distinctively Canadian" programming with British news, American movies, pantomime football, and the Antiques Roadshow.

Meanwhile the employees Senior Management locked out are taking to the airwaves on campus radio, pod-casting and will launch a Canadian news service at cbcunlocked.ca sometime next week - even while they aren't being paid. (There is no doubt left about who understands the spirit, and the mandate of public broadcasting.)

Finally I should mention that while the locked out CMG members have received enormous support from across Canada, from other unions, from business, from the media, from the public, from public interest groups and politicians - management has secured the support of no one, with the exception of those people who want the CBC to be killed off altogether.

To sum up. Management's carefully laid contingency plan came out of the door and blew up in their face. The staff it locked out has energized not only their own union, but other unions in a wide variety of fields. Locked out CBC staff have made innovative use of the internet and other media and introduced new attack strategies to the labour movement. Ultimately other employers and managers will pay the price for the collapse of this plan.

This plan is apparently part of a larger "vision" for the future of the CBC but, and to get to the point of all of this revisitation; given the success of stage 1 of their plan, do Canadians really trust these people to plan the future of public broadcasting?