For the aspiring leader, the rise and sudden fall of Kevin Roberts, the leadership expert and – until last week – chairman of Saatchi & Saatchi, presents a dilemma. Are his copious hints on leadership, many contained in his new book, 64 Shots: Leadership in a Crazy World, with “Chairman Saatchi & Saatchi” on the cover, still worth reading? Should we still be quoting Roberts: “I’m at my best when I’m the captain”; memorising his precepts: “Spirit is the magnetic power that harmonises”; studying his four pillars of leadership: “Responsibility, Learning, Recognition and Joy”?
Or does Roberts’s abrupt departure from his chairmanship, following dismaying comments on female ambition, leave that advice, along with pretty much everything he has ever said, with only cautionary (assuming we forget about entertainment) value? Is it better to resolve, if you don’t want to end up resigning in disgrace, never to imitate Roberts’s idea of great management: “I just assume command” and always to abjure his trademark drivel: “Ideas have been my mission and thinking round corners my passion”?
Is there anything left to learn from the man who told Business Insider, in an interview to publicise his book, that gender diversity in advertising agencies (where only 11.5% of creative directors are women) is a nonexistent problem, to which he devotes no time at all? At any rate, here’s Kevin’s contribution: “The fucking debate is all over.”
Some of Mr Roberts’s champions, warning of the potentially chilling impact of this episode on business leaders who merely wish to express the view that women staff are not as good at work as them, have suggested that his words have been taken out of context. Yet another man, according to this analysis, was witch-hunted out of his job by hysterical embodiments of political correctness gone mad. Other sympathisers have pointed out that there is also sharia in this country, which is quite a lot worse than Saatchi’s, isn’t it? Why go after poor old Kev, who’s never issued an outrageous sharia ruling in his life? And maybe sharia is, indeed, something women should bear in mind when confronted by their own workplace’s version of Kev. Mustn’t grumble. At least my life’s not being ruined by the religious patriarchy in a secret court sanctioned by the British prime minister!
Rightly or wrongly, the parallel existence of sharia could not save Roberts, who also informed his interviewer that if women hadn’t always reached the heights at Saatchi, it was their choice, not his. A woman advertising consultant who disagrees with him was, he said, making it up to get attention. “We have a bunch of talented, creative females, but they reach a certain point in their careers,” he said. “When we are ready to make them a creative director of a big piece of business, I think we fail in two out of three out of those choices because the executive involved said, ‘I don’t want to manage a piece of business and people, I want to keep doing the work.’
Thinking around the corner, he attempted to portray this outcome as a compliment to women. Their presence has coincided, you gather, with a rise in low ambition. Elsewhere, he calls that quitting. “Their ambition is not vertical ambition,” Roberts told Business Insider. “It’s this intrinsic, circular ambition to be happy. So they say, ‘We are not judging ourselves by those standards that you idiotic dinosaur-like men judge yourself by.’” Readers of his book are different. “If you know you’re giving it all you can give,” he tells them, “it simply feels great. No one can ask for more. You feel upbeat, positive, optimistic and seriously happy.”
Although circular ambition will describe some women’s chosen paths, just as it will some men’s, particularly those lacking the martial affectations that Roberts finds leader-like, his approval of the status quo provided a valuable illustration of the normally invisible prejudice that has long been postulated as the only possible explanation for the mystery that is leadership by Kevs. Ditto Daves, Donalds, Jeremys and Owens. Angela Eagle? She probably had that women’s circular ambition thing, unlike vertical Mr Normal. Kevinist prejudice is out there, shaping a world in which politicians are still admired as “big beasts”, but only rarely as overtly as, say, Lord Falconer’s objections to Liz Truss, the new lord chancellor. He was irked by her “ambition”, in contrast to the patronage he personally prefers. We owe Kev; in sex discrimination terms, his “circular” moment could be up there with the discovery of magnetic waves.
He was speedily let go by the owner of Saatchi, Publicis, whose chief executive, Maurice Levy, assured staff that Roberts’s remarks were “wholly inconsistent with my own personal beliefs and values”.
To which one can only respond, did he never read Roberts’s blog, One from the Heart? Along with menu descriptions, it is packed with evidence that success is basically man-shaped. “Men without hair are seen as more dominant and powerful (check).” How about clothes? “What you put on in the morning could contribute to what you manage to achieve during the day (I always suit up all in black for big days).” Watch-wise, he says, pick something in cement. “Pure. Clean. Strong.”
Similarly, there are elements in the ex-chairman’s latest book that might perhaps have sounded a reputational klaxon, given it has Saatchi all over the cover, and could scarcely, with its warriors, action men, battlefields, scars, heavy hitters, rugby and GRIT, make it clearer to women: you lost this debate. Men who do not self-define as “hard” may intuit a similar message from a guide to “today’s ultra-turbulent world” that owes such a striking debt to the Mad Men era. A favourite Kev quote, from David Ogilvy, was written in 1963: “The consumer is not a moron. She’s your wife.”
I find it hard to accept, having lingered in the Roberts archives, that his Business Insider comments were either a “miscommunication” (as he calls it) of his true views, a shock to anyone at Publicis, or too footling – certainly for Saatchi employees – to justify his departure. If it is any consolation to his leadership following, his departure is still a learning moment, addressing a very modern challenge: how not invoke your own resignation.
One might call it the Three Pillars of Not Being Accused of Insanely Discriminatory Attitudes. First: when in public, address women as your equals. Second: even if it requires self-censorship. Third: that way nobody will know.
Yes, it’s tough, not saying women are pathetic. Yes, it takes, grit, hardness and incredible staying power to pretend the opposite, but stick with it – it’s worth it!
As for Roberts, the wages of sexism include, among the riches detailed in his blog, a fine “sanctuary” in Grasmere.
For anyone who loves the Lakes, this discovery may be as horribly disheartening as anything in Business Insider. From Coleridge and the Wordsworths, to the creative from Saatchi. “She gave me eyes, she gave me ears,” Wordsworth wrote of Dorothy.
Didn’t he know the fucking debate was over?
