A tribute to Robin Gourlay

Citation

Dyson, R. (2007), "A tribute to Robin Gourlay", International Journal of Health Care Quality Assurance, Vol. 20 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/ijhcqa.2007.06220aaa.002

A tribute to Robin Gourlay

I am delighted to contribute to this recognition of Robin’s career and achievements. We first met and started work together in 1969 at the Nuffield Centre, Leeds University. Thereafter, for over 30 years, there was not a year when we did not share joint teaching programmes for NHS personnel or professional organisations. When we began, the NHS was experiencing its first industrial relations difficulties with organised labour and the culture shock was profound. Many senior managers found it almost impossible to come to terms with the idea of strike action “against sick patients” and even with the requirements of the 1971 Industrial Relations Act. The national ancillary staff industrial action of 1972 was an intense crisis of philosophy and direction for managers and many did not survive the 1974 Reorganisation. Robin and I had a strong, shared academic interest in how the NHS might respond to this challenge, but we approached it from very different academic disciplines, applying different analytical reference frames. We were first brought together into a team-teaching environment; an innovative idea at the time, as “conflicting solutions to the challenge”! Instead, over a number of years, through case study research, publication and teaching, we hammered out a joint approach to industrial relations management and conflict resolution that was to influence NHS management over the next 30 years.

Robin was the principal publicist and main author of our team and when he went to the Wessex Region as Personnel Officer in the mid-1970s, he gained the direct personal experience of applying a new and innovative approach to industrial relations management that gained him great “street cred” among the very insular mafia that was then the NHS senior management. His most popular and successful publication in this field was undoubtedly the Negotiations for Managers book, which went through several editions and over 20 years, sold 11,500 copies! It educated and informed a generation of senior managers, not to mention many trade union officers and shop stewards. Crucially, through teaching and writing, Robin gave senior managers a framework within which to respond to the industrial relations experience of the 1970s.

It is easy in today’s world to regard this particular management skill as just one ordinary tool in the armoury, but what was achieved has to be seen in context. One laundry manageress, who had promised that her staff would cross the picket lines, locked herself in a cupboard and drank herself paralytic for three days in succession because no staff member came to work. One hospital administrator cancelled most patient discharges for four weeks and organised patients into work groups having locked out his ancillary staff for striking. When they wanted to return, he refused and would not let them back until the national strike was officially over – after which Ministers quietly ensured his removal from office. Many made unofficial deals to keep basic services running and there was a real terror that when the strike was over “heads would roll” because of unauthorised expenditure. When it was over, very senior managers in one Region were found to have tried to falsify records to hide these unofficial deals and were dismissed. It was against this background, against the guerrilla warfare of the mid-1970s and the conflict of 1979, that Negotiations for Managers had such an influence on management thinking.

It is also a great tribute to Robin’s ability and resilience that when this type of industrial action was virtually laid to rest after the two big union defeats in 1979 and 1982, his work and teaching increased with great popular demand. A new edition of Negotiations for Managers appeared alongside a number of new linked, specialist, books and their relevance to the management challenges of the Thatcher years remained undimmed. In particular, the development of clinical management directorates, with a first generation of senior consultant directors, substantially expanded the call for Robin’s work and expertise and this demand continued throughout most of the 1990s as medical involvement in management continued to grow. This occurred despite the fact that by the mid-1980s there were many new academic specialists and despite the arrival of external management consultants marketing their wares to the NHS. Many shamelessly plagiarised Robin’s work, but then, imitation was the sincerest form of flattery!

Robin taught managers how to communicate more effectively with their staff. He taught them how to identify their long-term negotiating objectives, how to stay calm and focussed under pressure, and how to secure the right negotiating outcome. The fact that occasional teaching examples came from the domestic family environment gave participating males some useful personal spin-offs, although we all felt some sympathy for his wife Janet as a lifetime guinea pig of Robin’s negotiating experiments!

I find from my old diaries that for over 30 years Robin and I worked together on at least 140 joint programmes, the majority of which were two-day seminars. He was a delight to work with as a colleague; always well-prepared, always consistent and great fun as a teaching partner. This was despite the fact that he always played the straight man of the duo. Any readers who may have attended one of these programmes will remember his great patience as I kept butting in, or missing my cue. I look back on this aspect of my career and remember the enormous pleasure I felt when working with Robin and how much I valued his friendship.

The regular fan mail we received is now no more, but one or two come to mind. One man was ecstatic because after years of trying, he had finally persuaded his wife to go on a holiday to the USA. A radiologist reported that he had persuaded the secretary not to eat her lunch immediately outside the reporting room. But the more unusual ones tended to come from the era of industrial conflict. “When the night duty union steward summons us back at 03.00 hrs, our team no longer gets up and goes to the hospital to meet him”. Another letter explained that “I am very pleased to say that our local negotiations have succeeded and senior managers no longer have to carry the foul linen to the transport lorry every time the laundry staff withdraws their services”. If readers think these examples bizarre then they should remember the context. In 1979 Jamie Morris, the union convenor at the Westminster Hospital, managed to summon the Secretary of State, the Minister, the Permanent Secretary and a bevy of senior civil servants to the hospital in the middle of the night to hear his complaints under threat of strike action! After the 1979 debacle, Robin was a major contributor as he helped to rebuild management confidence and restore a sense of proper management purpose, which had been badly eroded through the 1970s, and I am grateful to have the chance to record this.

Roger Dyson