pwc - power willingly conceded

This is not so much another pile-on about pwc, but a view about some of the leadership dynamics behind (yet another) example of poor organisational behaviour and what it might mean for your day to day workplace decisons..

It’s about leadership and power.

What is leadership? The more ‘traditional’ views involve leaders having positional or personal power - what leaders do, how leaders do things, who leaders are (traits and characteristics) and where they are in an organisation (hierarchy), with these views reflecting a relatively simple leader telling follower what to do in a power over dynamic – Leader A has power over Followers B, C & D.

More recent theories about leadership suggest that, while positional and personal power is relevant, what maintains leadership power is more complex, and involves individual ideas and societal norms about what leadership and power is or looks like, which then influences how much individuals (and society) either take power or give it away to others.

In other words (maybe even in English this time…) leaders have power because they either take it or others give it to them in a continual process of interaction – power is continually negotiated or renegotiated between ‘leaders’ and others.

In one sense, this is obvious, and happens every time we vote in a federal or state/territory election to renegotiate our power with political parties. But is it? Sometimes in doing so, do we, as voters, take the time to understand the path that led to voting one party out and another one in? How many people take note of the legislation that was passed during a government’s term in office, what rights may have been stripped away during that time, how public funds were (re)allocated across various winners and losers, and whether we were better or worse off as a society as a result?

Applying this at an organisational level involves similar considerations, but which are more personally difficult - you can’t vote your manager off the organisation but you can vote with your own feet to leave. But most people don’t want to take this nuclear option due to the high career, personal and social costs.

So in terms of power, while the ‘big’ choices of taking back or using power (Vote or Leave) are more obvious, too often it is the failure, at a micro-level, to do something to either stop someone taking power, or failing to reclaim it, that makes more of a longer term difference.

For pwc these micro-decisions include other partners not questioning the ethics of where certain information came from (i.e. the Tax Practitioners Board), whether it was appropriate to share such information with other PwC partners worldwide and their ‘Dirty 30’ clients, and whether once that information was subject to ATO concerns, pwc should have reconsidered its ethical position and not sought to stymie the ATO and Treasury for years with claims of legal professional privilege. All along this slippery path were many, many, opportunities for partners within the firm, particularly those on the infamous email chain, to stop and consider what was going on, to reclaim their ability, their power, to intervene, to say something, to live the pwc motto Building trust for today and tomorrow (now with a Best-before 2023 date on it..).

It was only when the internal pwc emails ‘hit the public fan’ did pwc go into some form of introspection (aka damage control) about its conduct - nine partners ‘stood aside’ (What does that mean btw, do they go sit in the 'naughty corner' till the media circus moves on?) and the pwc audit business to be separated from the tarnished bit of pwc (Circle the wagons and protect the audit cash cow..)

Look it’s not entirely pwc’s fault.. No really. Going back to the wider concept of what a socially constructed idea of leadership looks like, pwc are just a product of a market dynamic that values market leadership and dominance, reputation, big $ and big clients etc, all of which require people (employees and clients) to buy into it. People want to work there to make money, clients want to go there to ensure they can minimise their tax as best they can. Ok, fair enough, but think about the choices you make along the way to get there, to become a partner, to give your clients ‘up to date’ advice. And if you can do it without crossing a confidentiality and ethical line, awesome. But if there are signals something is not quite right, you always have some power to do something about it..

The same signals were there for years in the Commonwealth Bank boardroom in relation to thousands of money laundering ATM transactions that later cost the Bank $700m in AUSTRAC levied fines. The same signals were there for so many financial institutions found to have acted unethically and unconscionably by the Royal Commission into Financial Services. Kenneth Lay and Jeffrey Skilling of Enron and Elizabeth Holmes of Theranos were doyens of the US stock market and Arthur Anderson was one of the mega financial services firms for many years...until they werent. Remember the GFC (Greedy Financial Corporations?) and the roles played by Lehman Brothers and other Wall Street merchant banks? How will these (and other) people behind these companies be remembered in terms of their leadership and use of the power they were given by others?

You can define some of their legacy by the bills they left behind - all paid by (ex)employees and their families, shareholders and society (aka 'privatise profits and socialise losses'). But again, this begs the question, what did people think they were buying when they invested in these companies with their 'magical' wealth building skills? Do people think the stockmarket is just a roulette wheel that exists to generate various payout options, unconnected to jobs, bank accounts, house mortgages and the reallocation of resources towards those with the most power?

So, assuming you buy into this interactive power theory, when you become a 'shareholder' you 'own' part of the company. Sure, not a very big bit, but the principle remains valid - you have some degree of power, so how you choose to use it remains up to you. If you want to support certain corporate behaviours (strongly driven profits and great dividend streams) are you going to look further and start testing the way those profits are generated, who wins and who loses along the way?

Similarly, as an employee, what are you signing up to by being there? What choices are you really making (what power are you giving up) in terms of what managers and partners ask you to do in relation to a client's information, or in billing clients to meet your monthly budget to make partner? Does this align with your view of what leadership is?

It's no different in every public service organisation. There are situations that occur every day between ‘leaders’ and those around them that provide opportunities for discussion, challenge and a redistribution of power. Hierarchies are very much a part of public service life, but they are facilitated by the decisions people make every day in terms of power and the way 'leaders' use it, sometimes with catastrophic consequences (e.g. the Home Insulation Program (aka Pink Batts) Royal Commission and the Robodebt Royal Commission).

In conclusion, power is always there between you and leaders, but it is not fixed - so you actually can choose whether you keep things the way they are, give more power away or take some back..

Every leader is there because someone gave away their power to put them there..