I went back into work this week. Scheduled to meet a Shell senior executive, first, I found myself standing shoulder to shoulder with all my other colleagues in our canteen turned conference room, listening to the news that the decision has been made to close down our HQ campus and move all activity to London by the end of 2016. And that the voluntary redundancy process starts in May with the compulsory process to follow thereafter. None of this comes as a surprise to any of us in the room. Like other companies, operating in low dollar priced oil, Shell need to trim their costs. In addition, they also have the additional pressure of recouping some of the £45bn they have spent acquiring BG Group. And more broadly, the energy industry is undergoing another seismic shift, an urgent need for a lower and more productive cost base and more innovative thinking to secure cleaner and more easily replicable energy sources for all. Our Townhall meeting explained context and rationale, the leaders were open, engaged and responsive. The respect and care they demonstrated goes a long way to softening such difficult news. I feel proud to have belonged, to still belong. And my loyalty is shifting, away from the old and embracing the new.
But loyalty can often be misplaced. In some cases it can be determined by a bullying, mercurial, hierarchical leadership style which demands respect, creates fear and reduces individuals to shards of themselves often without them realising. 
Sometimes loyalty is not earned – “My parents always voted this way”. “My friends always go to this venue”. “We always go to the supermarket closest to home” etc. These are cases where loyalty is the default position, leading to complacency and sometimes malpractice.
So for me it’s interesting to think about loyalty in the context of the news I have heard and seen this week. The tragedy of Hillsborough, where 96 innocent Liverpool football fans were crushed to death due to inexperience, incompetence and ineffectual decision-making is a perfect example. This is the harrowing true story of grieving families being subjected to psychological bullying, harassment and terror for 27 years. And in this time, many police officers, 116 at least, if the doctored police reports are anything to go by, maintain a steadfast loyalty and silence to their employer. This is a situation where rank and file are firmly loyal to each other all the way up the organisation and where leaders remain unchallenged and firmly loyal to the rank and file. 
Demonstrated by the extent that leaders will blindly and categorically refute wrong doing within their command structure and will actively seek to apportion blame elsewhere. A situation where right and wrong and the personal values which bind the 23 pages of police code and ethics become grey and questionable.
Clear and simple values and ethics form a large part of creating a framework to guide leaders and teams. In the past when launching new organisation values, we designed the content to enable our senior leadership team to connect with what these values meant for them. This was done by writing several mainly real life conundrums and ethical dilemmas that our leaders face where there is no right and wrong, where the answer in itself is grey, where only the values of leaders will allow them to arrive at their best solution. Facilitating this session allowed me to see and hear the rich diversity of experience, belief and thought in the organisation and it also demonstrated that rarely is there right and wrong.
Of course one man’s truth is another man’s fiction and it is our perspective, our inherent cultural beliefs, myths, stories and legends, our experiences, peer group and leaders which inform our view and command our loyalty. To balance our bias, we set rules (laws) to help govern our decisions and ensure society abides by these. We charge our police force, to uphold, guard, protect and enforce these laws. And we hold them and ourselves to account when these are broken.
In terms of policing perhaps Hillsborough will be the final snapping of the rotten tree branch, shaming us all into demanding a different, more ethically moral and transparent Police Force. It’s surely effective justice that when situations occur like Hillsborough, the Guildford Four, Maguire Seven and more recently Plebgate, that those in charge are held to account. But we need to look further and deeper into how this institution ingrains loyalty amongst its rank and file. 
I don’t believe that all of these police officers blindly follow their leaders when untrue stories are being concocted and shared. I don’t believe that they all lack integrity and commitment. So what happens to force their silence, to bind them to their senior officers? How do you break the ingrained systemic behaviour and belief that if “I look out for you, you will look out for me”, no matter what it takes and the consequences it brings?
Prosecution of senior leadership is only right and proper and it will bring some kind of healing to the bereaved families. But it’s not the solution. Cutting off the head of the serpent only means the serpent learns new ways to survive.
For society to regain its belief in the Police Force requires the collective Force to recognise it’s time for root and branch reform. And painful though this will be, it’s the only way that they will regain the loyalty of society.
And those in big business, who demand unswerving loyalty in return for interesting work, fat pay checks and big benefits, would do well to remember that building a company this way creates shallow foundations. Irrespective of performance, growth or employee commitment, an organisation lacking leadership moral fibre and a strong purpose and ethos is always ripe for change.
