Good chief executives don’t come cheap these days. Ged Fitzgerald will be on £190,000 when he moves from Sunderland City Council to Lancashire CC in June.
However, if asked to justify his salary, Mr Fitzgerald might rely on the classic phrase of Friends star Jennifer Aniston in the L’Oreal advert “Because I’m worth it!”
At 46, Mr Fitzgerald is seen by many as one of the rising stars of a new generation of chief executives from the North. Two years ago he was linked with the vacancy at Liverpool City Council. He managed to avoid that bed of nails despite being a season ticket holder at Anfield.
While there is turbulence in his football club’s boardroom, Lancashire CC proceeds calmly on its way. Continuing the tradition of female leaders established by Louise Ellman in the 1990s, the current holder of the job, Hazel Harding, has been in office for seven years. In that time, a productive relationship with outgoing chief executive Chris Trinick has delivered four star ratings from the Audit Commission.
We were reminded of the vital importance of the chief executive/leader relationship by Roger Taylor’s tribute to the late Sir Richard Knowles, his leader in Birmingham in the early 1990s. (The MJ, Feb 28) The captain/chief engineer analogy was a good one. Elsewhere, in The MJ were articles reminding us that councils pay a heavy price when there’s mutiny down below.
Not that it will all be plain sailing for Ged Fitzgerald. I was with the Lancashire CC leadership at one of their question time evenings in Oswaldtwistle. I found them still apprehensive that, with a workforce of 44,000, they remain a target for the never-quite-ending round of unitary reorganisation.
On another subject, it is now eight months since the government promised regional select committees.
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