Guardian - Stephen Carter: 360

Slightly embarrassing article in today’s Guardian profiling Ofcom’s CEO Stephen Carter. The article asks a load of ex-colleagues to rate him with marks out of ten in various ‘key’ areas of management expertise. Naturally, he gets a good write up.

Seems anyone with anything critical to say about the great man has asked for their name to be removed - yet he scored a somewhat respectable 6.08 for dealing with criticism!

This is a handy score sheet for Ofcomwatcher’s looking to judge Stephen Carter’s performance over the next couple of years. I have posted the results of the skills survey in full below for future reference. Feel free to get in touch if you would have scored differently - blog@ofcomwatch.co.uk

The Guardian’s Business unit show little consistency in their approach to Carter. They made their feelings very clear back in February 2003, on his appointment at Ofcom, in a cutting appraisal of his lucrative last days at ntl.

Finally - small point - but the Guardian should get someone who knows a little about the regulator before knocking out these ‘puff’ pieces. Lord Currie consistently comes out as [The] Lord Curry - which as we all know is a cheap Indian restaurant in Putney rather than the internationaly acclaimed economist at Ofcom!

[Note - on this last small point - the Guardian has since changed its spelling of ‘Curry’ to ‘Currie’. As usual, we are glad to have been of assistance to the mainstream media!]

Guardian’s Stephen Carter Verdict

1 Vision

Score: 8.33

(lowest 7 and highest 9)

2 Achievement How well does he put ideas into practice?

Score: 8

(lowest 6 and highest 10)

3 How does he deal with criticism?

Score: 6.08

(lowest 4 and highest

4 How well does he manage problems/issues?

Score: 8.5

(lowest 5 and highest 9)

5 How well does he communicate with others?

Score: 8.16 or 7.16

(lowest 3 and highest 10)

6 Networking skills

Score: 8.16

(lowest 6 and highest 10)

7 Leadership skills

Score: 8

(lowest 7 and highest 9)

8 Decision-making

Score: 7

(lowest 5 and highest

9 Self-management

Score: 5.4

(lowest 3 and highest 9)

10 Teamworking

Score: 6.4

(lowest 4 and highest