The Mainwaring Effect

 Putting the process before the solution.

There are certain TV shows which strike the funny bone supporting the soul.

Dad’s Army is a good example.

In total, 80 episodes over nine series ran from 1968 to 1977.  There was also a radio version, as well as two movies.  

TV episodes regularly attracted audiences of 18 million viewers. (To put that into context, in 2021, ‘Line of Duty’ was watched by a UK audience of 12.8 million – smashing a 13-year audience record for any programme).

Set in the non-descript British seaside of Walmington-on-Sea, the series follows the bumbling but well-intended exploits of a local Home Guard unit led by the endearing but pompous local bank manager - Captain Edmund Mainwaring.  His position in the bank and as unit commander fuels his haughtiness.

On first impressions, Captain Mainwaring is a caricature drawn from the past. A bygone figure in a long-gone time that arguably has nothing to do with today.  

However, look a little closer: many of Mainwaring’s traits and relationships begin to offer valuable management insights applicable to 2021.

Captain Mainwaring is one of those people who work diligently to reach a position of authority, only to find that they get stuck at a certain level and, with all the best intentions in the world, simply cannot move on.  They steer a rowing boat against a current that ensures they will never venture further than the local shores of a Walmington-on-Sea.

Regional bosses won’t hand Mainwaring the break he deserves. He is an excellent local bank manager, fond of his community, who, in return, respect him.  

His heart sincerely believes he has so much more to offer. But regional managers won’t promote him.  The longer he remains in his prescribed role, the longer the processes involved in the prescription define him.  Tasks become habits, and habits become his taskmasters.  Plus, there is a global war raging. The future is uncertain.

Mainwaring dreams of a world where he leads the hand of destiny rather than is run by a series of ambiguous circumstances.  His idyl is a disciplined and proficiently managed land where everything follows a great plan that’s neatly laid out on a clean slate.  

Whilst he can’t directly control the raging war led by a tyrant who refuses to follow any rules of decency, Mainwaring still has status in his nondescript seaside town.  

Placing Walmington-on-Sea in the epicentre of a war against the march to invade his idyllic land of rolling hills and manicured lives, Mainwaring creates a kind of timocracy.  Order and procedure cover any niggling sense of underachievement.  

Sticking to rules and pushing through with process drives away doubts.

After all, Mainwaring is the town’s upstanding example of doing things decorously, respectably, and pluckily.

However, whether it’s beneath his bowler hat or military cap, despite the crispness of his uniform, Mainwaring’s carries a small knot in the creases of his stomach that constantly reminds him that his plans were never quite good enough. His right to be where is – never rock-solid. 

Mainwaring’s father was a humble tailor. His in-laws felt their daughter married beneath herself. Mainwaring’s wife bore no children. He spent his honeymoon playing the bagpipes - as there was little else to do.

His wayward salesman brother wasn’t simply an alcoholic –he had no respect for the kind of checks and measures that ensure life follows the straight and noble path towards a retirement cottage with a rose garden and grandchildren playing in the sun.

Mainwaring takes on commanding the local Home Guard. It is not just a volunteering job; it is his solemn duty, not just as an Englishman but to affirm his position and place.  

Beyond the bank, it becomes his purpose. Much of that raison d'être revolves around his fixation for doing things ‘by the book’. To the untrained eye, Mainwaring’s plans appear to be so broad stroked that they over-complicate otherwise simple solutions.  (But that is why he is captain, and others are troops).

Invariably the unit becomes absorbed by a plan’s design tactics rather than direction stratagems. Following rigid steps always leads people miles from any intended goal. 

But it’s OK, as long as each does their job – to stick to the plan.

Here is an analogy: a guard, highly trained in security processes, loses his master key to an office that’s on fire.  

As it happens, the guard knows someone with a copy of the keys.  However, to follow strict security protocols, that second person must have signed a form to release the keys.  

Unfortunately, the form was changed six months earlier.  The person with the keys has not signed the updated version. The second set can’t be accessed. Doing so would violate all the stringent processes designed to ensure that the building remains safe and secure.  

The guard could act on his initiative and independently approach his friend with the second set of keys, but that would contradict protocols that took him years to learn and strictly follow. 

Lance Corporal Jack Jones is one of Mainwaring’s most loyal soldiers. He served in the Gordon Relief Expedition and Kitchener’s Sudan campaign.  Jones also fought in the Boer War and the Great War.  (Jones’ service duty and medals impress Mainwaring).  

Trained to act - and then ask, Jones is first to volunteer to carry out any plan.  However, as inflexible plans are impractical, Jones must interpret any implementation as he feels fit.

Jones panics.  He must follow orders.  Deadlines must be met.  But nothing is in place to explain how to do it. The critical thing is that it must get done.  

Panic turns to adrenalin which propels Jones’ resolve.

Jones’ Heath Robinson solutions over-complicate any objective already blurred by official procedures.  

However, not all is lost.  Whilst Jones’ solutions are ‘madcap’ - they are also highly creative and often lead to entirely original ways to resolving something.   (Equally, they can lead to the heap of misunderstandings becoming a mountain of problems.   It is all very much hit-and-miss’

Whilst Jones was a WW1 hero, Private Charles Godfrey is a conscientious objector.  (Despite earning a medal for taking the wounded off the battlefield at the Battle of the Somme).

Universally admired and constantly dosing off to sleep, the Home Guard provides Godfrey  - the unit’s First Aid Supervisor, with something to do when not joining his sister attending to his cottage rose garden.

Private James Frazer is the unit’s voice of doubt.  (Every organisation has one).  He is quick to instantly dismiss any of Mainwaring’s plans as “doomed.”  

There is an argument that such a figure counterbalances too many yes-people.

It is a question of getting the right balance of doubt and daring. 

Mainwaring’s second in command is the bank’s Chief Clerk, Sergeant Wilson (AKA the Honourable Arthur Wilson).

Unlike Mainwaring, Wilson heralds from the ‘upper classes. His great uncle was a peer of the realm.  This class distinction agitates Mainwaring.  He suspects Wilson as having pseudo-Bolshevik tendencies – whereas Mainwaring is far more grounded in logic and loyalty.

In truth, Wilson is comfortable being in his skin.  He has nothing to prove.  He takes life as it comes, rather than worry about devising official plans. 

Off duty, Wilson is the live-in lover of a widowed mother.  Her na?ve son. Pike has a blood disorder that precludes him from joining the regular Army.

Instead, he is a junior soldier in the Home Guard.  

The glamour of war beguiles Pike.  To him, everything is an adventure. Like most of the unit, Pike believes that Wilson is his ‘uncle’.

Wilson listens to Mainwaring’s plans.  Jones’ convoluted solutions make him cringe.  He maintains a fatherly but distant eye over Pike.  Wilson raises his eyebrows at Frazer ranting and raging that management has got it all wrong - again. He worries that Godfrey is over-exerting himself.

Yet, away from confusion and conflict, Wilson spots a visible path towards a simple solution.  

So, who in the organisation is the best leader?  

Without Mainwaring’s plan, there is no mission.  

Without Frazer, nobody ever questions ‘why?” Everyone simply follows instructions as if they were reading a telemarketing script. 

However, when people question everything, they also start doubting themselves. “Everything is doomed, so why bother to start anything in the first place?”

Without Wilson, there is no chance to see things from a broader perspective – still caring – but never becoming embroiled in power struggles or politics.

Without Pike, there is no sense of wonder to believe where others can’t see possibilities.

Without Jones, no one is willing to step forward and try.  It is often only through disrupting processes that innovation happens. Knowing that despite everything, you may fail takes guts.

Realising any vision needs the flexibility to look beyond the ‘hows’ by asking more ‘whys’ and considering ‘what ifs’.

A plan without a ‘where, ‘what’, ‘when’, ‘who’ may support a ‘why’ but fails to include a ‘how’.  

The Mainwaring Effect left to its own devices strangles an organisation and trusses up its architect.

However, when allowed to guide rather than dictate a team, each with their leadership qualities, the effect can form the basis of a culture that wins battles and wars.

Get it right, and life may just end up as a garden of roses – despite any unexcepted prickly thorns.

Jonathan Gabay

May 2021