Some Things Are Just Wrong

Is it right to ban people from travelling because they were born in a certain country?  Surely the answer to that question is no.  Apparently not, if you are a member of Her Majesty’s Government.  We will look for exceptions to the rule for British citizens, so that’s alright then - except it isn’t.  In espousing to uphold British values our Government has failed in its feeble and supine response to the US visa ban.

There is a moral vacuum at the centre of our Government; there are no principles left, just a need to make alliances for the purposes of trade.  Our special relationship counts for nothing if we are unable to publicly say to our closest ally that the ban is wrong.  Even in the murky world of foreign policy there are moments when we have to say no.  One of them was yesterday and our Government failed to do its job.

The next time a Government minister steps out to berate a regime for impinging on freedom or human rights the TV ticker tape should read “Hypocrite makes bland statement no-one will believe”.

Leadership Qualities

330,000 people were asked to rank 16 leadership competencies (www.inc.com/peter-economy/top-10-skills-every-great-leader-needs-to-succeed.htm)

Here are some that I think apply to our politicians and how some of our current leaders (in my opinion) fare against the criteria

Inspire and motivate others

Boris Johnson did this during the campaign, barnstorming around the country to the delight of crowds everywhere.  He has now disappeared from view has only been heard from via a newspaper column he is paid to write.  Inspirational stuff.

Nigel Farage seems to have inspired and motivated lots of people, sadly the results are unedifying and likely to take years to unpick, so thanks for that.    

Jeremy Corbyn is inspiring his party to self-destruct, which is likely to leave us without a functioning opposition party, almost as inspirational as Boris.

Solves problems and analyses issues

Boris is a very clever man, who seems to expend a lot of time and energy convincing people he is a bit daft.  He has focussed on the wrong problem (how does he become PM) rather than the real issue (what is best of the country) and so his analysis has proved faulty, which is rather a shame for the rest of us.

Nigel takes a simple and clear approach to all problems – everything is the fault of the EU and the rising tide of immigration.  Not sure this shows any highly advanced analytical powers, but unfortunately the approach works for him.

Jeremy has a lot of problems (172 of them), but he has analysed the situation and the only answer is for him to stay as leader - which is an interesting if not overly practical conclusion to reach.

Drives for results

Top marks for Boris and Nigel who are driving for results, although maybe not the right ones.  Jeremy is at the bottom of the class as he is just driving his party into an irrelevant future.

Communicates powerfully and prolifically

Boris did during the campaign.  Now he only communicates if paid £5k a week to do so through his newspaper column – nice work if you can get it.  

Nigel can’t stop communicating and in fact we wish he’d shut up every now and then.  

Jeremy is talking at the same time as the rest of his party and they are not having the same conversation.  There is a prolific amount of powerful communication, most of it insults and statements about the arcane rules of the Labour party – who cares?

Builds relationships

Boris has a history here….he rather enjoys building relationships, not many of them last very long though, which should be food for thought for the Tory MPs over the coming weeks.

Nigel distrusts all relationships and tries to knock them down, even when we need to talk to people to agree our exit from the EU - excellent work Nigel!

Jeremy is struggling to talk to the people who work inside the same political party as him, so a bit of work needed here – this may help (How to Make Friends and Influence People – amazon.co.uk)

Displays high integrity and honesty

Boris – hmm, let’s move on.  

Nigel - hmm, let’s move on.  

Jeremy we are told has both of these, but not sure his current stance of clinging to the appearance of power whilst his party pulls itself apart is showing him in the best light.

Displays technical or professional expertise

Boris…there are no words…

Nigel…there are no words…

Jeremy…there are no words…

Displays a strategic perspective

Boris…there are no words…

Nigel…there are no words…

Jeremy…there are no words…

Conclusion

Not much in the way of leadership qualities on show here, perhaps they could take some pointers from that Nicola Sturgeon she seems to be doing leader like things at the moment.

Take Back Control - Open Letter to Johnson, Gove and Stuart

Dear Boris, Michael and Gisela,

You asked to take back control and the result went your way.  Since some brief platitudes on Friday the country has heard nothing from you.  Now is a crucial time for the country and for leading politicians to show their leadership qualities.  All you have done is show us the backs of your head as you left the stage on Friday lunchtime.

Leadership is more than attending rallies with people hanging off your every word, or a couple of hours debating the arguments with other politicians.  It is about dealing with hard complex problems and having difficult conversations.  This country now has hard complex problems to answer and needs leaders who can have the difficult conversations, both within the nation and with the rest of Europe.

Our country needs leaders now, not after the party conferences or leadership campaigns.  If you are not the people who can come up with a workable plan for what this country does next - say so now so we can ignore you and get on with fixing our nation.

Yours,

A concerned voter.

Who Won?

All Vote Leave supporters voted to “Take Back Control”, but what does that mean?

Does it mean no law-making body above the British Parliament?  

Does it mean controlling immigration; which a lot of voters interpreted as significantly reducing the number of immigrants.

Does it mean hundreds of millions of additional funding per week for the NHS?

Or does it mean none of those things, in the way the voters understand them?

After campaigns with messages that have been interpreted in clear black and white terms by the real, ordinary and decent people, we now enter the nuanced language of politicians and diplomats.

How are the campaign messages turned into realisable policies, whilst healing divisions, keeping the Union together and averting an economic downturn?  This is certainly the political version of alchemy.

Not everything people believe has been promised can be delivered.  We are already being told there is no rush to start negotiating the exit from the EU, we need to determine exactly what it is that we are seeking and in what timescale.  I think voters will ask why the politicians didn’t know what they were seeking before calling the referendum.

We are in danger of heading into the familiar territory of politicians promising much and delivering something significantly less than people expected.  The ordinary and decent voters will not take kindly to being treated so shabbily yet again.

Use a Compass

I don't believe there is one system that will unlock the secrets of management and leadership for all of us aspiring titans of industry (or small corner of the public sector in my case).  There is plenty (too much?) information for us to absorb on the art of management and leadership in the form of books and workshops, apps, podcasts etc, etc.  Combine this with all the other calls on our time:

• Emails
• "I just need to pick your brains for 5 minutes..." (losing you at least half an hour out of your day)
• Endless soul sucking meetings
• "We need to complete this spreadsheet, but it won't take long..." (yes it will)

With all these pressures it is easy to just stay in the fire fighting, reactive problem solving junkie mode.  It is comfortable, I don't have to think too hard, I can feed my urgency addiction through keeping busy and I feel that all these competing calls on my time mean I am needed.  Trouble is I am not actually achieving much, I am working through a to do list and keeping my in-box ticking over, but not really being productive.  I can find myself becoming very good a ticking things of a list and missing the more important stuff.

I need a compass to help me steer my way through all the information, emails, meetings and general busy stuff and help me to see if I am still on course with what I think are the important elements of my roles as manager and leader.

Each day I like to reflect on what I actually did as a manager and leader, rather than as a fire-fighting, problem solving junkie.  I do this by asking myself some questions about the areas I need to cover/stay on top of to function properly as a manager and leader.

Organised:

Do I know what I need to do and what the priorities are for my team?

Do I know where my boss is going to be and what his or her priorities are for the week?

Do I have a balance of urgent and important vs important, but not urgent tasks?

Disciplined:

Did I get on with the priorities or fall into busy work and the email trap?

Open:

Was I open to suggestions from my team and colleagues?

Did I ask questions first or jump in with a solution?

Honest:

Did I give constructive and honest responses?

Did I speak up or keep my mouth shut during difficult meetings and conversations?

Clear and Consistent:

Did I give a clear and consistent vision to my staff and colleagues?

Were my actions consistent with my words?

Was I positive in my interactions or a whingy timeserver?

Available:

Was I available for questions and support?

Did I balance that with the need to get work done?

Health:

Did I exercise today?

Did I meditate today?

Creativity:

Did I write today?

I know that I will not do all of these things perfectly each day, but knowing how I am doing, helps me to spot recurring negative traits and it is slowly pulling me away from wallowing in the fire-fighting, problem-solving junkie mode, and give more of my attention to supporting my staff and colleagues in achieving the organisation's objectives.

What compass do you use?

Management Guides and Systems - The Conspiracy

The bookshelves are full of books promising to make me a better manager, a more organised manager, a more effective manager, person and/or partner.  My inbox is often peppered with invites to seminars and workshops on how to lead, coach, inspire or other ways of influencing people to listen to me during business hours.

These two phenomenon are linked.  I think management guides and systems were cooked up by the publishing industry and the hoteliers to make money out of us keen to learn managers.  On the one hand the publishers get a constant stream of money from stressed out managers wanting a way to make the work problems disappear and when the books don't work the hotelier can squeeze us into windowless conference rooms and feed us tepid coffee and danish pastries whilst we get taught how to become a better, more effective, efficient, balanced, focussed principle driven manager/leader/coach.

Because if there was one way to become the best manager you possibly could be, there would be one book and one course and we would all get our companies to pay for it and bingo! we are all the best possible managers we could ever hope to be.

Except for life isn't like that.

It is obviously not that straightforward if you can fill shelves upon shelves in bookshops with "how to guides" and pearls of wisdom from business icons vying for space on said shelves.  And then there are the apps - countless dozens of them, all offering similar, but different takes on how to organise that pesky to do list or all those projects you have on the go.

So perhaps there isn't one system that can solve all your management ills in one go.  Perhaps all those books are wrong and you don't need to spend another afternoon in Basingstoke watching a Powerpoint presentation on the 5 (or is it 6?) key leadership skills every manager needs.  Perhaps you just need to find a way to adhere to some straightforward principles and check how many you adhere to each day or week?

Then you can borrow what you want from any of the systems on offer without having to subscribe to the Facebook group or write comments on blogs about management.

What to do With My Time at Work

We are all struggling with not having enough time.  If we had enough time as a manager and leader what would you do with it.  Here are my suggestions:

Now all I have to do is clear my diary of unnecessary meetings and stop emails sucking time from my day and the rest is easy!

Motivation

I went for an interview the other week. The feedback was clear and uncompromising. I came across as cynical and jaded (in places) and I slouched. My ego flounced off to its room and ate chocolate for a week, but I also started thinking that perhaps a new job is not really what I am after and I should review my options with my boss.

The discussion did not go as I thought it would. It was like walking into a room and expecting to sit on a comfortable sofa, but instead I was confronted with a hard wooden chair and a lamp shining in my eyes.

I am cynical and jaded, I don't look like work gives me a buzz. This was the first time my boss had mentioned any of this to me. He needs someone who finds the information agenda exciting and if I am not going to grasp the opportunity then he will find someone who will.

After that motivational speech I went home avoiding high bridges and railway tracks.

On reflection though he is right. I have been treading water, albeit expending a lot of energy doing so. I am busy and look at the fires I have put out, but what have I achieved? What projects have I driven forward recently?

Time to sit up straight and sort out what is important.

Another Brick in the Wall

Parents' evening. A time to discuss your child's successes, failures, likes, dislikes and crucially, their potential. Alternatively you can drown the spark of educational enthusiasm in targets and performance measures. At one point my daughter's tutor went into a detailed explanation of the necessary sub-level improvement each child needs to make in their SATs. The aim is to show how a child's performance has improved, but we are mired in the details of sub-level data collection. What the measure can tell us about a child's performance is lost in the drive to list all schools in a league table.

The performance measure has become an end in itself. Education is being reduced to how far a child progresses up a scale, but only in as far as it helps the school. Once that level is reached on goes the parking brake, because the box has been ticked for that little darling.

For my daughter the necessity to show improvement has helped her Maths no end. She can dance through Maths problems, where previously it was a weary trudge to the wrong answer. English is her strong suit, so time to unlock her full potential? No, she's doing fine, but other kids need to be pulled up, so she can tread water. Especially as it is SATs year. All energy is focussed on getting enough points on the school board, and the children are a means to that end.

Teachers want to teach and the kids (mostly) want to learn, but we are hemming them both in through the need for teachers to understand how performance levels are measured and how many sub-levels each child has to pass through on the way to a good Ofsted report.

We need to get back to the goal of education, which I think is:

**Every child has the opportunity to realise his or her full potential.**

Victims

Politicians pontificate and shake their heads

Inquiries about inquiries are announced with a straight face

And still the victims wait for justice.

A grey faced middle aged man says he knew nothing 

Another grey faced middle aged man shuffles the chairs at the BBC

And still the victims wait for justice.

Every paper discusses the grey faced man

And what next for the BBC?

And still the victims wait for justice.

Other middle aged men continue to make decisions

About children and their welfare

More victims who will have to wait for justice?

Talent Costs

We are told that to have talent at the top of a bank or business costs a lot of money, but it is the best way to guarantee returns to shareholders and drive economic progress.  The revelations over the last few years of how business and media work, suggests that the system is now run completely for the benefit of the few who go to the top universities, work up through large corporations and award themselves huge pay settlements.  If these few choose the political route, then after setting in place light touch regulation and making the countries business friendly, they can walk into directorships at the very corporations that have benefited from such largesse. 

Now since the crash of 2008 we are propping up the banks and the ethical hole in the middle of the system has been exposed.  The system was about making returns for the holders of capital, if you look at the pension mis-selling, the insurance mis-selling, unsound mortgages, toxic derivatives, LIBOR fixing and loan mis-selling and even phone hacking, it points to a rotten ethos and culture of making as much money whilst you can at the expense of customers, shareholders, taxpayers et al.

The rotten foundations upon which the modern financial system seems to be based, are now being propped up by taxpayers to the tune of about £20,000 per household, that is the true cost of the talent we have running our banks and businesses.

Get A Grip

Lying bankers, politicians prostrating themselves before media companies, a double dip recession and the Bank of England shoving money into amoral banks as fast as it can print the stuff.  

What are the two most senior economic politicians in the country doing?  Indulging in a puerile slanging match about who said what to whom back in 2008.  Have they learnt nothing from the expenses scandal?  We don’t care who did what to whom, because almost NONE of them saw the financial crisis coming, and the rest were too busy sucking up to banks and big business in general, or switching their second home allowance to care.  So they are all culpable for the economic and ethical mess we find ourselves in.  None of our political leaders have shown the clear or rational thoughts and ideas necessary to start to rebuild the economy, let alone the ethical foundation of our political establishment.

We do need a forensic review of what happened to our banking industry, but that is a big question to answer.  A parliamentary inquiry will achieve very little if our Chancellor and his Shadow can’t even say “Good morning” to each other without throwing accusations across the corridor at the same time.

Our politicians are showing small minded, petty, dogmatic thinking at a time when objective, forensic and rational thought is required.

Trouble is the only person in the country who seems capable of doing that is currently busy making our politicians and media people look even shiftier than usual.

May I add to the clamour “Robert Jay for PM?”

Ethos vs Mechanics

 The recent NHS reforms have been accompanied by the mantra that services will continue to be free at the point of delivery. So that's alright then, well actually no. The key ethos of the NHS is that it is available to everyone when they need it. Being free at the point of delivery is only the corollary of this ethos. I pay for breakdown cover and, if my car packs up, I get towed home with no payment. The service is free at the point of delivery, but I only get the service I have paid for.

Introducing more private provision into the NHS weakens the underlying ethos of care being available when needed, because the driving force behind a company is to generate profit. There are plenty of examples where private companies have not put their customers first (insurance and pension mis-selling, Southern Cross care homes, breast implants).

The biggest issue is not necessarily that things go wrong, public organisations can provide poor service as well, but how quickly issues are put right. Private companies will fight to protect their profits (it's their reason for being after all), look at how long it took for the insurance companies and banks to admit liability over the mis-selling of various products. In the case of the breast surgery the main providers of the PIP implants have refused to carry out corrective surgery and the NHS has acted as the safety net. When things go wrong in the public sector, the politicians have more power to take corrective action.

The NHS is far from perfect and includes perverse incentives (too many targets, an obsession with structural change), but the ethos is that the patient should come first. For private companies that will only be the case whilst the patient generates a profit. The argument over how the NHS functions masks the real focus which should be on why the NHS exists – to provide healthcare to all. The only questions we should ask are:

1. What is the best thing for the patient?
2. How do we allow staff to deliver that care most effectively?

The market can generate innovation and necessary change, but it cannot ensure everyone gets the healthcare they need, when they need it.

Keep It Clinical

Saving money in the NHS is an age old problem. Even when there was money to spend there was still a cost improvement/efficiency/saving programme in operation somewhere in each organisation. The usual national approach to this conundrum is:

1. Promise to give more power over funding to Doctors (usually G.P.s).
2. Give lots of money to management consultants in sharp (expensive) suits to help the existing managers to find more savings.
3. Re-organise the bureaucracy by giving NHS bodies different names, so:
   1. Regional Health Authorities became Regional Offices, which became Strategic Health Authorities, and now they become Commissioning Boards
   2. Health Authorities became Primary Care Groups, which became Primary Care Trusts and now they will be Clinical Commissioning Groups

But despite all this heroic structural change people still get sick and medical technology continues to advance, and spending goes on rising. Putting G.P back-sides on the re-arranged chairs around the meeting table makes very little difference to the cost or type of services provided.

The way to reduce spending is to block book real expensive hotels a week at a time and make sure you put plenty of money behind the bar. Not to send the poor managers clutching their P45s on one last beano, but to gather the local clinicians together so they can really change services.

Put representatives of all the clinicians involved in caring for a particular patient group in a nice hotel a long with some high class...facilitators and give them a week to re-design how the patients receive their care and treatment. Let them at the A La Carte menu, and give them a free bar, the only provisos are that the result of the week's deliberations must be the most effective and practical care pathway they can devise in 5 days (or you send them the hotel bill) and no-one can mention money. You will not get an effective pathway if everyone is worrying about the money.

Rather than getting clinicians to play at being budget managers you will have them together where they can focus on designing the best way to care for their patients. With free reign of the facilities and the alcohol they will relax,which will allow everyone involved to have their say. This is not a new idea, the Persians would only finally agree on a battle plan if they all agreed on it whilst drunk. Hopefully our care givers will not plot to over-turn Western democracy under the guise of redesigning the Diabetes pathway. Instead, given the space and time to talk about their favourite subject, they will come up with radical change.

The other thing this radical change will do is save money. The most effective pathways will make sure the patient is seen by the right clinician at the right time more often, reducing duplication and waste which will save money.

So dig out the hotel directories and get booking.

The £20bn Question

The NHS has to find £20bn worth of savings over the next 3 or 4 years.  So everyone is asking how you save what is, even to an investment banker, a large sum of money.  Whatever way is chosen will have to lead to services being provided in radically different ways, as the savings target is so large.

I can think of two ways to find £20billion:

1)             Ask every member of staff in the NHS to look down the back of their sofa.  This would need an average of £20,000 per sofa; which is unlikely unless lots of staff are all living with senior banking executives.

2)             Increase car parking charges at every NHS property.  This would lead to hourly charges equivalent to the weekly wage of an average senior banking executive.

Or there is the Government’s preferred option:

3)             Give 80% of the NHS budget to GPs without formal training in budgetary control and cross your fingers.

1) &  2) are very unlikely to find you £20bn

Certainly 3) is better than either of the first two options, but not really a sound basis for reducing expenditure by 4% per year for the next 3 years.  As we have seen recently, GPs are not keen on being the Government's human shield when it comes to deciding where to cut budgets. 

It would be surprising if students queue up on their first day at Medical School and decide, “I’ll skip basic anatomy this term and take an introductory course on ‘Budgetary Techniques for Managing Cross Programme Finances’ instead.  After years of training in the medical sciences you can see why GPs are not keen to fill their diaries with contract meetings or spend time analysing over-complicated financial spreadsheets.

The taxpayer has spent a lot of money training doctors, nurses, radiographers, physiotherapists, social workers etc.  We then want them, and in this case specifically GPs, to work out how to save £20bn.  That is the wrong use of their training.  We should get them all to answer a completely different question:

What sort of health services do we want to provide in 3 or 4 years’ time?

That is a pretty big question and also one that all of our highly trained clinicians should be equipped to answer, if they can work together on the solution.  What we don’t need to do is throw finance in the mix as well, certainly not at the start of the process.  If you make money the question, you will get an answer that is built around spreadsheets and financial analysis, not one focussed on patient care.

We have a market structure in the NHS – Primary Care Trusts (soon to be GPs) buy services and hospitals, community services and mental health trusts provide care.   With any market you have the need to compete, so if you tell all these organisations that in effect the market has just got smaller (by £20bn), then Primary Care Trusts will try and buy less from the providers who will fight to maintain their income levels as best they can.  Organisations defending their budgets are unlikely to generate innovative solutions to the question of how we provide patient care.  We need to accept that the NHS does not act like a proper market. I can't pop into town and see if one GP will sell me their services cheaper or offer more frills than their opposite number across the road.  You can't get your hip replacement cheaper in Croydon than in Crawley.

We need to get clinicians out from behind the organisational walls and talking as equals about what is the best way to provide patient care.  You need to involve all shades of clinical and social care disciplines, otherwise the debate will be unbalanced.

Time to ask clinicians the question they are trained to answer, you never know it may unearth the £20bn we are looking for.

Next step how we get all the clinicians in one place….

Living in Fear

I live in fear that our politicians do not understand modern life.  The Right are wedded to the Market, obsessed that only through competition can any service be provided, and as an inevitable consequence, fear must stalk the corridors of our hospitals and schools.

The Left put their faith in the State, but because no-one trusts all those faceless bureaucrats, they put in performance targets, generating perverse incentives (anyone tried to get a GP appointment further than 48 hours in advance?), and wedded to outmoded classifications of productivity.  These are all put together into league tables.  Perhaps the school tables could be sponsored by a bank like the Premier League and we would have Paxman on Newsnight with the head of Ofsted and an academic discussing the latest positions like on Match of the Day.

“Westminster are up two places, but I still don’t think their History department is strong enough for them to push for the title.”

“I fear for Rutland College, poor all round performance, no star quality, they look likeliest for the drop this term.”

Neither way works. 

I fear a country where teachers view children as part of a performance framework – either to prove they should keep their jobs, or to maintain league position and avoid being re-badged as an academy or failing school, with all the extra paperwork and scrutiny that entails.

I fear a Political Class inculcated from real life by policy papers and think tank reports, which probably know the answers that are required before setting out on researching the subject. 

I want an honest debate about what the country needs, not framed in terms of market or state solutions, but in terms of what we really want from our public services and what we, as the populous, need to contribute in terms of money and responsibility.  There is no one right solution, nor one correct way to view the problems.

We need to start facing up to our individual part in the position we find ourselves in.  It is easy to blame the Markets for causing the economic bubble and collapse.  It is easy to blame the then Government or the Coalition for poor decision making.  We just sit here and shake our heads, whilst having less money to live on.  We were the ones who took out the easy loans and 110% mortgages.  And now we expect the politicians to solve the problems with the same mindset that created them in the first place (after Einstein).  We have to take some responsibility and tell the politicians we want it to work differently from now on.  If we don’t then once we climb out of this economic mess we will walk blindly into the next one.

Scandals and Management Culture

It Could Never Happen Here
We all shake our heads and say how shocking the revelations are from the News International scandal. As managers and workers we would never do such things - there are limits after all. Really? So we always stand up to our bosses when they ask us to do things that are not quite the ticket, not quite by the rules. Never used the “cheque’s in the post” line?

But that’s not the same (I can hear the cries). Indeed so, but it is how it starts. News International are not the first - Enron springs to mind (as do other corporate horror stories over the years). The issue is not how it starts - we’ve all told white lies and not been completely honest with co-workers, customers, bosses, partners, children.

Out Beyond Right and Wrong Is a Field...I’ll Meet You There (Rumi)
The issue for managers is what sort of culture do you foster? The poor behaviour is condoned, not just in the way people go about their work, but in how they act with each other. If the culture is all about getting the desired end result - however it is obtained - then laws, and people will be broken along the way. As managers it is up to us to keep the focus on the real objective.

If the question “will you meet the target?” only has one answer, how can you have an honest conversation with your staff or your boss? Any failure will be seen as weakness. If failure is a weakness, then the next victim is honesty because no-one wants to be seen as a failure. It is difficult enough (in my experience) to get staff to tell you the truth, rather than what they think you want to hear, without closing down the avenues for open debate.

If failure is frowned upon, then as a boss can you admit you are ever wrong? If you can’t admit that, then neither will your staff. Not a great starting point for solving difficult problems in the organisation, more an incentive to point fingers and bitch about colleagues and other departments.

Better off trying to get beyond right and wrong to somewhere people can work together on what really matters to the organisation.

Start walking towards that field....I’ll meet you there.

Time and Pressure (Never enough of the first and always too much of the latter

Emails flood in, seeming to lap over the top of the computer screen. They push past one another in their urge to get into your in-box.

Staff have a secret CCTV camera somewhere in your office - this must be true as the phone always rings as soon as you open the door in the morning.

You need to build your own TARDIS to get your work done on time.

Your boss seems to use a sadistic "Magic 8 Ball" to decide what project to give you next.

Just a normal day at the office.

The usual reaction to this common condition of working life is to develop a coping strategy, here are some of the favourite ones I have used in the past:

Burning Martyr

Carry lots of paper into meetings.  Always make sure everyone knows how busy you are (well a problem shared is a problem that person now knows you are trying to solve, usually single-handedly) - if you carry a bleep make sure it goes off regularly in all these important meetings, so the senior managers can see how busy and indispensable you are.  Always have time to take on more work, but always, always let that person know just how much work you have on at the moment.  Hair shirt and ashes are not common garb these days, but may be worn on dress down Fridays.

The White Rabbit

Turn up to meetings late or leave them early as you have too many appointments to attend in one day.  Never walk in corridors - always jog purposefully, with regular glances at your watch.You are busy going somewhere (it really doesn't matter where, just make sure you are seen on the move).  Never stay in your office for longer than 10 minutes at a time - so that your boss can't actually ask if you met that all important, not to be missed deadline, and staff can't pass on that thorny problem everyone has been trying to avoid for the last 3 months.

The Woe Is Me or Don't Blame Me Approach

Sit there and let it all come down on top of your head.  Shrug your shoulders and exclaim "But what can I do?"  When passing on work to your staff, which includes a panic now deadline, shrug and blame "them upstairs" for not prioritising things properly for you - (it will have slipped your mind that the email arrived at your in-box 10 days previously).

The organisational approach to the problem will be to send you on a time management course, which is rather a bizarre response given that we have no way of managing time, only what we do and how we do it.

There is only one person who can stop the rush - you.

There is only one person who can prioritise what needs to be done when - you.

Say no to attending a meeting and take that time to look at how you want to work (I like the 7 habits approach and the immediacy of Getting Things Done) - see how it feels, you may want to do it again.  It is certainly easier than building your own TARDIS.

Department Meetings and How to Run Them

Running Department meetings can fill you with dread and foreboding, so have a thought as to how the staff are feeling.  As a keen manager I always start the meeting with the best of intentions.  But, more often than not, it ends in a depressing dirge of corporate feedback and disinterest.  Below are the notes from a recent staff meeting.

Apologies
Big Boss was pleased to see there were no apologies for the meeting, which showed how seriously the Department was taking the new corporate "participation process".  In reality there were no apologies as no-one wanted to receive the "where were you?" email and the invite from Big Boss for a quick "chat" about commitment and being part of the team.

Corporate Headlines
Big Boss gave detailed feedback on the corporate performance indicators and Y.A.W.N (Yearly Actual Wealth Numbers).  Most of The Staff really wanted to know if the Marketing and Finance Directors did actually have a punch up at the last Executive Team Building Awayday.  The rumour was the Marketing Director ended up being "consoled" by the Chief Execs Personal Assistant.

Progress Updates

Big Boss used the smile he learnt on the "Getting Staff to Like You" course and assiduously gazed at everyone in the room to make them all feel included.  Everyone was holding on to their entry in the "who gets asked first" sweepstake, whilst staring at the table.  For the fourth time running the winner is Jason, the management trainee.  He has prepared a multi-coloured pack showing how much cleverer he is than everyone else.  Big Boss smiles throughout the presentation.
Not being as clever as Jason the rest of the reports are short and vague - Big Boss is not smiling by the end of the progress updates.

Get To Know Your Fellow Team Members
As part of the corporate "participation process" Big Boss has decided that each section of the Department should present to the rest of the group on who they are and what they do.  The IT section were up next.  Big Boss gave a lengthy introduction about how important good IT support is for the organisation.  Carl asked why, if IT was so important, that the network was always slow and the laptops had not been replaced for 5 years.  Big Boss put on his "oh its you" smile and dismissed the query with talk of capex, amortisation and projected infrastructure rollout trajectories.  Carl smiled, that got him a full house in the Bulls**t Bingo game.

Any Other Business
Big Boss persisted with the "participation process" by opening up discussion to the rest of the Department.  By this time any latent interest has dissipated and the staff just wanted to leave the room before their brains started to bleed.  Big Boss is left wondering what was wrong with the staff, but at least Jason understood his jokes.

Time and Date of Next Meeting
Time - when you have engaged with staff so they want to speak.
Date - when the staff have things they need to share.

Performance Management How It Works

There has been much talk recently about the relative merits of the private sector or public bodies providing care to vulnerable people in the UK. The recent examples of poor care in both types of organisation seem puzzling, until you realise that the mechanism used to judge good performance is the same in whatever form of organisation you work in - and here is how it works:

The People “up above” set targets based on a pledge, promise or a need to make money.

The Targets are shared throughout the organisation 

The Managers are made responsible for delivering The Targets.

The Managers tell The Staff how important it is that The Targets are delivered. This is usually in terms of how important they are to patient care/government policy/the company’s future/the year end bonus

The Staff tend to think that they have forgotten more about patient care than the manager will ever know/why do I care about government policy I didn’t vote for them anyway/our small care home won’t break the large PLC we work for/I don’t get much of a bonus anyway. 

The Staff tell the Managers what the problems will be in delivering The Targets.

The Managers patiently explain that The Targets are a Must Do.

The Staff know this means The Managers nether regions will be squeezed if they say The Targets are a problem.  The Staff shrug, no point arguing as The Managers don’t have the power to change The Targets anyway. 

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