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An elderly woman with Alzheimers disease suffered physical abuse in a care home rated as excellent by the Care Quality Commission CQC. What were the inspectors doing? Did they have the wool pulled over their eyes by devious staff or were they incompetent? Is the CQC just not up to the job?

These are the questions asked in the Panorama documentary which exposed this shameful treatment and these are the questions the news papers and commentators have been asking since. These are the wrong questions. Inspections don’t stop abuse managers do. Inspections ensure that polices and procedure reflect good practise and that that homes have sufficient staff to deliver good practice but inspectors aren’t’ there in the night when a resident calls for assistance to go to the toilet, inspectors aren’t in the bathroom when someone is being bathed or in the bedroom when they are being helped to dress. So who does ensure that best practice is followed? The manager of the home and the manager on duty do. They are in the building, they are supervising staff, challenging bad practise and promoting good practise or they should be. They should not be in the office but on the floor. They should be overseeing the delivery of care not drawing up staff rotas or ordering supplies these tasks should be delegated. They should be recruiting staff because getting the right people is the most important guarantee of good care.

Managers of care homes cannot work 9 to 5 because care is delivered in the evening and weekends and staff need to know there is no difference in how it is delivered in the night or when no one is watching.

Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management published by Russell House. Follow Blair on Twitter @blairmcpherson1

Not everyone pays their bills.  A local authority has a duty to ensure public money is properly managed and this means chasseing up those who don’t pay their council tax, their rent or the money for the services they receive. However the same national news papers that criticise inefficient local authorities for not doing enough to make people pay what they own can also label them as heartless breaurocrats when pursuing older people for money.

In the current financial climate most authorities have not only introduced charges but significantly increased them for services like home care, meals, transport, day care and residential care. There is a financial assessment which was originally designed to take account of the ability to pay but these days everyone is expected to pay its just a question of how much, which means that there is potential for a lot more debt. 

I was working as a senior manager for a large local authority when it was severely criticised by the auditors for allowing a very large amount of debt to accumulate over a number of years due to non payment by a small proportion of service users. In response the council set up a specialist team to pursue individuals and secure payment. This was largely carried out by sending letters threatening legal action, telephone call follow ups and occasional home visits.

Some people were genuinely unaware they owed the money having never been billed, some agreed they owed money but disputed the amount, others just hoped to get away with it. Most did pay up. However two years later there was still a hard core who were unwilling or unable. The council felt they had three options, large scale expensive legal action against people who probably didn’t have the means to pay, writing off the debt or selling the debt. The advantage of selling the debt was that we were guaranteed to get some money even though in would only be a fraction of the amount owed but we would be able to close the books. The disadvantage was that once we had sold the debt we had no control over the situation. We might sell to a reputable debt collection company but once they had collected all they could there was nothing to stop them selling the debt on. It was not hard to imagine that the debts of the least able to pay would end up with the less reputable local debt collectors who were not squeamish about the methods they used to get their money.

In the end it was decided to write off the remaining debt having agreed with the auditors that every reasonable means had been used to collect the money owed and that the cost of pursuing this further was disproportionate. Of course being a local council another consideration was the potential for some very bad publicity around being seen to send in the bailiffs or being heavy handed in pursuing elderly, disabled and vulnerable people for money they didn’t have.

I am not sure the same decision would have been reached in the current harsh financial climate but the debate would be the same.

Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management published by Russell House.

Follow Blair on Twitter @blairmcpherson1

Did he mean it was a privilege to work with this group of councillors? Unlikely as he constantly reminded us they were not to be trusted. Was he saying it was a privilege to work with the chief exec? Hardly since he referred to him as a back stabber. Was it his senior management team that he felt privileged to lead? Probably not since he was trying to get rid of at least one of his AD’s. It couldn’t be that this was a great  place to work since he had just told me he was applying for the post of Director in a larger authority. So I assume he meant it was a privilege to occupy the post of Director in a social services department. I find this ever so humble, pleased to be able to serve the people language at best old fashioned at worst false modesty.

It is not just some Directors of social services who talk like this I have heard some head teachers say they feel privileged to be in charge of young peoples education. Is this a legacy from the time when teaching and social work like nursing were considered a vocation? Almost a calling to which the individual sought to “save” children from their disadvantaged background and dysfunctional families to rescue vulnerable people. Are these paternalistic sentiments a hangover from a time before clients became customers and schools were businesses?

There are still plenty of social workers who describe their motives for coming into the job as to help people just as there are teachers who want to raise pupils’ expectations. But I doubt many social workers feel it is a privilege to work for social services or many managers who feel privileged to oversee budget cuts and service reductions. It’s a job often a thankless one but occasionally rewarding enough to remind you why you entered the profession.

I don’t agree with the old school language and paternalist attitudes but I do miss the belief that you were making a difference.

Blair McPherson author of People management in a harsh financial climate, UnLearning management and Equipping managers for an uncertain future published by Russell House. Follow Blair on Twitter @blairmcpherson1

Simon was big for his age, he was cheeky and this often got him into trouble with his teachers. He mixed with older boys and although only 13 could easily pass for 15. His mum was a single parent she couldn’t stop him truanting or keep him in at night. So he ended up in a social services children’s’ home in Birmingham with me his key worker and his social worker trying to get him into a school near the home. That is how we found ourselves in the uncomfortable position of sitting in the heads office whilst he interviewed Simon.

The head made it clear it was his decision whether Simon attended his school or not, he wasn’t interested in the report from his previous school. I don’t know whether this was because he didn’t trust it whether he thought he could tell a “good un” from a “bad un” in a ten minute chat.

 Simon had been told to be on his best behaviour and not to be cheeky. So this confident, vivacious character suddenly had nothing to say when the head tried to engage him.” How did you like your last school?” Simon had plenty to say about his last school and some of the teachers in the car on the way over but he recognised a trick question when he heard one. “Alright”. The head tried again” how did you get on with your teachers?” “Ok “ he muttered. “What was your favourite subject?” Simon shrugged and continued looking at his shoes. “Are you always this talkative”. Simon gritted his teeth he knew sarcasms when he heard it. The head changed tactics. “I understand from your last school you are a bit of a bully is that right? I won’t have any fighting here.”

 I tried a helpful intervention, Simon was the victim not the perpetrator, but the head said he wanted to hear from Simon. “Do you play football?”  “Sometimes”. “Do you support City or Villa?” “City no way man” said with genuine feeling and for the first time eye contact.

Interview over place secured.

Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management-short stories on modern management published by Russell House.

When you read that statement did you think, yes, the more I do the more they give me to do? As a manager it is very tempting to pile on the work to someone you know will do a good job as opposed to someone who won’t. This is how ambitious people have proved themselves in the past and you might think that in the current climate with reorganisations, outsourcing and redundancies people might feel they can’t say no. But I have noticed a new phenomena, managers who don’t take work home at the weekend and evenings, managers who take all their annual leave, who switch off their Blackberry at 5 pm on a Friday and don’t switch it on again until 9am on Monday, managers who just do their allocated hours and no more.

These managers recognise the reality of the modern Public Sector, they have experienced reorganisation and redundancy, they accept that there is no job security, no value in loyalty and the only reward for hard work is more work. These managers are not de motivated or cynical they are conscientious and good at their job but they feel no loyalty to an organisation that has no loyalty to them. If the work can’t be completed in the hours allocated well so be it.

If such individuals are not motivated by fear, driven by ambition or sustained by a strong senesce of loyalty what implications does this have? On the positive side they will not oppose changes, will not resist their service being outsourced or view working for a private sector organisation as a betrayal of principle. On the negative side they are not going to be inspired by a vision, they are not going to volunteer for extra responsibility and they are going to expect to go home at five o clock.

The Public Sector has always relied on “good will” people being prepared to do over and above what they are contracted to do and like most organisations there has always been an assumption that there will be managers keen to impress their boss happy to take on more as a way of enhancing their reputation and promotion prospects. It will become harder to hide the cracks and fill the gaps as people are less willing to cover for absent colleagues and increasingly ask difficult questions like what do you want me to stop doing in order to do this?

Blair McPherson author of People management in a harsh financial climate and UnLearning management both published by Russell House. Follow Blair on Twitter @blairmcpherson1

It‘s always risky getting up to go to the bar or toilet during a stand up comics routine especially if you are on the front row. So I suppose I should have expected to be a target of the comedians well rehearsed insults, much to the amusement of the rest of the audience. I had no witty response to his increasingly cruel jibes. I thought how great it would be if on my return to my seat I could be accompanied by that master of instant wit and repartee Ricky Gervais. He would find a subtle, clever and hilarious response, something smart and witty. Now what would it be, oh yes, I know”Fuck Off”.

I mention this because Ricky Gervais is again in the news for being insulting rather than funny. This time he is accused of poking fun at people with a learning disability last time in Life’s Too Short we were encouraged to laugh at a celebrity dwarf. And of course there was the wheel chair user in The Office.  I thought I got the office this was about showing the hypocrisy, insensitivity and incompetence of a certain type of deluded office manager being an authority figure he was a legitimate target. The humour around the wheel chair user was the manager’s obvious discomfort and cringe inducing insensitivity around an individual with a disability.

In Life’s Too Short we were encouraged to consider a celebrity dwarf a legitimate target because he was a celebrity and because he was devious, deluded and sycophantic. However there did seem to be a lot of physical jokes about his lack of height as in raising the door bell to discourage him from calling round. I didn’t get LTS I didn’t feel Warren the central character was in on the joke and I couldn’t see the humour in him being shown willing to be degraded for fame.

Some comedians say no topic is off limits and when I watched The Big C a comedy drama from the USA about someone dying from cancer I get what they mean. Despite the morbid subject there is humour, not in laughing at people because their hair is falling out and they no longer want sex with their partner but in societies foolishness and peoples attempts to avoid a taboo subject. The program has tackled other taboo subjects like infant mortality and mental illness recognising that despite our awkwardness about these subjects such things touch most families.

Why is the Big C funny and Life’s Too Short not funny? I don’t know but it’s nothing to do with the subject.

Blair McPherson author of An Elephant in the Room-an equality and diversity training manual published by Russell House Tweet @blairmcpherson1

It is not just pupils who get bullied in school. A survey of 3000 teachers found two thirds had been bullied or witnessed a colleague being bullied in the last 12 months. The bulling was by managers or those with a leadership role in the school. One in five said this had led to extended sick leave or changing schools.

The teaching union NASUWT has accused schools of operating a “macho” management culture this comes on top of claims that management bullying is  a growing problem in Social Services and endemic in the NHS.Is the performance driven, target obsessed and finance led Government policy to blame or is it a lack of   people management skills amongst our managers?

Is this a climate which breeds the wrong type of management behaviour in which arrogance, secrecy and bullying flourishes? Or are such claims the response of professionals unused to being held accountable and finding it uncomfortable having their performance compared and failures highlighted.

A performance management culture which treats head teachers and chief executives like football managers, where success is measured by position in the league and failure results in the sack may well led managers to make unreasonable demands on staff, to impose rather than negotiate and to view questions and concerns as dissent and even disloyalty. It takes real leadership skills to with stand this pressure, to resist the temptation to force through changes for quick results and to keep everyone on board whilst moving forward. Not all managers have these leadership skills. As a result leadership programs have been established in the NHS, Schools, Social Services and across the public sector. But whilst the need to develop leadership skills has been recognised do these programmes pay sufficient attention to people management skills or is that considered to basic for senior managers?

Management behaviour tends to be modelled from the top. If all staff feel valued and respected, if they feel they are treated fairly, then the organisation they work for is unlikely to be characterised by bullying, harassment and discrimination. This requires managers to become more sensitive to peoples’ needs and to improve their leadership skills by gaining insight into how their behavior affects the people they manage. Senior managers don’t tend to get direct feedback from staff as they are surrounded by people who want to insulate them from the bad news and the true strength of feeling on the shop floor. Their distance from the front line can result in a  failure to appreciate how the message is being heard further down the organisation.

An effective leadership program needs to help participants gain an insight into how their behavior affects those they manage and those at the on the front line, it needs to equip leaders with techniques and skills for creating an environment where staff feel safe to say what they really think, where people know how to challenge managers and accept challenges from managers.

 Such programs often start with a 360 degree feedback from staff and colleagues. What makes this type of leadership development different is the emphases on one to one executive coaching. The individual is observer in a number of work setting by the coach who then provides detailed feedback, this feedback is then used to set personal objectives which can be progressed with the coach or picked up by a mentor.

Blair McPherson is author of Equipping managers for an uncertain future published by Russell House which contains a detailed case study of the type of leadership development program referred to in this article..

Do the police recruit racists or do officers learn it on the job? Certainly complaints of racism persist amongst young black men unlike other authoritarian figures such as teachers. Is this because the teaching profession is better at detecting and rejecting racist recruits or is it a difference in the staff room culture compared to the canteen culture?

 Following the latest series of complains superintendent Craig Haslam , acting borough commander of Newham told local residents he was determined the force would “ police communities we serve with dignity, humanity, fairness and respect”. I get the impression that your average officer on the street thinks this is fine for law abiding citizens but that those who are not don’t deserve respect. Students who shout abuse, attempt to disrupt or obstruct those going about their business, “professional protesters” whether its climate change or anti capitalism and young black men because of their association with drugs, gangs and knife crime. It must be hard to respect people you don’t respect which is presumably why they so often don’t.

Teachers who also have to put up with verbal abuse, provocative behaviour and sometimes threatening behaviour are also on occasions the subject of complaints. The difference seems to be that teachers tend to focus on the individual and are less prone to generalise. I have heard teachers say a particular class is difficult to manage but in general the talk in the staff room is of the disruptive individual where as in the canteen it appears to be lumping together /stereo typing of groups such that all protesters are trouble makers and all young black men are knife carrying, drug using gang members. And need to be treated accordingly until they prove there’re not.

Blair McPherson author of An Elephant in the Room- an equality and diversity training manual publish by Russell House

It was inevitable. If you create league tables for public sector organisations and measure success by results you will end up with a hire and fire culture. Despite the fact that every one can’t be top of the table the board and the media will be impatient demanding a swift climb up the league. Those who don’t deliver can expect to be fired and replaced by someone who claims to be able to turn around organisations.

 Treating chief executives and head teachers like football managers is a bizarre way to run public sector organisations but this is what happening in schools, NHS trusts and Local Authorities. A recent survey by the Association of School and College Leaders (ASCL) showed that the number of heads and deputies force out of their jobs has trebled in the last 5 years. These were not incompetent heads or those fired for misconduct they were sacked for failing to raise pupils results quickly enough. Of course it is possible to turn around a failing organisation but the government and media have created an unrealistic expectation in terms of time scale.

If we were to continue the football analogy the most successful clubs tend to be those that have consistency and stability in management the obvious examples are Manchester United and Arsenal both with long serving managers. But don’t compare the public sector to Football. A School or Hospital is nothing like a football club.

The problem is that league tables are unhelpful because they encourage the public to of think success in terms of simple results. To think that the best school is the one in which the most pupils achieve top exam marks. That the best hospital is the one that cures the most patients, that the best housing department is the one with the shortest waiting list or the best social service department is the one that has the fast time for arranging adoptions.

The media love league tables because it allows them to name and shame to divide the world into the best and worst, it sells news papers. Managers place more important on measuring progress against past performance so are we doing it faster than last year rather than are we doing it faster than are neighbours. Managers are much more interested in the reason behind success what is it that they are doing which has result in their performance improving faster than ours? What could we learn from them?

 After all what is so clever about a school that creams off all the brightest pupils at the age of eleven and then gets the best exam results at 18.?

Blair McPherson author of Equipping mangers for an uncertain future and People management in a harsh financial climate both published by Russell House.

When I was training to be a teacher there were no league tables and we learnt the difference between education and training. We were to be educators. There was no mention of exam pass rates success was inspiring a desire for learning and developing each individual’s potential. Of course in the real world we soon learnt that success was measured in terms of the noise or lack of it coming from the classroom and the assessment of our control the class by our colleagues. There were two views on how this could be achieved you could work hard on your preparation and come up with an endless stream of ways to fire their imagination and hold their attention or you could instil the fear of god in them. Most of us quickly realised you needed to be able to do both because sometimes you ran out of inspiration and energy and sometimes well sometimes it just didn’t go according to plan. Exams and cheating wasn’t really an issue because we weren’t allowed near the exam classes and exams were “sat” in the hall under exam conditions. We never discussed the moral dilemma about how much help a teacher should give a pupil or whether it was acceptable to give clues about what might be in the test and we certainly didn’t debate whether it was ever acceptable for a teacher to manipulate results or re write their pupils exam answers.

I was shocked to read the findings of a recent survey of 512 teachers by the Association of Teachers and Lecturers in which 35% would be tempted to re write their pupils exam papers. A few admitted cheating was rife in their school. I was shocked but not surprised. The pressure to improve students’ grades and maintain the schools status in the league tables is relentless and the fear of an Ofstead inspection if results dropped are such that you can understand how some may give into the temptation.

I don’t think teachers today are any less moral or professional but I do think the culture has changed. We have seen the same accusations and the same confessions of fiddling the figures in hospitals and social service department. It is all too easy to condemn individuals, isn’t it time to move away from this corrupting obsession with results and league tables?  

Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management and Equipping managers for an uncertain future both published by Russell House.