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Blog
The average 3 year old is getting smarter
Many parents and every grand parent thinks their child is very bright for their age. This has always been the case but now there is evidence to support the claim. It appears the average 3...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
28 Oct 2020
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Trust , Unity and Progress
They sound like a communist party slogan from the soviet era. Something like, Trust in the party and the United workers will achieve great Progress. They are in fact the easy to remember...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
24 Oct 2020
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Who do you trust more your Dr or your MP ?
That is a simplified version of the government’s attempt to take back power from doctors. It has parallels with local government. How do you get the balance right between the professionals, the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
15 Oct 2020
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All or Nothing
Reading the biography of a very successful leader is often disappointing if you are seeking to learn how to replicate their success. Interviews with those who worked closely with such...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
02 Oct 2020
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Your team doesn’t need you when they’re winning
You earn your money as a manager when the team are going through a difficult patch. When performance dips, when morale is rock bottom and confidence low that’s when your experience and know how...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
01 Oct 2020
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A Hard Rain
When Bob Dylan wanted to warn people of the increased risk of a nuclear war he wrote a song , A hard rains a -gonna fall, which tells of the destruction from the fallout of The Bomb. When the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
29 Sep 2020
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Showing you’re annoyed is not the same as making staff scared of you
Alex Ferguson claims he used his notorious hairdryer treatment no more than 6 or 7 times in his long and successful career. The accounts of former players would indicate it was a lot more but...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
22 Sep 2020
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The Understanding Manager
Everyone wants a supportive manager some one who recognises your value to the team and acknowledges your skill and work ethic, some one who is sympathetic when some difficulty in your personal...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
14 Sep 2020
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Simply the Best
If you ask a highly successful manager, a great leader what it is that makes them so effective don’t expect to get the answer that those who work with them would give. Even the best often lack...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
11 Sep 2020
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Vanity Projects
A project that is not justified by cost and effort and whose purpose is to make the instigator look good. The most famous was the USA race with the Soviet Union to put a man on the Moon the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
08 Sep 2020
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The hole in the donut
These managers never seem to focus on the perfect circle. Instead, their first comment calls attention to the inconsequential mistake. They ask for trivial back-up data that you failed to bring...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
02 Sep 2020
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It’s Complicated
He drove the car, a reluctant participant in what was a sectarian assassination. First he finds the librarian he fancy’s is the wife of the man they murdered. Then he takes a job working on her...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
14 Sep 2020
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Ginger Rogers’ Annual Appraisal
Annual appraisals do more harm than good and now it’s ok to say so. Many large companies have dropped Annual Appraisals replacing achievement and reward with support and coaching. One to One...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
25 Aug 2020
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It’s your dream job but there is a catch
It’s your dream job. You have said so publicly and often, which hasn’t gone down well with previous employers. It’s high profile with a very competitive salary. But it’s only for nine months!...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
20 Aug 2020
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Boxing Clever
” Everyone has a plan until they are punched in the mouth.” Mike Tyson was not known for his wit and wisdom but his ferocity. His comment was therefore probably just a statement of the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
18 Aug 2020
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Statistics don’t tell the whole story
Statistics may never lie, though everyone knows they can be economical with the truth. Everyone being managers and members. LA leaders and chief executives struggle to persuade the local...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
14 Aug 2020
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Connecting community capabilities – how can an Open Place Directory help in the time of COVID-19?
There are examples across the whole of the UK, and some great tweets and posts about the ways in which councils have worked together with their partners and communities. The New Local...
By:
Knowledge Hub Team
Last updated:
14 Aug 2020
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The best organisation are like enthusiastic gardeners
If HR are were to adopt a gardening metaphor it would be weeds are just flowers in the wrong place. This is not what a manager who has been asked to consider someone on...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
13 Aug 2020
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Connecting people to respond to COVID-19
With budget cuts and reduced funding, digital collaboration plays an important role and enables Knowledge Hub members to stay connected, reach a wider audience and support their work. The...
By:
Knowledge Hub Team
Last updated:
13 Aug 2020
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Don’t Oversimplify
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
15 Aug 2020
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Managing a budget is too often like dieting
Following on from his successful book “The Food Myth” Tim Spector has written , “ Spoon-Feed: Almost Everything We’ve Been Told About Food Is Wrong”. On reading it I was struck by the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
08 Aug 2020
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Out of touch managers
In the years immediately after England won the World Cup the then manager Alf Ramsey could do no wrong in the eyes of his players but as the winning team was replaced by a new...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
24 Jul 2020
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A personal journey from council officer to supplier, via the MHCLG Local Digital team
In late June and early July 2018, I was racing between London, Cardiff and Birmingham, helping Linda O’Halloran, Egle Uzkaraityte, Adam Thoulass and our colleagues in the embryonic MHCLG Local...
By:
Knowledge Hub Team
Last updated:
24 Jul 2020
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A faint air of menace 2
We need to talk about how we talk about Black Lives Matter (BLM) in the work place because the subject still has a faint air of menace about it. If people are reluctant to talk about diversity...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
22 Jul 2020
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Do you read the instructions?
You might be someone who jumps right in and gets stuck in there and learns by winging it. Or you might be a little more cautious and assess all the bits and pieces first and then get going,...
By:
Knowledge Hub Team
Last updated:
15 Jul 2020
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Alien Encounter
If aliens from a distant and previously unknown planet landed seeking asylum and only to be allowed to integrate into society, HR would have no problem adapting equality and diversity policies...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
09 Jul 2020
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Heated arguments in the Team Meeting
To anyone observing it was a very heated argument. One member of the team was criticising another and not holding back. The other responded with a few well chosen remarks of their own. Voices...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
13 Aug 2020
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The First Fifteen Lives of Harry August
Time travel doesn’t require a time machine. You can’t go forwards into the future only backwards into the past. Time travel is not open to everyone but every generation has individuals who...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
05 Jul 2020
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Champions League
Black Lives Matter is making us rethink our approach to Equality. Most organisations have management steering groups to monitor their equality strategies and action plans. But the agendas lack...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
01 Jul 2020
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Hot Hand
An expression in basketball to describe a player on a hot scoring streak who feels and appears unable to miss. But for every up side there is a downside, the top striker who just can’t score,...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
30 Jun 2020
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Don’t look to football managers for best practice
Is managing a football club so different to being a senior manager in a Local Authority?Both are challenged to motivate talented individuals. Both have a vision and a plan for the future whilst...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
27 Jun 2020
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I look to football managers for lessons in management
Football managers like Jurgen Klopp and Jose Mourinho and from a previous generation Alex Ferguson and Brian Clough are stand out managers with impressive track records. They are extreme...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
26 Jun 2020
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Playing up and Playing down
Sometimes you have to play up and sometimes play down your abilities. The scene is a golf club, the context a new manager trying to break into a close knit group of colleagues , the method,...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
14 Jun 2020
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Big and Scary
It’s big and it’s scary, it’s in the room and ignoring it won’t make it go away. An Elephant in the Room is an expression to describe a big topic everyone is ignoring, pretending it...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
13 Jun 2020
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More than just a soft machine
I WAS AT ONE TIME THE ASSISTANT DIRECTOR OF RESOURCES IN A LARGE COMPLEX ORGANISATION. FINANCE, IT, PERSONNEL AND TRAINING FELL WITHIN MY REMIT. THIS LINE MANAGEMENT ARRANGEMENT REFLECTED THE...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
10 Jun 2020
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It doesn’t help that people really don’t like HR.
Human Resource staff make people behave and they don’t like it. They are the ones that tell you that even if you think the jokes are funny, you still can’t tell sexist, racist or homophobic...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
09 Jun 2020
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Sometimes it takes a crisis
When this pandemic is over you will know a lot more about your staff/ managers . A crisis brings out the strength in some and the weaknesses in others. It will not necessarily have been the...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
09 Jun 2020
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The Art of Winging It
Before you know what you are doing you’re expected to know what you are doing, so you have no choice but to wing it. It happened to me. As part of a cost cutting senior management restructuring...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
05 Jun 2020
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Management anyone can do it-not
The interesting thing about management is that pretty much everyone thinks they could do it and do it better. It’s not rocket science. That is why so many people think they understand it. But...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
22 May 2020
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Residential Care is Killing Older People
What has the coronavirus crisis told us about residential care? It has told us that residential care puts older people at far greater risk, which is ironic since the biggest reason for...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
18 May 2020
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What’s different about leadership in a crisis as opposed to any other time ?
The characteristics of effective leadership are the same in normal times as they are during a crisis. The difference is that during a crisis there is a temptation for leaders to do too much, to...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
14 May 2020
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Rejuvenating the Talent Pool
Even a successful management team needs their talent pool rejuvenated at regular intervals. Move too slowly and inevitably performance declines . Move too fast and the instability and...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
13 May 2020
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Do your members know what they need to know?
Why group communications matter Your members might benefit from regular communications from you that allows them to develop useful habits about how they visit and participate in the...
By:
Knowledge Hub Team
Last updated:
12 May 2020
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Can Tony Soprano make you a better manager
Tony Soprano has never read a management book. Yet he successfully manages a diverse workforce in a very competitive and treacherous business environment. Tony doesn’t work long...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
08 Jul 2020
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The Poor Make Bad Choices
The poor make bad choices the first being their parents, the second being where they were born. www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
09 May 2020
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The Balloon Debate
Did you ever have a balloon debate at school? One day my younger brother came home from primary school and as we sat round the tea table told us that he had won the ballon debate. This was a...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
06 May 2020
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Make HR your Friend
The best advice I could give any one moving into their first management post. There are lots of articles about why people hate HR and very few on why you should befriend at least...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
28 Apr 2020
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Management shouldn’t be about shouting from the sidelines
In this case the sidelines could be the chief executive’s blog, the senior managers road show or even the team meeting. There is getting your instructions across, vocal encouragement and...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
27 Apr 2020
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The difference between managers and leaders.
One asks permission the other seeks forgiveness.
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
25 Apr 2020
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The Manager’s Lucky Socks
When good fails to turn into great. When the sum of the parts isn’t greater than the whole. When a talented senior management team never quiet reaches the heights expected. Then people look...
By:
Blair McPherson
Last updated:
20 Apr 2020
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