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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
13 Mar 2018 - 14:22

null Are local public museums a thing of the past?

  As director of Community Services, museums and Libraries came under my portfolio of responsibilities. When it comes to managing a service within a shrinking budget there are many similarities. Notably reduced opening hours leading eventually to unpopular closures. The difference was that those running museums always had optimistic proposals for increasing income as away of avoiding... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
13 Mar 2018 - 11:58

null Don’t blame the social worker

  It’s all about the context in which you deliver your professional skills. Social work is all about how you treat people. The professional values that underpin social work , independence, choice, dignity, respect, are about how social workers go about providing practical assistance and emotional support to vulnerable people. Social workers don’t threaten their clients.... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
12 Mar 2018 - 20:13

null What is an essential service? When is a service no longer a safe service? 

  Another council leader discussing the dire budget position of their authority  states they only have enough money for “essential “ services but what is essential? I  don’t think there is a definition of “essential “. Where there is a statutory responsibility then it would be illegal not to provide a service. There is a statutory... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
12 Mar 2018 - 15:55

null The Three Tricks 

Three tricks endorsed by HR were in the spot light this week. Trick one is  to increase basic pay but at the same time remove paid breaks and enhancements for working on a Sunday. Trick two is to transfer staff to a new organisation on protected terms and conditions but then employ all new staff on inferior pay and conditions. Trick three is to offer a pay rise on condition... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
09 Mar 2018 - 16:20

null Social Workers Night Out

The football team was made up of social workers, probation officers and their clients. The clients provided the skill, speed and youth, the social workers the organisational skills, transport and reliability, the probation officers the sharp elbows. The social work lecture who ran the team would occasionally organise a team bonding pub crawl. Usually this went off without incident other than... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
08 Mar 2018 - 14:40

null Assessing leadership 

According to a recent survey of 200 HR managers by Top Employers the best way to assess a manager’s leadership skills is to look at how good their team is. This means assessing team members clarity of focus, collaborative behaviour , ambition, sense of purpose and also their own sense of leadership and accountability.  So rather than asking team members how do you rate your... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
27 Feb 2018 - 14:43

null The Irrational Manager

      We all like to think we are rational decision makers. Senior managers build their careers on their ability to put emotions and bias to one side and carefully way up the evidence arriving at a rational if not always popular decision. Of course it's rubbish we select the facts that support our beliefs, ignore the information that is inconvenient and put a... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
20 Feb 2018 - 21:01

null The bad guys in the black hats

    In the old westerns you could always tell the goodies from the baddies by the colour of their stetsons. The bad guys wore black hats. On my social work course there was an option on philosophy and ethics perhaps it should have been called best practice and doing the right thing because that is the language of social work. At the time most students thought there was no need... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
15 Feb 2018 - 16:28

null The Wenger Effect 

The Wenger effect so called after the highly successful manager Arsene Wenger who achieved great success with an innovative system that got the best out of an extremely talented group of individuals. However he was unable to repeat his early triumphs yet steadfastly stuck to the same system even thought he no longer had the level of talent at his disposal to make it work and the world in which... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
08 Feb 2018 - 11:47

null When is a crisis a crisis

We won't make a drama out of a crisis runs a well know advert for an insurance company. The media tell us the NHS is in crisis and the evening news provides the pictures. Beds blocked, operations cancelled, ambulances queuing up in hospital the car parks, patients treated in corridors, exhausted doctors and demoralised nurses. It certainly sounds like a crisis. A local authority has... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
06 Feb 2018 - 17:48

null The Genius is in adding the Egg

Focus groups are a very good way for out of touch senior managers to get answers to questions. Provided they are clear on what the question is. However having found out why things are not going to plan there is still the need to come up with a way to change things that will work. This is the genius of adding the egg.    An early focus group set up in the 1950's was tasked to... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
06 Feb 2018 - 15:32

null When work has no meaning

  More than a third of British workers think their jobs are meaningless. ( survey by YouGov) So either you think your job is meaningless, one of your colleagues does or some of the people you manage do. If they don't place any value on the work they do, then presumably they don't feel that their contribution adds anything, so what does it matter how hard they work or whether they... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
29 Jan 2018 - 11:45

null The Moustache Years

  From the age of twenty to my late thirties I had an impressive moustache. Grown in my first year at teachers training college it made me look very hip, it was also an advantage on teaching practise making me look less like the kind of student teacher who could be messed with. It served me well as a social worker allowing me to continue to think of my self as a bit of a rebel. But when I... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
29 Jan 2018 - 14:32

null Evil Joe and Good Joe

Have you ever worked for some one who was a smooth talker, a real charmer, popular, intelligent, cool headed and fearless?  Confident, some would say over confident with a tendency to take the credit for the work of others and when things went wrong it was always some one else's fault.  Not the type of person who would lose any sleep over a decision to make staff... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
25 Jan 2018 - 01:20

null Do teams need managers

An article on self managed teams caught my attention.  I've known quiet a few local authority workers who would find the idea of a self managed team very attractive and a lot of managers who would consider it ridiculous so I read on.  The headline Self Managed Team described an innovatory approach being adopted in a district nursing service. The aim was to give the district... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
23 Jan 2018 - 15:08

null Feeling guilty and doing nothing about it 

A colleague volunteered to assist a PhD student with their research. It involved attending the lab once a day after hours to count out exactly a thousand small ball bearings transferring them one at a time from one container to another. The task was fiddly, slow and boring and after four sessions my colleague just didn't turn up again. This was years ago and he still felt guilty that he... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
22 Jan 2018 - 18:29

null Effective for about four hours 

    Most modern employees are effective for about four hours a day the rest is padding and unproductive fretting (US researcher Alex Soojung -Kim Pang "Why you get more done when you work less.") Which is interesting since the average American works a longer day that most Europeans and has only 2 weeks paid holiday a year. On reading this my first question was... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
05 Jan 2018 - 10:49

null The almost human manager

  In 1970 when studying the effects of the appearance of robots , the Japanese robotics professor   Masahiro Mori discovered something strange was going on . The more human a robot looked the more people demonstrated empathy towards it up to a certain point at which they felt a strong revulsion. When the robot was almost human people found it most disturbing. This was because... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
03 Jan 2018 - 23:30

null Top tips on the transition from practitioner to manager

    How to decide what to delegate and what to do yourself. How to make your team members feel valued. How to allocate work . How to prioritise. How to retain your professional values whilst owning senior management decisions. How to keep your team members motivated. How to develop team members . How to manage an underperforming member of the team . How to make the best use... See more
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Blair McPherson
wrote a new blog post
26 Dec 2017 - 11:43

null Show a little respect

  So shouted Jose Mourinho  as the opposition celebrated their victory a little too loudly for his liking. Aretha  Franklin spelt it out R E S P E C T . Do we mean deference to age, our betters or those who have don it, what ever "it" is. It is frequently demanded but it can only be earned. The speaker  acts offended but is their indignation because they feel... See more
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