Blair Mcpherson
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Comment on: Councils to shed 140,000 jobs
As we get closer to local authorities finalising their budget plans the figures get more accurate, the implications become better understood and the mood changes from resignation to indignation.
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Comment on: Councils to shed 140,000 jobs
As we get closer to local authorities finalising their budget plans the figures get more accurate, the implications become better understood and the mood changes from resignation to indignation.
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Comment on: Raise your game
There are career opportunities despite the cut backs and management restructurings.In fact management restructurings may mean redundancies for some but will provide opportunities for others.The problem will be that many organisations will be cutting back on their management training so aspiring managers and those seeking senior management posts will have to take more responsibility for their own management development. After restructuring organisations will be leaner and looking for a different type of manager.Bigger spans of responsibility mean organisation will want managers with the management skills to work across professional boundaries and most relevant will be people management skills especially when the task is to get staff to do more with less.
I have written a management development manual based around this need Equipping Managers for an Uncertain Future to be published by www.russellhouse.co.uk in November/December2010.
Blair -
Comment on: Mr & Mrs stressed out
. So what can you do to manage the pressure and reduce the stress? Well if I knew then what I know now this would be my survival plan.
1. Take your full allocation of annual leave. Do not carry over annual leave to be taken at some point in the future. You need the break now.
2. Have a three week holiday as opposed to two weeks. This is all about getting people to do things in your absence rather than waiting till you get back. It will also reduce your emails you get less if you are away for three weeks rather than two, its true try it.
3. There should be no meetings booked in your diary first day back at work, this is catch up time and if do don’t do it now you will spend the next two weeks doing it at the end of which you will feel like you have never been away.
4. Take a lunch hour. You probably got in early and are staying late you will be more productive and less tired if you have a break away from the office. Yes it is hard to do if you’re worried that colleagues grabbing a sandwich at their desk will think you less committed but modern management is about what you deliver not the hours you put in.
5. Stay an extra hour in the office if it means you won’t have to take work home. With any luck the traffic will have died down and you will have a quicker less stressful journey home.
6. Try leaving the brief case at work. If you take it home you will be tempted to open it later in the evening and do some work.
7. It very convenient being able to access emails and reports at home on your laptop but don’t fall into the trap of extending your working day into the evenings or weekends. Instead negotiate a regular working from home day. If senior managers can’t negotiate this for themselves because of the “culture” in the organisation then this is a weakness in their negotiating skills. If senior managers are doing it then that gives permission for other managers to do it.
8. Delegate. With increased spans of responsibility the modern manager cannot micro manage, do not do your staff’s job for them, do not get involved in the detail. Your job is to explain what needs doing and ensuring they have the skills, knowledge and resources to do it.
9. Don’t do urgent only do important .It surprising how few things are important. Embrace this approach in your expectations of your staff in other words something is not important simply because it came from you.
10. Emails, I altered my machine to bounce back any emails which I was copied into. These were mostly people covering themselves by telling me what they had already done. Overnight I reduced my emails by a third and my blood pressure by a similar amount.
11. Get a dog. When no one else loves you Rover will.
Blairmcpherson.co.uk author of People management in a harsh financial climate
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