Sir Philip Rutnam

[tenchboy]

Well, Amber Rudd got away with it.

Fantastic! Perfect timing and perfect delivery.
The new "Mornington Crescent"

[murmur]

Yup, Patel comes across as one of those who doesn't like being questioned or challenged, doesn't like to hear why their scheme won't work and we know that 'cos it was tried before, no matter how polite one is, interprets anything other than fawning as obstruction and likes to punch down...See many NHS managers.

Oh, and is not actually that bright - see also many NHS managers.

Experienced civil servants, especially at Rutnam's level, are well accustomed to dealing with erratic, here-today-gone-tomorrow (to borrow a phrase) politicians - see also many NHS managers...

Yes, but that doesn’t change the fact that she’s now the boss and Rutnam was likely presenting problems rather than solutions. We’ll see whether his replacement gets on with her.

I once worked for a trust whose CEO was a "Bring me solutions, not problems!" type...

This lead to a huge fine when a massively polluting incinerator chimney was finally discovered after years of underlings never telling the CEO...

This CEO appeared on a job swap TV prog and was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To discover the daily bed linen raids conducted all around the main hospital site, which every f.cker else knew about, 'cos the laundry could not cope with demand and the budget for new linen had been raided for other equipment 'cos of the "efficiency savings" the CEO had OK'd.

There are many other similar stories from that trust in those days...

That approach is not a valid position, unless one wishes to maintain plausible deniability for oneself rather than actually looking seriously at what is possible and achievable; ie protect oneself and reputation at the expense of every bugger else.

ETA And who on earth ever had a job description which includes "Don't bother the boss with problems!" If a boss can't be bothered with problems, then what is the point of them?

[JQH]

I also once worked for someone who came out with the "Bring me solutions, not problems" line. His other favourite mantra was "I don't want to hear negative thinking". This latter deployed against a finance manager who tried telling him his expansion plans would bankrupt the college.

Spoiler:

They resulted in a major financial crisis.

[headshot]

I worked for a CEO who told us in a meeting that she wanted people in her company who would would be brave enough to push forward on projects and "ask for forgiveness, not permission" when making decisions.

Every single time someone based their decision making process on this mantra, they were hauled over the coals by the same CEO who would scream things like "Do I have to do everything around here to get it done properly?" and was once heard to say "Who do I have to f.ck do get this problem solved?".

An absolute delight. The company had a turnover of 50 staff in 2 years...out of a total of about 60 staff.

[Sciolus]

ETA And who on earth ever had a job description which includes "Don't bother the boss with problems!" If a boss can't be bothered with problems, then what is the point of them?

https://dilbert.com/strip/2020-01-29

[Pucksoppet]

Is it possible for someone to have a resting facial expression of the type Priti Patel displays, or is it a long practised way of upsetting her opponents?

There are multiple opinions about it:

Negative -
Guardian: https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2020/feb/21/priti-patel-hostile-environment
Vogue: https://www.vogue.co.uk/news/article/priti-patel

and, if not positive, then certainly critical of people who don't like it -

Spiked: https://www.spiked-online.com/2019/10/14/in-defence-of-priti-patel/

Certainly, an image search for her shows very few pictures without her signature expression. Is it anatomically possible that it is indeed her resting expression?

[JQH]

Maybe my mum was right and your face remains stuck if the wind changes while you're pulling faces.

Interesting how the allegedly libertarian Spiked rush to the defense of an authoritarian Home Secretary.

[plodder]

I once worked for a trust whose CEO was a "Bring me solutions, not problems!" type...

This lead to a huge fine when a massively polluting incinerator chimney was finally discovered after years of underlings never telling the CEO...

This CEO appeared on a job swap TV prog and was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To discover the daily bed linen raids conducted all around the main hospital site, which every f.cker else knew about, 'cos the laundry could not cope with demand and the budget for new linen had been raided for other equipment 'cos of the "efficiency savings" the CEO had OK'd.

There are many other similar stories from that trust in those days...

That approach is not a valid position, unless one wishes to maintain plausible deniability for oneself rather than actually looking seriously at what is possible and achievable; ie protect oneself and reputation at the expense of every bugger else.

This is crackers. An incoming CEO should be able to sack the senior and middle managers that created this mess, and they should be able to demand explanations. If these poor, downtrodden senior managers on their £100k+ salaries come out with smooth, polished platitudes rather than answers and plans then they should bl..dy well expect to be shouted at.

[dyqik]

I once worked for a trust whose CEO was a "Bring me solutions, not problems!" type...

This lead to a huge fine when a massively polluting incinerator chimney was finally discovered after years of underlings never telling the CEO...

This CEO appeared on a job swap TV prog and was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To discover the daily bed linen raids conducted all around the main hospital site, which every f.cker else knew about, 'cos the laundry could not cope with demand and the budget for new linen had been raided for other equipment 'cos of the "efficiency savings" the CEO had OK'd.

There are many other similar stories from that trust in those days...

That approach is not a valid position, unless one wishes to maintain plausible deniability for oneself rather than actually looking seriously at what is possible and achievable; ie protect oneself and reputation at the expense of every bugger else.

This is crackers. An incoming CEO should be able to sack the senior and middle managers that created this mess, and they should be able to demand explanations. If these poor, downtrodden senior managers on their £100k+ salaries come out with smooth, polished platitudes rather than answers and plans then they should bl..dy well expect to be shouted at.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of your post here to the post you are quoting.

[TopBadger]

This is crackers. An incoming CEO should be able to sack the senior and middle managers that created this mess, and they should be able to demand explanations. If these poor, downtrodden senior managers on their £100k+ salaries come out with smooth, polished platitudes rather than answers and plans then they should bl..dy well expect to be shouted at.

And she could have sacked him... going down the usual route of offering a nice comp settlement so everyone walks away happy.

Instead she briefed against him and he's not happy with her behaviour to him and his staff. That's not the way to move people on, and staff do have contracts and employment protection.

What are you proposing - that an incoming CEO should have a 90 day window where employment law doesn't apply? Because that would be crackers.

[plodder]

I’m not sure she can sack him for disagreeing with her. What she can do is make it clear that his job is to agree with her. If you had to manage these oily suave unruffled professional sticks-in-the-wheels (lets assume, just for fun, that he objected to one or more of her policies), what would you do?

[murmur]

I once worked for a trust whose CEO was a "Bring me solutions, not problems!" type...

This lead to a huge fine when a massively polluting incinerator chimney was finally discovered after years of underlings never telling the CEO...

This CEO appeared on a job swap TV prog and was shocked! Shocked, I tell you! To discover the daily bed linen raids conducted all around the main hospital site, which every f.cker else knew about, 'cos the laundry could not cope with demand and the budget for new linen had been raided for other equipment 'cos of the "efficiency savings" the CEO had OK'd.

There are many other similar stories from that trust in those days...

That approach is not a valid position, unless one wishes to maintain plausible deniability for oneself rather than actually looking seriously at what is possible and achievable; ie protect oneself and reputation at the expense of every bugger else.

This is crackers. An incoming CEO should be able to sack the senior and middle managers that created this mess, and they should be able to demand explanations. If these poor, downtrodden senior managers on their £100k+ salaries come out with smooth, polished platitudes rather than answers and plans then they should bl..dy well expect to be shouted at.

I'm struggling to see the relevance of your post here to the post you are quoting.

Quite: the point (well, one of...) of anecdotes about that particular set of managers is that the problems were created by the attitude of the CEO who didn't want to be bothered with those sort of details. And, yes, it is crackers...

As an aside, a couple of years later there was a trust merger or 2, that CEO left as a consequence, most of their managers were "persuaded" to leave, then the person who cleared up a load of their mess was also persuaded to leave...With a f.cking huge, well over the odds settlement and beautiful set of references and a very tight NDA...I might be related to that person, which is why I know.

[headshot]

I’m not sure she can sack him for disagreeing with her. What she can do is make it clear that his job is to agree with her.

Ah, the Nuremberg option...

[dyqik]

I’m not sure she can sack him for disagreeing with her. What she can do is make it clear that his job is to agree with her. If you had to manage these oily suave unruffled professional sticks-in-the-wheels (lets assume, just for fun, that he objected to one or more of her policies), what would you do?

Ask for a detailed point by point memo stating the reasons for the objections, including studies that back up those reasons, and for a rebuttal to that from another person at that level.

[plodder]

You’d get all that, 6 months down the line, with added smarm.

[murmur]

I’m not sure she can sack him for disagreeing with her. What she can do is make it clear that his job is to agree with her. If you had to manage these oily suave unruffled professional sticks-in-the-wheels (lets assume, just for fun, that he objected to one or more of her policies), what would you do?

I don't know if the Civil Service is somehow different from other parts of the public sector (p'raps any lurking folk with greater knowledge can chip in), but there is no way on sodding earth that any boss I had in the NHS could oblige me to agree with them and automatically follow their "orders": they could ask or suggest, but if what they wanted conflicted with my professional opinion, my professional code of conduct, trust policy, NICE guidelines or a variety of other rules, regulations, laws, official guidance and the like I was OBLIGED to say so and could stand on my professional rights and responsibilities, no matter who the " boss" was.

Being "boss" does not (well, until Cummings programmes Johnson to do away with all employee protections and relevant legislation) give anyone absolute rights...And that sort of weight chucking is a sure sign of a bad "boss".

[plodder]

And that attitude, frankly, is unhelpful and would get most people moved sideways into a dead end job.

We don’t know the details of the conversations Patel had with Rutnam but I’d imagine he spent a lot of time explaining why things couldn’t be done, and Patel thought ‘sod that, I’m the home f.cking secretary’.

One common complaint about the Obama government was the lack of real, tangible progress on many things, even though he had a second term. One of the reliefs of the Trump administration is that he’s not been able to change much. These are both due in part to the Rutnams exploiting the complexity of the system. I can understand why politicians get frustrated (even though I think Patel’s leadership “style” would cause me to walk out of the door)

[greyspoke]

Problem is, if the boss is not so clever, or not so well informed about the system* they are presiding over, they will be unable to distinguish between "actually genuinely impossible without an Act of Parliament changing the law" and "possible if we completely up-end the current system, though it wouldn't actually require an Act of Parliament, but I am sure you don't really want to do that so I will not bother to explain this option". So a management approach of "I will assume everything can be done and keep on hassling people to do it and only if after all that it still can't be done will I assume it actually really can't be done" has some attractions. Particularly, but not excusively, for the ignorant or lazy (intellectually lazy that is).

*And the more arcane and byzantine the system is, the less likely they are to be able to inform themselves about it other than by asking their civil servants...

[murmur]

And that attitude, frankly, is unhelpful and would get most people moved sideways into a dead end job.

We don’t know the details of the conversations Patel had with Rutnam but I’d imagine he spent a lot of time explaining why things couldn’t be done, and Patel thought ‘sod that, I’m the home f.cking secretary’.

One common complaint about the Obama government was the lack of real, tangible progress on many things, even though he had a second term. One of the reliefs of the Trump administration is that he’s not been able to change much. These are both due in part to the Rutnams exploiting the complexity of the system. I can understand why politicians get frustrated (even though I think Patel’s leadership “style” would cause me to walk out of the door)

It's the opposite of "unhelpful", in that it stops a lot of time and resources being wasted on things which have been tried before and failed or were replaced with something which works better, things which are agin policies and national guidelines/illegal/harmful, stops you falling into short-termism, reduces the use of the "Something must be done! This is something! It must be done!" fallacy, aka The Illusion of Action and many other things.

Unless you are a very lucky person and have only ever worked places where "bosses" make wonderful, practical, achievable suggestions in full light of best professional practice, resources and legal issues...Oddly, I very rarely have - see my descriptions of NHS management passim, not to mention management "theory" or "science".


I'll be charitable and assume you've always had perspicacious bosses, do exactly what you are told all the time and have no professional code of conduct and the like which oblige you to behave in certain ways, up to and including refusing to do certain things.

[dyqik]

Unless you are a very lucky person and have only ever worked places where "bosses" all parties only make wonderful, practical, achievable suggestions in full light of best professional practice, resources and legal issues...Oddly, I very rarely have - see my descriptions of NHS management passim, not to mention management "theory" or "science".

FTFY for when the boss is asking about an idea someone else is pushing, or when someone usually sensible strays outside their area of expertise.

[TopBadger]

It's the opposite of "unhelpful", in that it stops a lot of time and resources being wasted on things which have been tried before and failed or were replaced with something which works better...

Yebbut, does the boss share that view? Because the flip side of this is when the new boss joins your organisation with all of these wonderfully exciting "new ideas" only to find out they're not new in the slightest and were tried in year X and didn't work then and the fundamentals haven't changed... well, what are they to do now?

In my experience the 'organisation learning' piece be can be cast aside, along with those that speak of it, and the new boss presses on regardless because they've got to demonstrate "something" to their boss / board / whomever. The old hand who knows it's a poor idea because they've seen it tried before quickly becomes an obstacle to be removed rather than a helpful source of lived experience.

The higher up the org chart the boss is the worse it gets because there is less likelihood of someone 'above them' also having lived the experience and calling a halt to the idea. When the top person comes in and has new ideas that are old ideas that don't work - it's an utter minefield and you can become unpopular really rather quickly through no fault of your own other than being honest and transparent.

It's sh.t. But there you are.

[greyspoke]

Provide them with another new idea that might work and let them believe it was their idea.

[plodder]

Perhaps if you want to be in charge then go for the promotion. If you don't, then don't make your boss's life a misery with all your "that'll never work" b.llsh.t.

[Bird on a Fire]

Perhaps if you want to be in charge then go for the promotion. If you don't, then don't make your boss's life a misery with all your "that'll never work" b.llsh.t.

Interesting that you keep pushing this line. I never had you pegged as an obsequious, bootlicking yes-man.

[science_fox]

It's the opposite of "unhelpful", in that it stops a lot of time and resources being wasted on things which have been tried before and failed or were replaced with something which works better...

Yebbut, does the boss share that view? Because the flip side of this is when the new boss joins your organisation with all of these wonderfully exciting "new ideas" only to find out they're not new in the slightest and were tried in year X and didn't work then and the fundamentals haven't changed... well, what are they to do now?

In my experience the 'organisation learning' piece be can be cast aside, along with those that speak of it, and the new boss presses on regardless because they've got to demonstrate "something" to their boss / board / whomever. The old hand who knows it's a poor idea because they've seen it tried before quickly becomes an obstacle to be removed rather than a helpful source of lived experience.

The higher up the org chart the boss is the worse it gets because there is less likelihood of someone 'above them' also having lived the experience and calling a halt to the idea. When the top person comes in and has new ideas that are old ideas that don't work - it's an utter minefield and you can become unpopular really rather quickly through no fault of your own other than being honest and transparent.

It's sh.t. But there you are.

There is of course an entrenched attitude of "we've always done it this way". Change is hard and difficult. But it doesn't have to be wrong or hard, but it does require all staff all the way down to the bottom to be prepared to accept it. Nothing I've heard about PP indicates this was the case, but some of the posts above strike very close to 'we've always done it this way' and that's not how gov/business needs to operate.