My boss isn’t worried about team harmony, he is notinterested in which members of the team rub each other up the wrong way and hecouldn’t careless whether we socialise outside of work. In fact he encouragesthe worsted kind of competitiveness. He recently started a budget meeting bystating “I asked you all to come up with plans to deliver a 10% budget cut.Education have already come back to me with a plan for 12%”. It was a similarstory when he announced that each directorate was to cut one in four managementposts. The thing is the Directorates are very different not only in theirstructure and type of services they provide but in how their budgets were sethistorically. For a start my directorate has a lot flatter management structureand children’s services have always been protected from budget cuts. The chiefexecutive policy unit set up by his processor has more chiefs than Indians andwhilst we are struggling to identify how to deliver big budget savings newcorporate marketing and communication posts have been created. I feel that mycolleagues and I should be standing together to challenge this instead oftrying to outdo each other. Blair McPherson author of UnLearning management- shortstories on modern management and Equipping managers for an uncertain futureboth published by Russell House www.blairmcpherson.co.uk
