I know, and I promise my eyes are wide open (to our shitty government and the damage they have done to the NHS). I posted this article not as any endorsement of the publication but simply because it was the one that was sent to me and it struck a chord, and that was purely based on my own experiences with the NHS and its management.
Absolutely, for me I think the link is the line "many bully to hide their incompetence ". The best managers accept that sometimes problems arise and mistakes happen (or in the worst case someone acts maliciously), and they take the short term aggro or reputational damage to improve the long term outcome. The bad managers are the exact opposite, they don’t want to deal with the short term problem and will actively bury it regardless of the long term risk to patients. I think that is what has happened here, and sadly often the next step (in my experience) is bullying those subversive elements.
Based on my experiences (13 years, 3 Trust’s) the managers fell into two broad groups. The first were amazing, well established in their profession and worked their way up through the ranks. They cared for their team, had professional pride and enabled everybody to do the best job possible (it was actually one of these people who sent me the article). The second group were as the article describes. Invariably not very good at their core role so moved towards management and admin to escape it, invariably failed upwards, made poor decisions which they weren’t around long enough to see the impact of, and were insecure in their position so responded poorly to any challenge.
There was no suggestion of privatisation in the article, nor do I think that would be a good idea. I posted it because the description of the culture surrounding NHS management resonated with my own experiences.
Maybe for certain issues. But something like this bridges the political divide, and I think the article hits the nail on the head regarding NHS management and the culture that surrounds a lot of them.
As per the Beeb article he has “four grown-up children with second wife Marina Wheeler, and another daughter from an affair” plus the other 2 he had whilst in office. So I’d say eighth as the bare minimum
This could be our Falklands, Elizabeth