Army Rumour Service

Register a free account today to join our community
Once signed in, you'll be able to participate on this site, connect with other members through your own private inbox and will receive smaller adverts!

That wee lapel badge that some Nats wear reminds me of the badge of another party.

View attachment 429180

Blackford’s is especially small.

So is his party badge.
Sorry, my eyesight's not what it used to be and I can't quite make out the words ... I got the bit around the top - "national schottische" - but I'm struggling with two out of three of the bottom letters, definitely a 'P' for the last one. 'S' ... 'N'?

-------------------------------------------------
Well, my first attempt and pasting something above was quite amusing and apposite. I'd been looking at another thread and caught reference to a Good Old Days Arrse offering and curiosity got the better of me, so I copied the phrase of interest. Clearly, my later attempt to copy "schottische" didn't work because what I got was:

spastics fighting in skips




A pretty good description of any place politicians get together.
 
The ever present problem in the NHS, is that you either put a clinician in charge with little management experience or you put a manager in charge with no clinical knowledge.
A common problem. A couple of decades ago, I met a senior Japanese electronics company director who was totally baffled by our (UK) approach of putting accountants in charge of engineering companies. I'd already formed the opinion he expressed that many non-engineers just don't have the "heart" to run such businesses properly and often lacked strategic vision.

However, I'd also run into engineers who got promoted on the basis of their engineering skills, but turned out to possess the management skills needed to completely paralyze a previously functional department. Dilbert to Pointy-Haired Boss in one fell swoop of pen on parchment (a commissioning scroll, in my case ;-) ).

And (I never said this, OK?) I've also encountered some outstanding project managers who, despite a non-engineering background, were more than capable of grasping what was important and what wasn't. Some people are bright enough to make a success of whatever they turn their hand to.

All things being equal, however, I think it would probably be easier to find an engineer who could be trained in the ways of management than vice versa.
 
A common problem. A couple of decades ago, I met a senior Japanese electronics company director who was totally baffled by our (UK) approach of putting accountants in charge of engineering companies. I'd already formed the opinion he expressed that many non-engineers just don't have the "heart" to run such businesses properly and often lacked strategic vision.

However, I'd also run into engineers who got promoted on the basis of their engineering skills, but turned out to possess the management skills needed to completely paralyze a previously functional department. Dilbert to Pointy-Haired Boss in one fell swoop of pen on parchment (a commissioning scroll, in my case ;-) ).

And (I never said this, OK?) I've also encountered some outstanding project managers who, despite a non-engineering background, were more than capable of grasping what was important and what wasn't. Some people are bright enough to make a success of whatever they turn their hand to.

All things being equal, however, I think it would probably be easier to find an engineer who could be trained in the ways of management than vice versa.


I have done a few "Leadership" courses whilst in the NHS.

They are quite different in style than that taught at RMAS.
 
I have done a few "Leadership" courses whilst in the NHS.

They are quite different in style than that taught at RMAS.

Do you mean the content of the “Leadership” course or the style of “Leadership” being taught? One of the best natural leaders I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for had received virtually no “leadership” training, she naturally knew how to weld together a very effective and efficient team and how to get the best from her people.
 
Do you mean the content of the “Leadership” course or the style of “Leadership” being taught? One of the best natural leaders I’ve ever had the pleasure of working for had received virtually no “leadership” training, she naturally knew how to weld together a very effective and efficient team and how to get the best from her people.

A bit of both.

Most courses seem to have emphasised listening and being aware of different styles whether it be leaderdship or learning.

However the NHS differentiates leadership from management which is more administration based.

Thus allegedly anyone can be a leader, and indeed they can, just no one listens to them or takes notice of their ideas!
 
A bit of both.

Most courses seem to have emphasised listening and being aware of different styles whether it be leaderdship or learning.

However the NHS differentiates leadership from management which is more administration based.

Thus allegedly anyone can be a leader, and indeed they can, just no one listens to them or takes notice of their ideas!

The Government Department I used to work for had no training requirements for those being promoted into managerial roles “at the coalface”, the vast majority of managers I had ranged from poor to terrible and the turnover was excessive. Three separate managers in a four month period was my personal highlight, I had become accustomed to having a succession of managers either very disinterested in what we were doing or extremely adept at delegating all management functions through the team. At one point I was responsible for 70% of the management output for the team while our full time manager spent most of her time discussing any question with her colleagues before coming to a “decision”, obviously she’s now been promoted to take over a full specialist office.
Her replacement, working part time, reclaimed all management functions and was extremely successful in managing three periods of quite difficult change in our working practices. Which saw us move to a completely new way of working, change all the revenue streams we were working on and eventually become a high profile specialist team working with vast sums of revenue. All without any recognition from senior management and even when her team put her forward for an award she was overlooked in favour of others with less tangible results.
I now work for a different Government Department.
 
A bit of both.

Most courses seem to have emphasised listening and being aware of different styles whether it be leaderdship or learning.

However the NHS differentiates leadership from management which is more administration based.

Thus allegedly anyone can be a leader, and indeed they can, just no one listens to them or takes notice of their ideas!

You get a laugh for that last sentence. Many a truth and all that.

FWIW, I found that the best way to get people working efficiently (and happily) was to devolve authority together with responsibility, and then to both keep overwatch to identify & sort out problems and to provide top-cover to deal with any incoming.
 
The Government Department I used to work for had no training requirements for those being promoted into managerial roles “at the coalface”, the vast majority of managers I had ranged from poor to terrible and the turnover was excessive. Three separate managers in a four month period was my personal highlight, I had become accustomed to having a succession of managers either very disinterested in what we were doing or extremely adept at delegating all management functions through the team. At one point I was responsible for 70% of the management output for the team while our full time manager spent most of her time discussing any question with her colleagues before coming to a “decision”, obviously she’s now been promoted to take over a full specialist office.
Her replacement, working part time, reclaimed all management functions and was extremely successful in managing three periods of quite difficult change in our working practices. Which saw us move to a completely new way of working, change all the revenue streams we were working on and eventually become a high profile specialist team working with vast sums of revenue. All without any recognition from senior management and even when her team put her forward for an award she was overlooked in favour of others with less tangible results.
I now work for a different Government Department.
I am old enough and ugly enough to get left well alone by my management, being geographically challenging to get to also helps.


The most interaction is my sending leave requests to be approved.
 
All without any recognition from senior management and even when her team put her forward for an award she was overlooked in favour of others with less tangible results.

I've seen that more times than I would care to admit. Some people just aren't very good at getting upper management to actually understand what they've done, whereas others have the gift of being able to make opening a filing cabinet look like the work of a genius.
 
I've seen that more times than I would care to admit. Some people just aren't very good at getting upper management to actually understand what they've done, whereas others have the gift of being able to make opening a filing cabinet look like the work of a genius.

The squeaky gate gets the oil.

Those that get on with the job and solve problems locally are often seen quite differently to those who go running to management for solutions.

The latter are perceived to have overcome difficulties whilst the former just had it easy.
 
I've seen that more times than I would care to admit. Some people just aren't very good at getting upper management to actually understand what they've done, whereas others have the gift of being able to make opening a filing cabinet look like the work of a genius.

We had authority to agree up to a certain financial level, a level above that authority would come from our team manager after discussion, a level above that was discussed with the manager above that (which was always done with our manager, as senior managers had never dealt with this level before and were extremely reluctant to do so now) and the level above that would be sent for very senior level approval. I’ll let you guess at what level we had to seek senior approval and what a refusal entailed.
 
We had authority to agree up to a certain financial level, a level above that authority would come from our team manager after discussion, a level above that was discussed with the manager above that (which was always done with our manager, as senior managers had never dealt with this level before and were extremely reluctant to do so now) and the level above that would be sent for very senior level approval. I’ll let you guess at what level we had to seek senior approval and what a refusal entailed.

I am Chair of our Catalogue Committee.
I therefore am in charge of what materials we can buy, labs we use etc.
However I have absolutely no budgetary responsibility nor do I even have any authority to place any orders for said materials.
 
I am old enough and ugly enough to get left well alone by my management, being geographically challenging to get to also helps.

Depends where the geography is. A 244(*) Sigs Sqn major I knew commented that it was always nice to get a high-profile visit from HQ when they deployed to Jamaica, Cyprus or somewhere similar across The Pond. Funnily enough, they didn't see much brass when operating in some mosquito-infested swamp in the middle of some African nowhere ...

I quite enjoyed working in detachments; I could get away with far more stuff than I could in a real unit and there's a certain joy in politely telling parent units that their opinions, whilst madly interesting, would be given a deeply-considered ignoring.

----------------
I can't remember the actual squadron number, but 244 Sqn seems likely as they all trolled around in Land Rovers with the "Red Hand" painted on them.
 
We had authority to agree up to a certain financial level, a level above that authority would come from our team manager after discussion, a level above that was discussed with the manager above that (which was always done with our manager, as senior managers had never dealt with this level before and were extremely reluctant to do so now) and the level above that would be sent for very senior level approval. I’ll let you guess at what level we had to seek senior approval and what a refusal entailed.

I bet my guess is a good one. =-)

One incident that stands out is my requesting a certain comms fit in our ops rooms (two different sites) - sound justification for it, approved all the way up the uniformed hierarchy and noted as being an operational priority.

However, some bright spark on the CS side noted that there was a similar bit of kit in another ops room situated about a mile away from one of our ops rooms. So he blocked the requisition and suggested we move our unit (that took up most of a big building and had lots of copper running out of it) and relocate it to the small office down the road (said office being smaller than my existing office). To my utter amazement, instead of somebody just telephoning or wandering over and putting him right (or even dashing off a quick memo to that effect), we had to start all over again. Crazy.

I also survived several moratoria that required SO sign-off on cutting-edge technology - like 4-hole punches and 9V batteries. I also found that my policy of always speaking to the admin staff like they were real people often paid off in such situations; an unintentional but appreciated side-effect when you want something from the rocking-horse stable.
 
The squeaky gate gets the oil.

Those that get on with the job and solve problems locally are often seen quite differently to those who go running to management for solutions.

The latter are perceived to have overcome difficulties whilst the former just had it easy.
To a degree, yes. However, I think it's mainly down to personalities and attitudes in some cases. I remember one actually all-round good egg sort getting lots of accolades for something minor. People just noticed him without any active attempt on his part to gain such attention.

OTOH, I've seen people completely overlooked for major achievements because few understood the significance of their input or because, paradoxically, it was either the kind of thing people expected from them or they made it look easy.
 

New posts

Top