The HSJ online now has a number of probably highly important health service managers writing blog posts for their website. I say probably, because most of these are written by people anonymously.
I was drawn by one such post recently because like me the author admires Stephen Covey’s 7 habits of highly effective people and thinks it is one of the best of the management guru / popular textbooks that you can get.
I use Stephen Covey’s book in some of the leadership and management sessions I do. I particularly like the way it is laid out in sections that can be related to real life. I see from his website that he has developed an 8th habit and also has a book called the 7 habits of highly effective teenagers which I might well have a look at though I am not sure if it is possible as a parent to directly influence the effectiveness of one’s teenager.
Anyway, the HSJ blogger thought it would be a great idea to think of the 7 habits of highly ineffective managers. Irritatingly he comes up with some very good and pretty true to life examples:

• Saying “What we did at St Elsewhere’s was…”. This becomes a significantly more ineffective habit if the offender stopped working at St Elsewhere’s 17 years ago.
• Lamenting the old days, i.e. when junior doctors did an honest day’s work and nurses wore frilly hats. And when people died of rickets and the waiting lists were ten miles long.
• Drawing inappropriate parallels with the private sector, e.g. “In the City they have a much more sophisticated approach to managing financial risk.”
• Doctor bashing and manager bashing. That’ll sort it.
• Stating the bleeding obvious and bleeding unhelpful in one sentence, e.g. “If we had a full electronic patient record in place then we wouldn’t have this problem.”
• Being late. These people should be hung, drawn and quartered, for ’tis timeliness and not cleanliness that is next to Godliness
• Writing blogs: the province of the badly dressed and the serial underachiever.

Obviously i don’t necessarily agree with number 7 since I am neither badly dressed nor do I underachieve but the rest are pretty often to be heard around NHS coridoors.

My own would include:

• People who cannot delegate – since only they are good enough
• People who use email to tell people off and whats more cc in half the world to do it
• Speaking of email  – people who always ‘reply to all’
• People who are so important that they are in the office before dawn, don’t leave till after dark and who are still emailing you at midnight
• People whose meetings never start on time, always over run and which are full of irrelevant discussion
• People who habitually cancel appraisals and one to ones with their staff as they have more important meetings to go to
• finally – people who don’t listen but who love the sound of their own voices