The Art of Brilliance Blog
Welcome to our random musings. If Carlsberg could write blogs...
Reverse Psychology…
The vast majority of psychologists are trained in mental illness but never trained in mental health. They’re experts on what’s wrong with you, but not what’s right with you.
The Team Your Winter Plan Depends On
Somewhere on a shared drive, your winter plan is nearly finished. Version eleven, probably. Filename ending ‘FINAL final v3’.
It’s a serious document, and it should be. Beds, rotas, escalation triggers, discharge targets, surge capacity. Months of work by people who care. And I want to point at one sentence in it – it’s in all of them, usually around page four – and ask the question nobody asks.
Happiness Isn’t on the Curriculum (It Teaches Anyway)
There’s no scheme of work for happiness.
It doesn’t appear on the timetable, it has no assessment framework, no moderation meeting, no folder. And yet it’s in every classroom, every day, doing more heavy lifting than almost anything that is on the plan.
What Will Your Team Say About This Year?
At some point in the weeks ahead, there might be a lunch or evening event, where glasses are raised to the year just gone. Someone senior will probably tell you what a year it’s been. Well done all. Cheers!
Don’t Wait for January (It’s the Worst Month to Start)
Nobody, in the entire history of the National Health Service, has ever stood on a ward in the second week of January and thought: ‘You know what this place needs? A new initiative.’
What a Brilliant INSET Day Actually Looks Like
Let’s be honest about the bar.
Everyone reading this has survived an INSET day that involved a cold hall, a flipchart and a PowerPoint with 74 slides about assessment data. There may have been a fire safety video from 2011. Lunch was a platter of sandwiches with an apologetic amount of cress. By 2pm, half the room was mentally laminating.
The Best January Decision Is Made in October
This is a post about January, written for October. Stay with me.
Picture the first Monday of January. Frost on the windscreens in the car park. Everyone’s back, slightly puffy, wearing at least one Christmas-present jumper. Resolutions are two days old and, for some, still intact.
The Half-Term Wall Is Coming (Plan for It Like You Mean It)
Right now, everything is still mostly shiny.
The displays are up and haven’t started peeling. The routines are bedding in. The reading corner still looks like the photo you planned it from. You’ve got some energy still in the tank.
Getting Wellbeing Past the Budget Meeting
Let’s talk about the room where good ideas go to die.
You know it. It’s called a budget meeting. You’ve got a wellbeing proposal you actually believe in – not a poster campaign, a proper one – and somewhere between the corridor and the third agenda item, you can feel it turning into a line that says ‘nice to have’.
The Business Case for Happiness (Steal This for Your FD)
You already believe in this stuff. That’s my guess, anyway. You’ve seen with your own eyes what a team looks like when the energy is right – and what it looks like when it isn’t. You don’t need convincing that happiness and wellbeing at work really matter.
Winter-Proofing Isn’t Just Beds and Rotas
Somewhere in your trust, right about now, there’s a meeting with the word ‘winter’ in the title.
You know the one. The room’s too warm, the biscuits are the cheap ones, and the spreadsheet has more tabs than anyone will ever open. Escalation beds. Surge rotas. Flu campaign dates. Discharge pathways. Bank and agency cover. Somebody says ‘lessons learned from last year’ and everyone looks at their shoes, because last year’s main lesson was ‘survive’.