Coaches come in threes

Faceless Bureaucrat:  They say buses come in threes but I've now discovered coaches do too.  I can't believe I'm in the situation where I have three coaches, all at once.

My coaches don't have wheels of course, they are all young (23-35), male and all of them are really amazing.  A generation ago it would never have happened,to a woman of my years (no I'm not telling, but I have a married daughter!  I was barely out of nappies when I had her though...).  Indeed, a woman of my years being coached in three different areas of her life by three fab young men.  I can't believe it.  And I have seen all three of them in the last two days.

So how did it happen?  Well the first one I collected is my personal trainer in the gym, Chris.  He's been my coach for the last 2 years and his is the thankless task of helping me win the battle of the bulge.  He's my youngest coach at 23 and is, obviously, very fit.  In a health and wellbeing sort of way of course.

My next coach - and here I slip into Bad Assed Trader, if I can put it like that - is Emmanuel, my Forex trading coach.  Emmanuel (30 years old very soon I understand, very tall, very dark and very...) has coached me for a few sessions now and has been incredible at keeping me motivated, helping me to believe I can crack this trading lark.  He helps me see the error of my ways when, as we go over my trades, we see little bits of evidence of me making trades, or jumping in too soon etc etc.  Not only is he himself an experienced and successful trader but he reads interesting books on philosophy, psychology and sociology.  He reads Nietzsche, recommended "The Road Less Travelled" to me (I read it 30 years ago but I only told him 20...) and is now reading a book I gave him "I'm OK, you're OK".

My third coach - and now I'm back into Faceless Bureaucrat mode - is my most recent acquisition.  His name is Ciaran (Irish in case you didn't know) and he's the more mature coach at 35 (I am guessing here - well actually I asked my boss to guess and that's what she reckoned, I'm crap at ages).  Ciaran is the only one I'm not paying through one route or another.  Well I suppose I am in a way, through taxes and through losing my job.  Because it's as a result of the impending redundancy that I have been given, by my employer two coaching sessions with Ciaran who is highly trained and experienced and works for Hays Management Consultancy.  He's helping me to plan my next steps.  We had our first session yesterday and he was just great.

In my usual spirit of openness and honesty I did share everything with him, my desire to hang on until September before being made redundant, but at that point the P45 would be very welcome.  He was very excited about me trading Fx and helped me with lots of ideas as to how to extend my employment just that little bit longer.  He is definitely in cahoots with me, which is just how it should be.

So.  With all this coaching am I making progress?  I believe I am turning a corner.  Whether that's in getting the washboard stomach, a new job or hitting the big time with Fx....you will have to find out next time....

Turkey votes for Christmas

Faceless Bureaucrat:  How bizarre to be in this situation.  Personally I agree that bureaucracy in the NHS has burgeoned out of control and has gone beyond the point of adding value.  I also agree that clinicians, particularly GPs, should be driving the decisions about use of health care resources in their area.  These are the key points the Coalition Government makes and hence their decision to make nearly 21,000 NHS managers redundant and it looks like I'll be one of them if I don't sort something out by April.

They are estimating a redundancy bill of £1billion, it's a high price to pay for this strategy, let's hope it's worth it in the terms of the radical changes needed.

I can see why they feel it's necessary.  Many of us have been institutionalised as NHS managers, we can be wedded to complex and lengthy decision making processes, we can be prone to avoiding risk and we can give more weight to following orders from on high than working with local clinicians and communities to determining what is needed and putting that first.  But to be honest we are public servants, following the orders of a democratically elected Government.  The last Government, despite what they said, made it crystal clear they wanted us to look upwards rather than outwards and as one of their national advisers said to me last year "bureaucracy is in their DNA" so it became part of ours.

Give us a new set of masters and we follow their orders instead.  In a democracy it's what the tax payer would want from public servants, what's the alternative? Rebellion and chaos...

So here we are now, diligently obeying the next set of democratically determined orders and helping the new GP commissioning consortia to get up and running whilst, in an orderly fashion, sacking our colleagues and ourselves.  We are the turkeys voting for Christmas and I'm one of them, right up to the point where I become a bad assed trader.

I recently commented on the BBC website that I support the changes being proposed even though I am at risk of being made redundant and ended up being interviewed on Drive Time BBC London to share my thoughts with the world.  I'll tell anyone who cares to listen...

It doesn't mean I'm happy with the way things are turning out.  I was completely sold on the prospect of GPs determining the size and shape of their commissioning consortia but sadly many of them are plumping for massive organisations that are looking uncannily like the Primary Care Trusts they are supposedly replacing.  How will this be different?  Come on guys - you're not managers - do this differently!  This is the whole point.  It's what we're sacrificing our careers for.

The strength of general practice and GPs is that they understand their patients, their families and their local communities at a very deep level.  They are small enough to be responsive and fleet of foot in decision making and implementing change.  They understand the clinical impact of change, they appreciate the relevant importance of one treatment regime against another.  They see the inefficiencies day in day out and as master problem solvers they often see the solution, where things need to change to help the patient get more quickly to the help they need.

They are at the heart of the NHS front line, the centre of the network of local support, the co-ordinator and advocate for the patient and this is what needs to be brought forward as the driving force of commissioning in this brave new world.

But they're scared.  They see the £20bn headline for savings the NHS needs to make over the next 3 years and they're worried that if they don't perform that their personal income will be affected or they'll be thrown out of general practice.  They figure there's safety in numbers so they cling together, pooling resources as they see it to be more economically efficient.  But is it?  If it was then why didn't it work last time round?  Are big organisations really more financially efficient?  From my view they tend to be big lumbering, one size fits all, lowest common denominator driven, bureaucratically heavy, anti innovation, demoralising and disempowering lumps of anti matter.

Why don't the GPs keep the power house local and club together at a higher level to bulk buy as they see fit?  Drive it from the bottom up rather than giving up their power to the higher authority?

Yes they would have nowhere to hide in terms of responsibility and accountability but actually they still will with the bigger set up, the difference is that unless they're a mover or shaker in the new arrangement their power and influence is massively diluted.  A price worth paying to be part of a big herd?

Maybe when the dust settles that is what they'll do, set up some local decision making processes to drive their organisations, I hope so.  If I'm paying for this change with my job I'd really like to see some courage and innovation being put into play here.  I've worked with GPs supporting them to commission services for the last 10 years, I still believe they can do it, but they need to be clear about their strengths and weaknesses, take their courage in both hands and go for it.

Here I am, the supposedly risk averse faceless bureaucrat, forging my alternative career in the notoriously high risk Forex trading to help bring this new world into play, I'd really like to see the new NHS leaders accepting some of the risks inherent with their new powers...

A new approach

Bad Assed Trader: It's been an instructive two weeks, she said positively.  As I've been saying for a little while to anyone who's cared to ask, I'm learning rather than earning.

I sneaked back onto my broker's trading platform a week ahead of plan and had a few interesting experiences.  I had an instructive one with a short trade on sterling (GBP USD) when I moved my stop loss too quickly and got stopped out for a profit of £22 when if I'd left it where it was I'd have hit my profit target of 1% (about £110) but if I'd managed the trade differently I could have made twice that.

A week later I put a short trade on the Euro (EUR USD) which I closed prematurely for a profit of £9.74 when price wasn't going anywhere only to see price tank to my 1% target and beyond.

Oh these are the classic errors of trading!  I've read all about them and yet have I learnt?  Well, it's still early days, I'm still considered "fresh meat" so I guess it's inevitable.  But I am tapping my head and telling myself that I have to mend the error of my ways, I don't want to keep making the same mistakes over and over again, it's just not profitable and that is, after all, the point of me doing this stuff.

The following day (we're up to 12 Jan now) I caught the beginning of a massive move on sterling.  This time I was flawless and took my 1% profit.  It's been difficult accepting this was a good move though because I watched price continue to rise, without dropping below technical levels (the 50 day moving average line) at which I would have taken the trade out if I was managing it.  The little sod went all the way up about 6% - that would have netted me over £650 if I'd stayed in it.

It's a tricky game to be sure.

The long and short of it all is that my wins to losses are 1:2 which is not good.  So I'm doing serious reflection. The failing is with me, without doubt, and I have to raise my game.

So I had a coaching session with a senior trader who is helping me onto the straight and narrow.  He has given me clear instructions which I am now following to the letter.  We have agreed that I am sticking to one trading strategy.  I have very clear rules which I must stick to for entering, managing and exiting the trade.  If I see these criteria met then I take the trade.

I have to do 30 perfect trades following this plan.  If I fail to follow the rules precisely then I must start again, that is the punishment.

I have been following this agreed plan for a week and a day.  I thought I might be able to do it on the second go, chances were I would mess up on at least one trade before I hit 30.  I'm on my fourth try - I did 8 trades and then realised I'd broken a rule on trade 6, start again.  I did one trade and then realised I hadn't strictly followed the rules.  Third time lucky.  Three trades later and I've clicked "buy" 2 minutes ahead of plan.  Start again.  I've now taken 12 trades without error, I believe.  I will be reviewing them tomorrow, scrutinising them for any errors and I will be hard on myself.

It sounds awful doesn't it?  But I'm loving it!  I left that coach feeling liberated and sure of what to do which has been wonderful after tarting myself around with every currency pair and strategy in the book. Now I know what to do and I'm just doing it.

At the same time I reduced by over a third the amount I am risking each time and I won't increase it until I'm consistently winning more than I'm losing.  So far I'm improved my performance to 1:1 wins to losses and they're the same value so I'm exactly where I've started.  BUT I've realised that as I'm continuing with the same strategy I'm starting to spot what works and what doesn't better and that's helping me to filter out some of the less likely trades.

And I've also finally discovered my trading personality, something I'll share a bit more about in my next blog.

Oh and the news on the impending redundancy.

Isn't life exciting....?!