Day 80: People

Reaching more people, improve outcomes and reduce inequalities takes exceptional people working together.  I had a great conversation today with colleagues from our People Team about how we progress a People Strategy.  This includes focussing on recruitment, retention, leadership, and personal, professional, and organisational development.

For me, the most important element of this is leadership, at all levels.  The NHS ran a Leadership At The Point Of Care programme a few years ago.  I liked the concept behind this, which embedded leadership skills in front-line staff, recognising their leadership role with the people we support and within their own teams.

Day 54: Grow Your Own

In discussion today about how we meet the challenges of recruiting to some of our harder to fill posts.  These include clinical roles that support the front-line delivery of our services.  With an organisation outside of the NHS it is difficult to access funding to support the training, development and backfill costs of trainees.

If we seek to ‘grow our own’ talent, then we must make a compelling offer to them as both a learner and what the employment prospective is post-qualification.  This applies to nursing, psychology, medical specialties, and other roles too.  This will help with recruitment and retention.

Day 49: Talent Management

Interesting discussion today about talent management and where we want to be on the exclusive/inclusive spectrum.  It may seem obvious we should be inclusive, but the problem is when everyone is special, then no-one is.  However, one of Turning Point’s values is “We believe that everyone has the potential to grow, learn and make choices”.

We want to support all our people to achieve their potential.  We also want to identify current and future talent and support the nurturing of this for the benefit of both the individual and the organisation.  These are not mutually exclusive; we can do both.

Day 30: Make Mistakes Positively

When you make mistakes, fail fast, fail forward and, face the future.  Use your mistakes and those of others around you as learning opportunities, not ‘failures’. 

When I make a mistake, I can beat myself up about it; I sometimes struggle to respond positively to my emotional response. This can reduce my ability to learn properly from it.

In organisations providing health and social care services, as leaders we need to create the climate and culture for people to make mistakes, but in a safe environment.  Great leaders create space and provide resources for people to ‘try dangerous things carefully’. 

Day 17: Organisational Memory

To err is human; people learn from their mistakes but can still repeat them.  Organisations only learn from people’s mistakes if they find replicable ways to prevent them being repeated. 

This requires a learning culture, where people feel psychologically safe to recognise and admit errors.  Organisations need to look at how systems and processes support error prevention.  This can lead to a fear of standardisation that can hinder creativity and personalisation.

Systematisation doesn't have to mean standardisation, but a framework including design, delivery methods, performance/outcome measurement, continuous improvement processes; all based on evidence, policy, and values – pushing towards organisational vision.

Day 51: O.D.

My first OD (Organisational Development) Steering Group today.  OD is important for us to plan, monitor and shape how the organisation grows, learns and develops and to ensure good succession planning to develop talent for the future.  We discussed our OD plan, which includes our training & development and succession plans.

We looked at the demographics of our staff, what further detail we want to know and how we incorporate this into our Public Sector Equality Duty declaration in the new year.  We reviewed the results of our Board effectiveness survey and how we can develop future GP leaders in Luton.

Later I met with exec colleagues to discuss how we'll develop our five year strategy and more detailed two-year operating plan (2014 - 2016).

I then spent time this afternoon working on our Risk Register and Board Assurance Framework, ensuring that we're effectively managing the high-level strategic risks as well as the more operational ones.