.... and breathe.....
Great this week to have some space to breathe when things are so hectic with the planning requirements and thinking ahead to what the "Challenged Health Communities" support and ten-week work plan will mean.
I was reminded this week of some work I did with a few GP practices in Yorkshire. We were looking at appointment systems in relation to availability for patients and efficiency for the practice. GPs would lament the "extras" that might get tagged on to the end of a day meaning their evening surgery always overran and they never finished on time. It is really interesting to note what happens if you change the expectation of the finish time by half an hour and then note any times you finish early. It was really useful for some in helping to get back in control of the constant sense of a work life that was not theirs to control.
This week I've again heard many people describe life as "busy" - in our world it is at this time of year with contract negotiation and planning pressures. But the reality is that this is the pace of my life and I have got comfortable with it, it is my choice, rather than my burden. It doesn't mean every day is a joy, or that there aren't days when I don't get finished when I would really want to, but not answering with "busy" as the default answer when asked "How are things?" does have a good effect for me.
The five highlights this week on Twitter (@jeclo)
Highlights of the Week 1: Discussing with our Business Intelligence Team how to work more effectively-so glad we have them in the CCG
I am really pleased as I look at the cross matrix effort that is required for many of our key tasks - from integrated governance to producing our five year strategic plan - that we have our critical business functions within the CCG, rather than in a Commissioning Support Unit. We have excellent support from Business Intelligence and have some great examples of their work. We can become a bit spoilt and make ad hoc demands to support individual pieces of work. This week was about thinking through how we get a bit more strategic about the work and move to a model that is perhaps more like 80% planned work and 20% ad hoc, rather than the inverse, which is probably where we are now.
There is really important work ahead, whether we are scoping the needs for the Better Care Fund or the supporting data for the Challenged Health Communities work, so the timing was good. We all are aligned about the purpose, lined up behind the CCG's goals.
Highlights of the Week 2: Leadership Team Development Day -School with Pay. Provocative thinking from @timrobson07 about how we live at work
The Leadership Team in the CCG spend a day on development every 6 weeks or so. I used to facilitate these, building on my years in coaching, facilitation and development before rejoining the NHS and we use a few different facilitators. This week's session was facilitated by Tim Robson from NSU Media who introduced us to some thinking of his about how work can become like school with pay. There were interesting paradigms to consider, like Teacher knows best and think about how these analogies may be true for us at work.
We are an organisation under significant pressure with financial challenges at the top of that list. Days like these are crucial for the Leadership Team to keep a focus on the assured leadership that the system and our staff need and to ensure we retain eyes to the long term, whilst attending to our challenges in the present.
Highlights of the Week 3: Feedback on Strategic Plan - more work to do, but happy with the progress and the team effort to produce quality
I am better at receiving feedback about my work than I used to be. Given time and application, I am clear that I can produce products of good quality and enjoyed that space in my consulting career. The amount of work in our strategic and operational plan means it is hard to ensure we have produced the level of quality that we would want, especially given both the extent of our ambition and the challenges that our local system faces.
All in all, the feedback from the Area Team of NHS England was that we need to do more work - we know that, so no problem with receiving helpful views about the areas that we can work on before the 4th of April and ultimately the 20th June when we need to produce further versions of the plans as well as the Better Care Fund submissions.
The role of the Planning and Programme office in support of this production is gaining momentum too and it does feel like we have the systems in place now to notch up the quality for each future versions. Without breaking my own rules as laid out above, the teams that are co-ordinating the work as well as within each commissioning team are pulling out all the stops to support the effort.
Highlights of the Week 4: Coaching and mentoring sessions with two exciting members of staff. One thing I miss is regular coaching each week
Coaching used to be a core part of a working week. I might have 3 or 4 coaching sessions in an average week and perhaps on some weeks most of the days would be taken up with development work, both individually and in groups. I don't have time for anywhere near that amount now and it is one of the things I miss most from my previous life.
I did have a couple of sessions this week with some wonderful young members of staff within the organisation who had felt able to ask for some support; that in itself is a sign that both me the organisation are getting things right. They are both exciting and I loved talking about their future careers, what they enjoy and where opportunity might lie.
I used to run a programme called Ten Steps to Me that I developed (I own a registered trademark) and it came out of the wrapper in one of the sessions. I have committed to myself that I am going to write the book of that programme this year and have booked some leave to get that moving. I coach people on the need to move from dreams, where they have little investment in making things happen, to action. Time for me to reflect on my own lessons!
Highlights of the Week 5: Individuals at the Centre - thinking about how we extend our successful programme for staff in and beyond the CCG
The most enjoyable days over the last 12 months have been those spent working on the Individuals at the Centre programme in the organisation. No organisation would set out to "put the patient at the periphery of there care, at the margin or our interest", it simply makes no sense. But there is something that is different from saying things are important and doing something about it. This programme is part of that process for NEW Devon CCG.
We have run half day workshops for over 50% of our staff with evaluation that I've never seen before, based on bringing brand concepts and a focus on purpose to stimulate thinking (one of my Change Day pledges is to get this number to over 90%). We have done Leadership Team and Governing Body Development sessions and are running a developmental learning set for nearly 30 staff over 9 months to allow 5 teams to model what excellence of putting individuals at the centre would look like - we'll see in May how brilliantly that has worked.
But today was about thinking past May and over the next 12 months about what the next stage of this programme could be for us and what might it be as a movement beyond our CCG?
If leadership is, in part, about going beyond what people expect you to do and to inspire about things that are of you own creation and initiative, this is one key piece of what keeps me smiling at the end of the week!
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