Foundation Trusts - A Follow Up

Following on from last week’s post (Foundation Trusts - The First 100 Days), I had an interesting chat with Mike Cooke yesterday.

Mike is Chief Exec of South Staffordshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust – one of only 3 Mental Health Trusts that currently have FT status.

Mike had some interesting observations on the post. With apologies in advance to Mike for any errors, here is my ‘take’ on our discussion:

1. Just because you’ve become an FT it doesn’t mean you can start innovating and striking deals all over the place straight away. Monitor and all new FTs are together in a new relationship and you still need to 'earn’ the space to innovate – becoming an FT doesn’t earn you the ‘space' per se becasuse the DoH can't give it to you any more – having a ‘track record’ of compliance with Monitor’s performance management regime earns the 'space’ from them! 

2. That said, five months in to being an FT, the Trust was now starting to pursue a range of initiatives (12-15) that should lead to new ‘service lines’ being established or existing ones extended. Not all of these will happen, but pursuing them has meant that the nature of management has had to be rethought. Whilst the vast majority of managers are still focused on continuously improving operational performance (whilst better understanding and responding to client needs and preferences) a growing number are also focused on pursuing these new strategic opportunities. This has led to the introduction of an internal ‘licence to explore’ system being introduced where managers continue to earn space to pursue iniatives if operational performance remains good.

3. When these new initiatives start to become real, the Trust may need a new breed of managers to co-exist alongside the current ones – these people might be thought of as integrationists – people who can quickly integrate the new initiatives into core Trust processes, remove unnecessary duplication etc. Perhaps the initiatives that can be 'ringfenced' from core Trust operating processes are the ones that are least risky in the long-term.

4. Once you are an FT people and organisations approach you with opportunities!(particularly if you are in the first trance or two). ‘Deals’ come to you because you are seen as credible and worth working with/for. Perhaps an FT needs to spend as much time thinking through how to ‘make itself available’ to potential partners as how to seek out opportunities itself?

So, breaking free in the first 100 days might be too ambitious, but here's one FT that's ‘in motion’ and that’s very encouraging, don’t you think?

Steve

www.stevepashley.co.uk