The Changing NHS

I recently went to a meeting with a person I’d never met before. We were to discuss the design of a one-day workshop for all Chief Executives of Primary Care and Mental Health Trusts and Directors of Social Services whose organisations operated within the boundaries of a new Strategic Health Authority.

As we started our discussion it quickly became clear that the person I was meeting with was not the client. She had inherited the commitment to arrange the event from her predecessor, who, in turn, had been asked to ‘sort it out’ by a Director at the new Strategic Health Authority.

Although highly capable, experienced and personable, the person I was meeting with didn’t know all that much about the purpose of the event. It was certainly about trying to generate a shared commitment to a small number of new priorities for Mental Health services within the sector over the next few years. But beyond that? So after a while, we agreed to set-up a 3-way 30 minute conference call with the client the next day, to clarify purpose and ask a number of other questions that had cropped up. Our questions included:

• What’s the purpose of the event?
• Why are you choosing to hold it now?
• What do you think the participants will think about this workshop?
• Will participants be comfortable committing their organisation to any recommendations?
• To what extent will you be happy with identified priorities being different in different parts of the sector?
• What will happen next after the workshop?
• What role will the SHA play in managing the process after the workshop?

The conference call went well and we are now designing the workshop programme. So what? Why am I writing about this little story?

Well, it has just occurred to me that if the real client had been present at my meeting I would not have asked all these useful questions! I’d have enquired about purpose and probably also found a way to ask a couple of the other questions as our conversation progressed. But I wouldn’t have thought to ask them all and the client certainly wouldn’t have been so agreeable to play such a strong clarifying role.

Maybe I should try and introduce this ‘proxy client’ process into more of my work? But how could I accurately identify people who know just enough to be helpful? Perhaps I would be just as likely to find someone who knows just enough to be dangerous?

Steve

www.stevepashley.co.uk 

I’ve been saving posts from my favourite bloggers for a few months now and I thought it might be useful to share a few with you. They have all given me loads of ‘food for thought’ and I hope they do the same for you.

In no particular order:

+ Would you rather have customers rave about your services, your organisation or how using your services makes them feel great about themselves? See what Kathleen says in Creating Passionate Users;

+ David Maister writes about how best to offer advice when it's not been asked for. I've needed to know this for a very long time;

+ Ever wondered why it's so hard to get people motivated? The Chief Happiness Officer will enlighten you - if you're motivated enough to visit (groan). 

+ Rob Millard's The Adventure of Strategy blog draws attention to how "the folk at Visual Literacy have developed a monumental summary of graphics used in business management and strategy".

+ Seth Godin helps you to understand why switching strategy is harder than switching tactics.

+ Ever wondered what’s so hard about making those cash releasing efficiency savings? Tom Peters has a "1% No brainer" post. Do we overcomplicate things a tad?

+ Bob Sutton has some great diagnostic questions for designing or repairing a team on Work Matters.

+ Are you grappling with information overload? See Psych Centrals 5 top tips for coping. Thanks to George Ambler at The Practice of Leadership for the ‘heads up’.

+ Dr Crippen – the NHS Blog Doctor - talks about how he needs to grit his teeth and spend a few hours recording QoF data in-order to earn his practice £23,000. It's in the Monday 15th Jan section.

+ David Williams, author of the The Health Business Blog summarises a New York Times interview with Professor Clay Christensen where he talks about the lack of progress in shifting the practice of healthcare to lower cost, more accessible settings.

+ Michael McKinney’s Leadership blog introduces us to Marshall Goldsmith's idea of soliciting feedforward rather than feedback.

A couple of questions to end with:

Is this 'best of' post something you'd like to see every 3 month's or so?

Do you have any favourite posts to share?

Steve

www.stevepashley.co.uk