The programme participants comprise three nominees from each system, and include people from local government as well as from the NHS. There is a mix of clinicians from across primary care, community trusts and acute services; commissioners; Heads/Directors of Services; Chief Operating Officers and Chief Executives. The programme involves four one-day events in London, with learning sets between. The learning sets deliberately include a mix of participants up so that people are not solely working with others from their ‘patch’, as they explore their system challenges.
The overall aim is to build awareness of what it means to lead in a system and to work across boundaries, and strengthen people’s leadership capacity, through a mix of hearing from people involved in this work; learning about systems leadership ideas and approaches; and having time to reflect on what it means for them and learn from each other.
In mid-October, our session will be focused on introducing systems leadership, with participants hearing from Simon Stevens, Chief Executive of NHS England/Improvement, and from Rob Webster, who currently leads the West Yorkshire ICS. By December we will meet again to explore ICSs in their wider context, and it will be important for us to getting as many non-NHS voices in the room as possible to give the full understanding of the wider system. We’ll be joined by Donna Hall, formerly Chief Executive of Wigan Council as well as people using services and parent carers. In January we will have an opportunity to look at leadership behaviours, including more on public narrative and reframing, before rounding up our learning together in March.
As with all of our work at the Leadership Centre, the programme is highlight responsive to the feedback of participants, so we will be tweaking our approach as we go. So far, feedback has been highly supportive, and also shown how people are starting to use the learning to try out new ways of working in their own places. If you would like more information please do get in touch with Debbie : debbie.sorkin@leadershipcentre.org.uk