Weeknotes S01E05
TL;DR: Too much flimflam. Flex in recruiting. Children’s EWMH Show and Tell. Mapping the SABP Digital Service Change. Strategy into Action is coming.
[Weekending 26/02/2021]
After a month of too much flimflam thinking and a hiatus for holiday I’m back with some meandering reflections 🤠.
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation?
Over the past couple of weeks I have spoken to many fantastic and varied people interested in applying for our Strategic Transformation Lead positions. These chats are so valuable in exploring what an organisation is really like and discovering more than can be in an advert. Andy Callow picks up on the value of this in his weeknotes and I’ll add my voice to recommending that this a key when applying for senior positions.
These roles are, for me, extremely exciting for two reasons.
The role: In the NHS we often have grand strategies and visions which we then get our programme directors and managers to align to. In my experience and I suspect in many organisations reality we then spend time aligning our work into beautiful buckets to show their importance, and prioritise — things in reality we were going to do anyway. Truthfully, aligning anything to strategic goals is relatively simple and often serves a purpose — notably funding, sponsorship, prowess but doesn’t really change what you do, just maybe the order. This is most likely still needed but…
…We’re looking to do something different with our STL team we’re looking (against a set of imperatives — perhaps I’ll talk about these more next week) to go and discover and explore needs, be those of our professionals or the people we serve. From here we are looking to align understanding of needed capabilities, policy and architectures and turn that into strategic areas which we will address through our ever developing user-centric delivery arm. We’re looking to challenge assumptions on the status quo the constraints of legacy clinical models and organisational centric data and technology. Identify, explore and invest in tomorrow’s capabilities rather than just responding to the ever increasing demands of today! It’s a bit akin to an internal consultancy which is continually learning centred in the reality of the complex system in which we work. Core to this will be our emerging design lab ethos — and yes these roles naturally are ‘personalised and integrated care’ focused.
It’s worth noting at this point that this team will not replace meaningful discovery and alpha by our delivery teams it is very much aimed at maturing a pipeline of problems, areas to consider which we can drive investment for — whilst recognising the platform capabilities we need to be enhancing or building.
The flex: These roles are designed to be extremely flexible (reflecting the modern way to work) – we’re looking for the best talent – not the talent that can work 37.5 hours in an office. In this I’m hoping we find a pool of diverse individuals – those who are looking for part/variable time, portfolio careers as much as those who want the opportunity to flex where they work.
Well something sparked people — we ended up with 58 applications which is unprecedented in my time recruiting in the NHS for a position at this level. I’m looking forward to the Assessment Centres once I get through the shortlisting 😱.
Through conversation with Aasha Cowey I’m also going to follow up with some analysis on whether the applicants reflect a different makeup to our standard profile. One to watch…
What did you enjoy?
Our Children’s EWMH Show And Tell – Do check out the recording if you can
Great overview of our PowerBI platform from Sam Luboff and bringing the complex nature of the Alliance together through data and importantly the ambition to openly publish as much as we can. The Trust has been at the leading edge of working with the third sector in partnerships and MDT services. Working with our charities is increasingly becoming a focus and it’s great to see the emerging thinking of working together on technology and data challenges that come with this.
A fantastic initiative from our alliance partners the Tavistock & Portman who are just releasing into beta an app to support and engage children and young people whilst on waiting lists (a big challenge).
Lastly a show and tell of the Surrey Family help hub (in beta) but I saw a huge potential to access much of our content making it truly accessible.
Sadly one other reminder we had was the nature of the funding these initiatives is still short term and project driven. For these to be sustainable we need to shift thinking on funding to services not just the initial project. It’s notable from the discovery in these initiatives the amount of previous iterations – of could have beens that can be listed.
The other big takeaway – content design is crucial and the ongoing need at scale to make these sustainable and usable.
What did you achieve?
Business planning this year is a little delayed due to covid but it did give me an opportunity for some base service cataloguing of what SABP Digital delivers day to day. It’s a reminder of how we have grown as a central function but with recognition this is connected to the growth of what we do and the value we add.
I’ve taken it a step further as well and done some simple colours to indicate shift in the covid year. We knew we were looking to change but we’ve done things at a pace that’s unheard of. The concern this raises is sustainable funding of this change. I’ve never gone into a business planning process asking for such a large shift in operating expenditure – it’s going to be interesting to see where it lands. We have responded to needs and raised expectations – it’s now for the decisions to be made on its permanence.
What are you looking forward to next week?
Covid has stifled some of our strategic next steps (whilst also speeding up others). We have the first of Strategy into Action sessions next week with the Digital Leadership team. These sessions are a fantastic opportunity to collaborate and coalesce on what we are actively going to do in the next 12 months on the way we work, the ethos and principles. Identify the barriers and forecast some of the pivots we may need to take.
Core to this is the strengths of the team and these sessions enable us to reflect and build on this. Looking forward to the session with the wider leadership team on Clifton strengths. I’ve found these incredibly useful over the last few years on understanding and working with colleagues and it’s great to have the opportunity to extend this.
Some of the buzz things I’ve thought this week (not enough time to explain more)
Humanity is technicolour so should our solutions be and this can only be achieved with inclusive and diverse teams.
With the strong nature of ‘identity’ politics being strong at the moment – it’s important to recognise that to thrive as digital we need to operate in and master the grey – falling in to ‘it’s this or it’s that’ traps is detrimental — things are rarely black or white.
