First-Time Board CDIOs Programme — Cohort 2 Summary

7 min readApr 18, 2024

TL;DR: Superb conversations with learning for all. The importance of a “Board of Me”. The Wisdom of the Crowd. Annoying t-shirts.

Background

There’s some background to this Programme, which is available in the Cohort 1 Summary.

Planning

We gathered feedback from Cohort 1 and used it to shape the programme for Cohort 2. Things that we changed:

We put together an offer and ask document to share with potential sponsors — so they knew what the deal was for kindly funding the meeting space, lunch, refreshments, accommodation, dinner and books/collateral.
Candidates were told in good time about the casual dress code
More reminders/clarification to delegates ahead of time to remind them about things to bring/location/final arrangements
With the support of sponsors, we bought every delegate two books — The First 90 days and Turn The Ship Around.
Adding in an action learning set slot
Ensuring there was cake in the afternoon!

Things that stayed the same:

NHS Providers excellent support on logistics and chasing everyone with good humour
Excellent support from sponsors
Book slots — bringing a book you highly recommend to give away

It is a testament to how much the faculty got out of it last time because the majority came back again. The faculty who supported cohort 2 were:

Yinka Makinde (day 1)
Rebecca Moore (from NHS Providers)
Amy Freeman
Kate Warriner (day 1)
Sonia Patel (joined us for the afternoon of day 1)
Martin Sadler (day 2)
Nick Hopkinson
Jim Austin (day 1)
Andy Callow

As for last time, NHS Providers did loads of the hard work, including sending out communication to all Trust CEOs, encouraging them to nominate eligible candidates at their trust. The same criteria applied:

#1: Recently appointed (in last 6 months) to the Board
#2: Recently appointed to the most senior digital role in a Trust
#3: Seeking to represent a wide range of diversity as possible

We had 9 people lined up to join us, but unfortunately 2 had to drop out at the last minute. We probably need to do more about that drop out and the consequences of it, as it might be “free” to the delegates, but it does come with cost and expectation from the sponsors. Something to think about incentivising commitment for Cohort 3.

Cohort 2 Programme Summary

This was the moment of truth, in that would the detailed notes of timings I’d taken from Cohort 1 make the running more accurate for Cohort 2. Just about I reckon.

What is great about this programme, is that everyone gets something out of it — delegates and faculty, because the breadth of experience sat round the table was phenomenal and made the discussion-based approach really valuable. Whilst quite a lot of the content was the same from Cohort 1, we changed some of the ordering around and added a few extra bits, and the questions/discussions that arose out of it are unique to the blend of delegates in each cohort.

Day 1

Amy talked about Board Basics. We had a good discussion on the role of the governing body for Foundation Trusts and the importance of having media training. Jim and Kate added much experience and wisdom to this section 2 and both talked about tips for developing really good relationships with Non-Executive Directors.

Kate gave us a snapshot of the day in her life. I enjoyed hearing about a “high-five board” used in her Town Hall meetings. She also talked of her “Board of Me” — people you need to gather round you to provide support and challenge. We also had an interesting discussion about charisma and hero leadership and how you don’t have to be an extrovert to be a great leader.

ATOS led a discussion over lunch about the One Digital Estate aspirations arising out of NHS England, followed by PA leading us in an introduction to Strengths-Based leadership, by approaching challenges from a position of strength rather than deficit. We heard about some research that showed strengths-based approaches led to improvements of performance, employee engagement and retention, and the converse for approaches that focus on weaknesses. We were introduced to the work of Marcus Buckingham in this area, which I’ve personally tagged for following up on.

Nick led a session on Executive leadership, and how to approach the Exec/Board role. He led us through a few reflective exercises. I liked his thinking on a self-1:1 where do you a check-in with yourself on a regular basis, giving some attention to all aspects of your professional wellbeing.

The day concluded with some thought-provoking thoughts from Nervecentre on the role of the C(D)IO and what the future holds when digital approaches are ubiquitous as electricity. Sonia gave us a view from the centre and talked about the new aspirations for One Digital across the NHS. The day finished with Martin dishing out the homework for Day 2.

Day 2

Martin tried to spoil my day by rocking up in a t-shirt emblazened with Informatics on the front. I have an extreme allergy to that word. I’d never heard of it in my career in technology (over 20 years at that point) until I joined an Acute hospital, so I think we have created a word that means nothing to the outside world, further isolating us from much needed inward transfer of talent. I don’t put it past him to have had the t-shirt printed specially to wind me up. He led a session on service delivery, concluding with the challenge that we should be “aspirationally idle”, in that the services that we provide as so good that we have nothing to do!

Never ever use the word Informatics ever again ever ever or else…

SCC gave us some incredibly helpful insight on what it is like trying to sell to the NHS, what their incentives are and the mystery of logging an opportunity with the software/hardware provider.

After lunch, I talked about making a success of your first 100 days in role, drawing heavily on the Michael Watson book everyone had been given. Then Amy led an action learning set on a problem one of the delegates was kind enough to be willing to share and collectively explore.

We finished the day by picking one of the gifted books we wanted to take home, collecting feedback via short survey and agreeing the mentoring arrangements for the next 6 months.

Reflections/Feedback

I haven’t looked at the feedback survey as yet, but some of the in-session feedback collected was:

Importance of maintain the balance of supplier input/freedom to talk
Really like the conversational approach rather than being lectured at
Could we locate the meeting venue, dinner location and accommodation nearer to each other or in the same place next time to reduce the faffing that introduces?
Could we have collected wicked issues from the delegates ahead of time and shared with the sponsors to invite them to come prepared to talk about those issues?
Spending more time on the strengths would be valuable
Could we do better on doing introductions with suppliers/delegates and faculty, particularly when some people knew each other very well
Could we get some input from a different sector or industry to a different slant to the discussions?
Could we have asked the delegates to produce a 1-page bio like the faculty did (this was one that also we got as suggestion from cohort 1 and still didn’t manage to do !)
Should we ask sponsors to talk about a book that has been impactful for them too?