First-Time Board CDIOs Programme — Cohort 3 Summary
TL;DR: First time with a full cohort. New sessions on Cyber Security, Optimism and Curiosity. Wonderful learning for all and still room for iteration.
Background
There’s some background to this Programme, which is available in the Cohort 1 Summary. You can see how it evolved in the Cohort 2 Summary.
More Planning
As with Cohort 1, we gathered feedback from Cohort 2 and updated the programme. Things we changed:
- Adding in a slot about Cyber Security
- New slot about Curious Leadership
- Extended the lengths of the Strengths session
- Gave Service Management more time
- Gave the Action Learning Set session more structure and time
- Adding in an agreement to pay a penalty on cancellation after commitment. In cohorts 1 and 2 we had last minute drop outs. This was based on a consideration that whilst it feels free to the delegates, it is not free for the sponsors, plus those places could have been taken by those on the waiting list.
- I publicised the programme via LinkedIn and other social media platforms as well as the NHS Providers comms. Via that route we went from having a low number of people to becoming over-subscribed in a matter of days.
Things that stayed the same:
- NHS Providers excellent support on logistics made the difference between this programme being viable or just too much to handle
- Great support from Sponsors
- We gave each delegate two books, but this time it was — The First 90 days and Aspirationally Idle.
Faculty supporting cohort 3 this time around:
- Rebecca Moore (from NHS Providers)
- Amy Freeman
- Martin Sadler
- Nick Hopkinson
- Andy Callow
For the first time in the programme, all the delegates who committed to attend managed to come and we had a full compliment of 12 for the first time too.
Cohort 3 Programme Summary
This time we met in Leeds, which was strange and familiar after a 5 year absence of working there, including getting on the same trains I used to catch. We met at the Government Building 7–8 Wellington Place which was just foundations when I left NHS Digital in 2019.
I opened the day with the view that we are not here to just talk at the delegates, it only works when we have a series of conversations, which recognises that collectively the whole group of faculty and delegates have considerable experience and knowledge to impart to the whole group. Certainly Martin, Amy, Nick and I have a level of self-interest in doing this programme as always we get a lot out of the sessions and leave with new ideas and energy. The interesting thing I’m noting as I write this summary is that even though some of the source content is the same as last time, the discussions have often gone in different directions.
Day 1
Amy talked about Board Basics. She acknowledged the demand on money and Trusts needing to decide in investing “Clicks or Bricks”. As we talked about needing to be strategic, we had a really interesting discussion if a Trust needs a separate Digital, Data and Technology strategy or just needs to be embedded in the overall Trust Strategy. Some Trusts represented have already done this, whereas others felt that there needed to be some foundational work done first. Amy offered advice about going outside your professional lane, by “embracing your inner gobsh**e.”. We then got into a debate about the current context we find ourselves in and pondered if the current environment is even possible to be successful in, leading to needing to be comfortable with continually making least-worst decisions. Finally Amy reminded us that taking time out of the organisation like we did over these two days is part of essential professional development — and our doctor colleagues have planned in time for their development as a result.
Amy then continued by talking about a day in the life.. We all sat up sharply when she said she’d managed to make a case with the hospital charity to fund a small AI team for the next two years. We also heard that Martin had established an associate CCIO for AI, so lots of creative work in constrained times to explore this area that will impact health massively. She also described how she’d created her own “magic quadrant” diagram with spend on the y-axis and strategic importance on the x-axis, and giving her time to the high value and high strategic clients.
PA led us in an extended Strengths session, with a number of practical exercises individually and in pairs. Strengths are something that someone loves doing, is good at and is energised by. Research shows that given equal knowledge and skills, strengths differentiate top performers from the rest. Interestingly, the research also shows that using 20% of the time at work is sufficient to motivate and carry us forward each day. I enjoyed seeing another Marcus Buckingham video, which I remember watching a few of them after Cohort 2.
Nick took us through Executive Leadership, attempted a reference to Oasis (of course everyone was too young to get it) and led us through some reflective exercises.
Hinesh and Helen from Moorhouse then did a session on Curious Leadership, which include some Lego Serious Play.
At the end of the day, Nervecentre facilitated a session on Transformational Leadership, where Iain spoke about the East Midlands Acute Providers Digital Design Collaborative. I feared this could have been a bit strange, as there were three of us from the East Midlands in the room who were involved, but the topic really stimulated a good conversation.
As ever, Day 1 finished with Martin dishing out homework for the group.
Day 2
Martin took the group through their homework and then onto a session on service delivery, drawing heavily on his excellent book “Aspirationally Idle”. Martin started by talking about queueing theory and made a great argument to focus on logging wasted time, rather than at first time fix, or queue times; he proposed that we should be working out how much cumulative time the organisation wastes waiting for things to be fixed and then use that as a basis to staff up a service desk accordingly. He also talked about profiling the number of service desk colleagues according to known demand periods. Our conversation went on to apply the same queueing conversation to areas such as ED and Pharmacy dispensary.
Eleanor and Simone from Channel 3 did a session on Reasons To Be Optimistic. Despite the title, we did a have a few moments of cathartic venting about the current challenges across the NHS currently, including one person (nameless) talking about a silly situation where their Trust took a decision that negatively impacted patients in order to achieve higher level of tariff income. We did get to brighter discussions in due course.
I was delighted to make space for the brilliant Mike Fell in the programme to come and talk about Cyber Security. Mike reminded us of the need to do the basics, including compliance with GDPR which will actually protect organisations from around 95% of the common threats. He also felt that a there was a strong correlation between levels of cyber security risk and organisations that had DSPT “standards not met”.
I did a session on the first 100 days, drawing from the First 90 days book — a bonus 10 days for the NHS! Then Amy and Nick led an Action Learning Set session, where we split into two groups and spent about an hour working on a couple of problems collectively.
As with Cohort 2, we finished the day by picking one of the gifted books [see below for the list] we wanted to take home, collecting feedback via short survey and agreeing the mentoring arrangements for the next 6 months.
Reflections/Feedback
We really value the feedback from delegates and have tried to use it to adapt each cohort of the programme. We got some great input electronically:
- “Great event and flowed really well”
- “I would definitely recommend this course, a superb set of facilitators that’s brought together a really great group of people”
- “Very valuable and time well spent”
- “Good format, though static by nature of session. Suggest some more quick breaks to get up and walk around! Venue not great, reception, loo monitor etc Would def recommend”
- “You’re not alone. It’s good to share and talk. There’s amazing learning you can obtain from taking the time to stop the day job”
And verbally:
- Could we have included some input on politics
- Much as it was good in theory to use a NHS England venue, the restrictions on entry/being monitored didn’t help for relaxed movement around
- Being clearer about accommodation being provided as part of the programme
And so to Cohort 4
As a result of my LinkedIn post, we now have a waiting list for the next session, so we’ll start thinking about that in a few weeks. There are a few things we need to remember (embarrassing that some of these were from Cohort 2 feedback that we failed to apply this time):
- Being specific that we expect delegates to bring a physical book to gift
- 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?
- Could we have asked the delegates and faculty to produce a 1-page bio and shared in advance
- Should we ask sponsors to talk about a book that has been impactful for them too?
Appendix A: The Gifted Books
- White Fragility by Robin DiAngelo
- Being Mortal by Atul Gawande
- Radical Candor by Kim Scott
- Black Box Thinking by Matthew Syed
- Surrounded by Idiots by Thomas Erikson
- Aspirationally Idle by Martin Sadler
- The Diary of a CEO by Stephen Bartlett
- Open Side by Sam Warburton
- The Accidental CIO by Scott Millett
- Making Digital Healthcare Happen in Practice by Ruth Chambers
- The Alchemist by Pablo Coelho
- The CTO/CIO Bible by Rorie Devine
- The Leader’s Way by The Dalai Lama
- The Phoenix Project by Gene King, Kevin Behr and George Spafford
- Once by James Herbert
- Why Digital Transformations Fail by Tony Saldanha
