Weeknotes s05e01
TL;DR: Personality assessment of motives and strengths. Feedback to candidates. End date looms large.
[week ending 06/01/2023]
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? I had a conversation with Amy and Nicci about the Midlands Digital Health Skills Development Network. Amy has taken over co-chairing with me from Mike, so we had a brief chat about the forthcoming steering group agenda.
This week, with all NHS providers in the Northants region being in Critical Incident, I joined as many system conference calls as I was able to.
In preparation for starting my new role at NUH, I completed a Strength Deployment Inventory (SDI 2.0). I joined a call to get an explanation of what the various elements were and where I sat on the diagram, and what that meant. On my first day in the new role, we’ll be exploring this as an Executive team.
What did you enjoy? Sarah, Matt and were the panel for the ICB Digital Director role. All I can say on this for now.
I had a call with Martin from Sandwell and West Birmingham and picked his brain about a number of things. Some for the current role and some for the future. He left me with lots to think about.
What did you achieve? I did a couple of interview feedback sessions with candidates from the Group Chief Digital Information Officer role. I’d gone through all the panel’s notes and created some consolidated feedback summaries.
I continued to add to my handover notes. The more I add, the more I think about, so it feels a lot more work to do on it.
What are you looking forward to next week?
- Spending some time with Suzie, the new UHN incoming Director of Comms and Engagement
- Getting my handover notes finished and trying to tie off a few final things.
Next week will be my final 5 days at UHN. It will be a week of mixed emotions — sadness of leaving an organisation I feel a lot of loyalty to, sadness of leaving colleagues who have become friends and excitement & anxiety of starting a new job.
Interesting Stuff read/consumed:
- Plan Continuation Bias by Tom Connor (linked to via Roy Lilley’s daily blog). “This is the cognitive bias to continue with the original plan in spite of changing conditions and growing evidence that you should reconsider.” The article goes on to reference ways to tackle this, from a Harvard Business Review article, which included “The opening of the window should initiate a brief but intense period of heightened inquiry, experimentation, and problem solving in which people feel free to ask uncomfortable questions about the potential threat. During this period, employees must be able to explore the significance of aberrant observations without fear of retribution should the threat prove harmless.”
- How to Succeed Quickly in a New Role — Five ways to build a strategic network by Rob Cross, Greg Pryor, and David Sylvester at HBR. Pretty relevant article given my new start in a weeks time. I was particularly struck by words in the opening paragraph; “in today’s hyper-collaborative and dynamic workplaces, successful moves aren’t as easy as they once were, even for the most qualified and hardworking people. Too often, transitioning managers and employees don’t live up to their organizations’ expectations”. The article talks about some of this being linked to the importance of collaboration with new networks “collaboration in even the most transactional roles had risen markedly, with most leaders and knowledge workers spending 85% or more of their time in collaborative activities — on the phone, on email, and in meetings” …. yet “only 20% of companies surveyed by i4cp indicated that helping new hires establish critical organizational networks is an objective of their onboarding process”. More to think about my plans in joining NUH…
- Richard Corbridge’s Review of 2022. Always keen to see what Richard is up to and his honest reflections that I’ve followed for some years now. This led to reading his Wired article on The Future of Health on the High Street.
- Millions of hours of doctors’ time lost each year to ‘inadequate’ IT systems from the BMA. Which is a summary of a report Building the Future Getting IT Right. “Just 11% of doctors responding to the survey reported ‘completely’ having the necessary hardware equipment to perform their roles”. …“while funding for IT infrastructure has increased is ‘has not been sufficient to deliver ambitions’ with National Audit Office data from 2020 showing trusts in England collectively spend 2% on IT/technology, less than the recommended level of 5%.”
Books finished since last weeknote:
- Non-Fiction: Compassionate Leadership: Sustaining Wisdom, Humanity and Presence in Health and Social Care by Michael A. West.
- Fiction: The Woman Who Wouldn’t Die by Colin Cotterill.
Currently Reading:
- Non-Fiction: Not started it yet, but have got Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman by the bed ready to start. I did a scan of my bookshelves over the festive break and selected 4 or 5 books that I’ve not read to particularly target this year.
- Fiction: Tangerine by Christine Mangan. Reading this for home bookclub. Got about 80 pages to read before Monday.
