Share Your Change Agent Stories!

Are you taking part in The School for Change Agents this year? If so, we’d love for you to share your stories with us!

Over the next six months we will be using Sensemaker© to capture the day-to-day experiences of NHS staff trying to initiate change and improvement. Sensemaker is an innovative survey of a kind you're unlikely to have seen before.

As part of the survey, we will ask you to write a short summary describing a time when you tried to initiate change in the workplace. We will then ask you to analyse your experience using our Sensemaker “triads” to enable us to add context to that experience. 

Categorising your own experiences is easy and looks a little bit like this:

The whole survey is quite short, and will take a maximum of 20 minutes to complete. Click here to complete the Sensemaker© survey.

Why are you collecting this data?

We are hoping to capture the status of change agency in the NHS and create a White Paper to present our findings. Our community has already been helping us by contributing to our White Paper on a New Era of Change. 

We’d also like to collect data from people in other sectors, and our international participants to help us understand change agency in other organisations so don't worry if you're not working in the NHS, you won't miss out! 

Fantastic, so when is this all happening?

You will be asked to complete the Sensemaker© survey three times over the course of your School journey.

The first time will be from 2nd May (and until 16th May, when School starts). The second time will be once you have completed the School and the third time three months after you’ve completed the School (in around September). The survey will be the same each time, to help track any changes that might occur with participants' change agency.

Anyone who completes the initial survey will be invited to enter their email address, and will then receive reminders to complete the subsequent ones.

We would like to use the stories that our participants give us, word for word, as part of the findings at workshops, presentations and reports. Your stories will be used anonymously.

This all looks quite fun but are there any extra incentives for completing the Sensemaker surveys?

NHS staff who take part in Sensemaker will be upgraded for free on FutureLearn, saving you £32. Please note that if you haven't completed the first survey by the 16th May in the first round you won't be able to recieve free accreditation. NHS staff are deemed as anyone who applies using an nhs.net or nhs.uk email address (please ensure that you use your NHS email address both when signing up to FutureLearn and when completing Sensemaker).

Patients who use NHS services will also receive an upgrade for free. Please contact england.si-horizons@nhs.net to confirm eligibility.

We reserve the right to limit the number of people we upgrade, so would encourage participants to enter early.

All participants will be put into a draw, with the opportunity to win time with a member of the Horizons' team of your choice. This could be a one hour virtual one-on-one mentoring session with Helen Bevan, or Kathryn Perera. You might also like to take advantage of a training session of your choice on strategic facilitation, social media and influence or framing, re-framing and narrative with one of our Horizons subject specialists.

Have you signed up to the School for Change Agents yet?

If you've not yet signed up to the School for Change Agents, there's still time! You can sign up here. It's free to join, and all online. The live webinars start on 16 May; they're recorded so you can catch up at your convenience. You can find out more information in our frequently asked questions.