Tweets of the Week, 25 September 2020

The Horizons team features many influential Twitter users. This curates a wealth of insights, knowledge, and information about transformation in health and care from other thought leaders across the world. (Tip: to read an article or watch a video mentioned in a tweet, click on the blue text. To view the original tweet, click on the image).

#Caring4NHSPeople

Financial concerns are one of the secondary stressors impacting #OurNHSPeople during COVID-19. We have partnered with Money Pensions UK to develop a financial wellbeing support offer. Join us for our launch & first interactive session in a new mini-series

You can also watch our last #Caring4NHSPeople wellbeing community event here. As well as a 2minute summary video below.

#YearoftheNurseandMidwife

An increasingly frequent conversation topic when we are speaking with colleagues at the point of care is about balancing an exhausted workforce with the opportunities for improvement. This  latest report from the Kings Fund adds insight and examples for creating the conditions for our workforce to grow.

Leadership and Teams

The NHS is moving to a mindset of "system-first" or "system by default", meaning that we focus on the bigger system of health & care rather than individual organisations or silos. As leaders we must also role model "system first" in how we think & behave in the world.

There's a big trend in organisational design towards "self-management" and more decentralised ways of working. However, leaders tend to over focus on structures & processes for this. We should think much more about mindsets and ways of being.

#VirtualCollaborate

Meetings or workshops on Teams or Zoom can be as good as, or even better than, face to face meetings if they are well facilitated. We need to invest massively in building virtual meeting facilitation skills. Here's 10 top tips from Krystyna Gadd.

"Liberating Structures" are powerful facilitation methods. I recommend LS to anyone/everyone wanting better results from their virtual or face to face workshops. The Q Community LS user group meeting is open to all, not just members of Q.

In Helen's practice as a virtual facilitator, she often uses "human spectrograms". They're a powerful way of surfacing differences & similarities in a Teams/Zoom session. Here's a great little film by Training for Change showing 10 ways to use a virtual human spectrogram.

Change and Innovation

Helen shared being part of a great meeting with " Young Pioneers": A secure online community for 13-30 year olds with type 1 diabetes.  They can show that getting power through peer-to-peer support makes a big difference for young people.

There's many myths about making big change happen in organisations. No, we don't have to start big, we don't have to have senior leaders and/or critics on board, and it doesn't have to be top down or bottom up. We just have to get started.

Helen shares that she sometimes winces when she see change or transformation plans that talk about "driving" change through the organisation or system. Large scale, sustainable change is more likely to happen if we grow it, not drive it.

If we're going to make the space to start new projects & initiatives, we have to get better at stopping doing other things, quickly. To do this, we need to make more decisions reversible, make work more visible & overpower fear of failure. Start stopping faster.

Helen shared being on the Innovation Learning Network speaking panel with a group of amazing healthcare innovators from around the world including. Helen and Lucien Engelen talked about the zoom in/zoom out model as an alternative to traditional planning.

COVID-19 and Recovery

Many people are feeling the "dip" after six months of #Covid19 response. They say that earlier in the pandemic, their reservoir of energy & creative ideas was full but now it's running out. The reality: the best ideas often follow the dip.

Many organisations are planning their recovery/restoration/reimagined phase, post #Covid19. At present, Helen shared that she sees a lot of teams creating radical, transformational ideas but their action planning approach to make it happen is highly transactional. We need transformation follow up too.

And Finally...

This week was #NELFTThankYouWeek. NELFT is thanking all the people who work & volunteer in the organisation for the outstanding job they do. The NELFT CEO, Oliver Shanley is leading this in such a positive, energising way. Helen hopes that other leaders might follow Oliver's example