Leading EMLA to Victory
Northamptonshire Integrated Care System – working collaboratively the system leaders leading health and social care needed to succeed where others had failed.
In the urgent care system, their challenge was to drive integration and better system working for patient flow, so patients get the right care, at the right time in the right place. In practice this means discharging patients from acute beds to social care and community packages, creating a Pull through rather than the traditional Push of hospital discharge.
As part of the ICE Living Systems Leaders team development programme, Natural Leaders where commissioned to understand, design and accelerate how to work together to facilitate the behaviour change and transformation needed. The team focused on developing trusting relationships, building a growth mindset, identifying and committing to the skill sets and agreeing a system wide set of tools and techniques needed for effective system working.
The 2-day residential programme was designed for the team as a part of a 6 month program. The two days deconstructed into 3 main focus areas:
- insight into what it’s like now, and clarify their vision for a best future, linked to the growth mindset and clear motives and drivers at both a personal and system level
- co-design in the 3 lens of mindset, skill set and tools and they first designed their best mindset focusing on openness, vulnerability and trust, then steeping forward to describe these for the system and agreeing a plan to roll in the codesign activities for the system
- engage both themselves, their organisations and the system wide at best collaboration, first by building a clear narrative, describing clearly the what as a set the priority objectives and outcomes and presenting the mindset, skill set and tools that all in the system will be enabled to acquire and use.
The Natural Leaders accelerator included development for consistent communications and engagement with the front line teams. In partnership, we developed a plan and set objectives to align personal purpose to organisational and system ambition, A key focus for the team was to develop and understand the right tools that will support system changes at scale, bringing alignment and commitment.
Natural Leaders novel environment provided a safe place to practice the new behaviours ( growth mindset and skillset) that enabled the design to work. Across the 2 days, the team were focused on problem solving and live business challenges. As a group they had a set of system initiatives around re-enablement this visual helps explain the design they took
The 2 days allowed the team to think differently, plan differently and then test and refine. In the 6 months after they made significant improvement and acceleration to the outcome of system collaboration and most importantly patient care. The Natural Leaders experience is cited as having a direct and relevant impact.
Want to find out more about this work or to plan your own powerful natural leaders experience we would love to connect. Contact Zoe.sheen@icecreates.com or call 0845 5193423
“I just want to say thank-you for a fabulous 2 days. I confess that there were times when I thought ‘what am I doing in this field?’ But on reflection, I can really see the point. I have been thinking and reflecting on the insight I gained about my leadership style and our strategy, and what I need to work on and develop. The active-learning exercises – particularly working with the sheep and talking about who we are at our best was so helpful. I came away with an appreciation that I work with such a great team of people and the projects and learning we got have really benefited our system journey.”
Debbie Draper, Person Centered Approaches Programme Manager,
East Midlands Leadership Academy
