An NHS Trust prepares its leaders to Transform Community Services
Business Challenge
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Developing keen competence in financial management, commercial and business awareness as well as the insight, sensitivity and resilience to manage teams working with the most needy citizens is a challenge.
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It is this challenge facing NHS Primary Care Trusts that requires them to support their leaders and managers to rapidly Transform Community Services, integrate their services with other agencies and operate in a highly regulated environment demanding continuous improvement and challenging efficiency savings.
Echelon’s Solution
Echelon enabled the Trust to rapidly assess the competence of individual managers with a process of online 360 degree feedback. We designed an online 360 tool enabling participants to be reviewed against the nine Transforming Community Services Competencies.
Key Benefits
As a result of the information and feedback harvested from this exercise the Trust was able to
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identify the current capability of its leadership to transform community services
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undertake a gap analysis of the development needed for the cohort of leaders and for each individual
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provide each leader with personal coaching and a development plan
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provide each leader with instant access to a website of support materials in the form of practical recipes for managing change.
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Echelon’s solution
Research
The 9 TCS competencies published by the Department of Health are spare, consisting of little more than headlines, but together they provide a helpful framework of intent.
Along with the Trust's strategic plan and helpful conversations conducted with 'thought leaders' in the Trust we were able to design a comprehensive suite of nine targeted competencies that describes the essential 'leadership DNA' for this change.
Buy in
All change is scary and NHS leaders have 'suffered' constant change, so fear is overlaid with a healthy dose of cynicism. This is also a market which has been heavily oversold every management technique and process in the quest for greater efficiency, innovation and risk management.
Getting buy in from a group such as this is difficult – they have undergone frequent 360 reviews, appraisals and feedback as part of professional development, management training and organisational development.
We resolved to be practical, timely and time saving and to provide the kind of added value benefit that would be of value to each participant regardless.
We also resolved to facilitate a briefing session that would engage their generosity in offering their experiences, their wisdom and their needs; and importantly to utilise all of these in getting them to audit and sign off the final suite of competencies.
Two personal coaching sessions [from a panel of Echelon coaches they could select from] supported participants to get the best possible diagnostic support and value from the process.
Design and Delivery
The TCS competencies were designed for specific relevance to this cohort of leaders. This entailed developing the underpinning characteristics and behaviours of each ␉competency against which this cohort could be reviewed for organisational contribution, personal competence and future development need.
Participants were asked to go online using their password and unique ID to select around nine respondents drawn colleagues, stakeholders and even partners. Their self assessment questionnaire was completed in 15 minutes and then the system did the rest, notifying [and chasing up respondents].
Each participant received a detailed feedback report from their designated personal coach. It was packed with quantitative, qualitative feedback and benchmarked data ␉and provided a helpful platform from which to draw up a future focused role profile ␉in a two hour coaching session.
Time for reflection is vital in these situations and a further coaching session several weeks later enabled each participant to consider and draw up a development plan for themselves.
Meanwhile each participant could download a host of practical ideas and applications ␉from the learning website that accompanied this feedback tool.
Each competency signposted a number of suggested development activities and there were enough to engage different learning styles and accommodate different ␉work environments.
Communication
Each participant received 3 hours of dedicated feedback and development support as well as the opportunity to participate in a briefing session which invited their involvement in tailoring the competencies.
Sustaining the initiative
The TCS competencies can be further employed in underpinning the recruitment of new leaders, for appraising them and importantly for supporting development centre activities. This will form an essential part of the talent management toolkit to sustain this transformation of community services.
Evaluating the outcome
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A summary report describing the development needs of this cohort with suggested actions was fed back into the Trust and provided a template for the design of future ␉development interventions. to commissioning manager
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A report of the organisational issues/benefits in separating commissioner and provider services that was derived from this feedback helped in informing new ␉patterns of provision.
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Individual feedback reports whilst remaining confidential to the participant provided useful indicators for organisational improvement.
Echelon, Angles House, 210 Sheen Lane, London SW14 8LB; 020 8274 9965