Why I donned the blue gilet… and you should too
I’m recruiting to two critical roles in my team
In a nutshell — Because when I wear the blue gilet I feel part of a team that has been challenged and empowered to work in an agile manner to improve the NHS through culture change and clinically-led digital innovation. So what’s not to like about that?
So if that got you interested— simply apply to the various roles in my team (the first one reporting to me directly).
If you’re curious, let’s break this down a bit — bear with me not in order
Working in an agile manner
This means two things.
- This is the critical element of this role and look forward to hearing your vision of what it means to you.
Imagine your typical IT service desk with people logging ‘tickets’. The tickets we received are not about troubleshooting or incidents, but about digital transformation projects, so they take a bit longer to assess, scope, sort, deliver. As there is always more demand than supply, how would you (i) implement scrum/agile methodologies to prioritise the inevitable backlog of tickets, (ii) provide great (internal) customer service, and (iii) ensure the allocation of internal IT resources is reasonable?
Our ‘Demand’ meetings, when we collectively try to sort this challenge, are the beating heart of our department. I would like the team to leave this meeting energised, ready to roll and feeling on top of the world. To support this, we’ve moved to a dynamic platform such as Monday.com, adding resources to the team, refining our ‘gateway’ processes. We still need to move to sprinting and that feeling of ‘on top of the world’. If you want to help us achieve this, this is the role for you.
2. This is a hybrid role. I have been working 50% remotely since 2016 and would support you in allowing you to manage your time how you like so that you feel happy — in fact, I’ll be asking you week by week if you *are* happy in your role and how to support you stay there. I currently work condensed hours (4 days in 5, one in the office), take meetings during wellbeing walks, and encourage that part of our work is undertaken in the clinical ‘shop floor’ helping troubleshoot and support our clinical colleagues to make it real.
Like my visit in the Paediatric Emergency Department, supporting with giving drinks and food to parents and children waiting for care. Or my great success troubleshooting a label printer.
Challenged and empowered
Doing change is hard and in the NHS, there’s never enough resources to do what we want to do, and we’re moving to a context when even resources for digital transformation are now dwindling. That means a particular attitude to find ‘wins’, do your best with what you can and work incrementally while supporting each other in the ride.
While working with me you will experience that sense of challenge coupled with the empowerment that comes from having trust and autonomy. I want you to feel/be successful in this role — we’ll work with you on a great onboarding experience, partnering you with others in our team, and having a set of key metrics to succeed, and supporting you with a dedicated coach.
Feeling part of a team.
I few years ago in my first NHS job, my line manager used to talk about the feeling he used to wear when he put on an NHS lanyard….
I can say that feeling that gets amplified when I’m wearing the gilet.
When I come to the office I see my colleagues wearing it, or when I go in my walkabouts around the Trust I am recognised as a member of the team — makes me feel proud of what I do. Memorable times wearing the gilet: The Trust CEO identified me one day and even passed on a message to the CDIO I was looking for him. Or when we had this meeting with NHS England to evaluate our readiness for a new Electronic Patient Record and we all turned up, unprompted, wearing the gilet. That was great.
I know it sounds trite but this is one of the nicest teams I’ve ever worked with.
Culture change and clinically-led digital innovation
My vision for this role is to increase that sense of team even further: we’re working on developing a ‘Community of Practice’ with our Product Managers, doing project retrospectives, Action Learning Sets across the the directorate (with PMs from technology, business intelligence and digital).
Ultimately I want that sense of team to spillover, because that’s when culture change happens. If at Buckinghamshire Healthcare Trust we all feel we can bring digital innovations (large and small) to our place of work I would have fulfilled my mission for this role.
I envisage this role to be 75% Programme Management and 25% innovation. I spent my afternoon today watching pitches from the NHS Clinical Entrepreneur Programme thinking of the various innovations we could bring. Going to conferences, learning new skills — see with ian roddis we rolled out a successful apprenticeship programme and we’ll be soon thinking job-experience and internships. And got my eyes on home grown innovations via Topol or NHS Clinical entrepreneur
But enough about my vision: What would be your vision if you joined us and how I can help? Do get in touch through here or Twitter if you wish to apply.
