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10th August 2016

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Ed Smith

Chair of Not-Monitor, or whatever it's called. In conversation with Roy L

Good conversation, networking and a glass of wine. What's not to like!

Details here

You'll soon get the picture

News and Comment from Roy Lilley

If all the photos stored in a year were printed out as 4x6 prints and lined up end-to-end, they would stretch over 200 million miles. Not a lot of people know that!

In 2015 one trillion photos were taken. No doubt you will be adding to them this holiday. White, hairy legs dangling out of dad's shorts, funny hats, exotic cocktails, azure pools, sunsets and beach bodies.

By next year, courtesy the camera on your smart phone, 4.9 trillion pictures will be stored, ready to be rediscovered, produce gales of laughter and embarrass growing teenagers.

Take care when posting to FaceBook... it's the first place prospective employers look. Oops!

It's all a bit of a change from when an essential item for holiday fun was a roll of film and a box camera. Oooh, the anticipation, waiting for them to come back to the corner-shop chemist; the agent for Kodak or Ilford film.

Pictures of Mum's thumb, heads cut off and the odd one or two, treasured forever. Years later you find one of you all; carefully preserved in the back of Dad's wallet. He was a softie really.

Ilford was the European answer to American Kodak. Both companies have since changed beyond recognition... the march of technology.

Ilford films; founded in 1879, originally the Britannia Works Company, later occupied a large site in the centre of Ilford in Essex and adopted the name of the town.

The Town Council, oblivious to the number of jobs and money brought to the area... objected to the use of their town being used as a trading name. There was a row.

Fortunately these days, Ilford's great and good are more sensible. In fact, they are very sensible. They might be the most sensible authorities I have come across.

These days they are known as Barking, Dagenham, Havering, Redbridge and Waltham Forest and they have stunning working relationships with local health providers.

Indeed, Redbridge have joined forces with NELFT NHS Foundation Trust, put public health front and centre and produced seamless services, joint funded, mutually planned and with a relentless focus on starting with the service user and working backwards.

Pivotal to this success is the vision of Redbridge boss of social care John Powell and the very adept NELFT senior management team. In creating this extraordinary free flow of decision making and innovation they have a huge success on their hands.

By working in harmony they have reduced acute admissions, speeded discharges and carved chunks of costs out of the system.

Because the principle players have been in post for years they have come to know each other, trust each other and are prepared to take risks with one and other.

NELFT is a very successful Trust. The don't seek the limelight they just get on and do great things. Developing Apps, reducing bed stays, avoiding admissions, focus unremittingly on quality, training, education and doing the right things for their patients, clients, users, families and friends.

They cultivate a climate of expectation, pioneering, novelty, refinement and inquisitiveness. They know it's OK to be proud of what they do.

An established senior management team, confident and assured have created the time and space for good people to do great things... and great things they have done.

NELFT and their partners are fabulously good but because they deal in the mysteries of mental health and community services and the social complexities that come with it, does not attract attention in the same way lesser acute Trusts might.

Their Care City concept is extraordinarily perceptive; based on research, education and training... far sighted, goose bump good.

How can they achieve all this? Stability is the key. Time and again I see top performing organisations who owe their success to stability and the steadfast leadership of men and women of vision, who share it by being visible and accessible.

The message is clear; if you want successful organisations you have invest in leaders, be patient and give them time. Tripping them up with regulation, trapping them in petty bureaucracy snuffs out enthusiasm and the willingness to find partners and take risks.

If you want a source of leading-edge service provision, look at the Academy. Better still go to NELFT. If you want to meet enthusiastic people, free to think for themselves, go to NELFT. If you want to meet idea brokers, innovation wholesalers and organisational entrepreneurs go to NELFT.

If you want to understand how it all works, spend a morning with Trust CEO John Brouder and his team, you'll soon get the picture.

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Contact Roy - please use this e-address

roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net

Know something I don't - email me in confidence.

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