Weeknotes s04e27
TL;DR: Building links with local Unis. The importance of the CCIO community. Inaugural Midlands Digital Health Skills Development Network Conference. UK CIO 100 Awards. Career Conversations.
[week ending 24/09/2022]
Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? Loads of people — this week it was the Midlands Digital Health Skills Development Network Conference and I also went to the UK CIO 100 Awards ceremony, but more about those later.
Narinder and I had a meeting with Patients Know Best about progress on the Northamptonshire solution.
It was the monthly EMRAD Board meeting where we get updates on progress on various initiatives and made some decisions, including agreeing an increase in insourcing pay rates.
I also managed to join the latter half of the inaugural meeting of the Midlands Cyber Security Resiliance Network meeting. I arrived just in time to get the latest update on the Advanced cyber security attack and shared my notes with the wider UHN Digital team.
I also met up with one of the professors from the University of Leicester to continue conversations we’d had before the summer about collaboration between our two organisations. We’ve got a number of projects that undergraduates, Masters students, placement or interns could help with, so we’re exploring that as well as offering up our time to deliver lectures. Early days, but a very encouraging conversation.
What would you have liked to do more of? We had a long-overdue meeting of all the CCIOs across UHN. I think we all acknowledged the need to review on how we all work together, what works and what we need to do improve. So we did a retro session, but the conversation was so rich that we ran out of time. One of the prevailing views what that the role of the CCIOs has somehow come a bit adrift from the work of the Digital teams and we need to do work to address that. We also talked about the ongoing challenge of how to balance the needs of individual Trusts with the strategic direction as a Group to support more clinical collaboration. More to do in this space, but the key thing for me was that we were all seeking to address the situation and improve it.
What did you learn? This week it was the inaugural conference of the Midlands Digital Health Skills Development Network — Digital Future Midlands 2022: “Developing our Digital and Data Capability for the Future”. This has been in the planning for a long time, since Alan from HEE strong-armed Mike Emery and I to take on the co-chair roles, but really it has been people like Nicci who did all the hard yards to get us to be able to make it a reality. I’d been making some bullet notes throughout the day with a view to provide a summary in these weeknotes, but I lent Mike my clipboard at the end of the day and he went home with it, so I’ll have to freestyle a bit more:
- Eddie Olla talked about closing the skills gap. He spoke about exploration of DDaT roles and a new set of job families, with the potential to go outside of Agenda for Change. He also talked about the pipeline of talent:
- Laura McGowan gave a completely inspiring talk about her journey from not even knowing what the term CCIO (Chief Clinical Information Officer) meant to being appointed into the role at Board level. I heard so many people during the course of the day talk about how this helped open their minds to this being something they should be considering as a career option.
- Kate Warriner gave an insight into just what does a Chief Digital Information Officer (CDIO) do all day. I’m completely biased as Kate is one of my fave people to talk to, but she captured the excitement, challenge and fulfillment of the role perfectly. I also loved that she has the shared experience as me that people all turn to us in a meeting when the AV stops working!
- Paul Ward from Coventry City Council gave us a wider perspective on what the city is doing regarding digital. I was super impressed by the progressive schemes such as wide-scale deployment of electric vehicle charging point, innovative funding models for wide scale broadband provision (they sold their network!) and how the digital team are supporting delivery of good public services.
- I then chaired a panel with Laura, Eddie, Kate and Paul talking about developing digital capability for the future.
- Sultan Mahmud from BT gave his perspective on the future of digital health. It probably wasn’t the nugget he wanted me to go away with, but the highlight for me was when he said something like “x% of mortalities are avoidable”… and someone from the audience responded rapidly “Not forever they’re not!”.
- Adi Latif gave an incredible talk about accessibility and his experience as a blind person — where his words “The current world isn’t designed for me. But the digital world can be.” left a strong impact on everyone I spoke to later in the day. He shared his video on trying to book a flight using 5 different apps — makes depressing viewing given we’ve been at this digital stuff for decades now. He also talked about how he’d missed two hospital appointments due to the reminder coming as a letter — noting that these were EYE HOSPITAL appointments. We must do better.
- Amanda Sullivan, Chief Exec of the Nottingham and Nottinghamshire ICB gave her perspective on how digital and data is a key enabler to improving health across a population.
- We then had a series of workshops — I listened to Indi Singh talk about ‘Bringing the worlds of digital, clinical and operational transformation together’.
- Mike Emery led a panel with Masood Ahmed, Laura, Amanda and Kate on leadership journeys.
- Then we had the closing address from Jonathan Volanthen (I reckon that’s one of the first times I’ve linked to someone’s Wikipedia page not their Twitter account!), one of the key people behind the Thai soccer team cave rescue in 2018. You could hear a pin drop as he talked about the challenges to navigate the caves as the water level continued to rise and time was running out. I know that some people went home an immediately watched the Hollywood film about the rescue.
What did you enjoy? I had a 1–2–1 session with a colleague from the REACH network. I hold at least two hours a month in my calendar for anyone from the network to have chat about anything they wish to. Here’s the boilerplate offer that I circulated earlier this year:
My offer to you?
I make two 1 hour slots available in my diary each month for members of the REACH Network to book with me for a 1–2–1 session.
You may be wondering what that could be used for? The answer is — it is completely up to you.
I’m happy to use the time to:
* Hear about your lived experience in our organisations (or from elsewhere) and to understand your thoughts on what I can do as a member of the Executive Team to address it
* Have a career coaching session — hear about your aspirations and talk thoughts on your plans/next steps
* Review a job application ahead of you submitting it
* Do some mock interview questions — either for general practice or ahead of an actual interview
* Challenge me on something I’ve said, written, done or not done
Colleagues who have used these sessions for all the above reasons, but you may have others you can think of and that’s completely fine. I find I learn a lot from these sessions and continue to be keen to educate myself.
I’m currently in the process of gathering more senior leaders from across the organisation to offer something similar on an informal basis. So far I’ve gathered 13 willing folk.
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The session this week was really interesting. I learnt about the challenges of this person moving from Africa and moving into their trained profession in England, and finding the cultural differences were so great that they re-trained to a different profession, into which they are now flourishing. So this person had already made two massive life pivots, which in themselves would be imaginable to many of us. Then if you add the undercurrent of racism, it is incredible for for anyone to have the resiliance and fortitute to be flourishing and brimming with ideas as this person was. We talked about their feeling that they’re ready for a new challenge and I used the helpful framework from Radical Candor to have a career conversation. I also suggested them using the skills/passion matrix to explore more about where their sweet spot is. The lovely thing about this was they had a couple of really exciting ideas inside, but they just needed a bit of help to get them out — which is what coaching is all about.
After the Digital Future Midlands 2022 Conference I jumped on the train and headed to the UK CIO 100 Awards Ceremony. I arrived pretty late, but just in time to see the Industry Recognition award go to Phil Jordan from Sainsbury’s. I was surprised and chuffed to be ranked #5 this year. There was an increased representation from health and care, which was excellent.
What did you achieve? I sent a note to all the consultants across UHN, giving them a summary of progress during August and what is to come during September/October.
Gareth and I prepared questions for the ICS Digital Programme lead interview next week.
I worked with Martin on finalising the summary report on some discovery work done for us on Health Intelligence, which will shape our next phases of work.
What are you looking forward to next week?
- Interviewing for ICS Digital Programme Lead with Gareth.
- Digital Town Hall
- Board meetings at NGH and KGH — back in person for the first time in 2.5 years, so we’ll see if we remember how that works!
Interesting Stuff read/consumed:
- How to run a careers event to increase the diversity of your team on Gov.uk.
- Long serving NHS CEOs: what makes them tick and what keeps them going? (although I linked to this last week, I made a Sketchnote this week)
Books finished this week:
- Fiction: Once Upon a River by Diane Setterfield. A pretty brilliant book, but perhaps longer than necessary. Needed some editorial trimming.
- Non-Fiction: None
Currently Reading:
- Non-Fiction: A Work of Beauty: Alexander McCall Smith’s Edinburgh by Alexander McCall Smith.
- Non-Fiction: Belonging: The Key to Transforming and Maintaining Diversity, Inclusion and Equality at Work Paperback by Sue Unerman , Kathryn Jacob and Mark Edwards. Reading this for our UHN Leadership bookclub. I reckon we’re going to have a brilliant conversation about this one.
- Fiction: None.
