Autumn Newsletter - Flipbook - Page 1
In-Brief
The 25 year anniversary issue / Autumn 2017
Introduction
Welcome to our autumn edition of Niche In-Brief; our subscription only collection of insights and articles from our
practitioners and partners. It has been a really busy summer and we have been working hard to support our clients with
governance review work, investigations and mental health pathway modelling. Together with our sister company Mental
Health Strategies we are celebrating our 25 year anniversary this year and so we thought you would enjoy our
celebratory timeline on page 10. We hope you enjoy this collection of articles and look forward to seeing you again in
spring 2018 – have a great Christmas and New Year from us all.
In this edition
Dynamic Governance
Page 1-2
Compassion8 Science
Page 3-4
Under Lock and Key
Page 4-5
Walking the floor
Page 6
Third Sector Thinking
Page 7
Navigating IAPT
Page 8
Did you WannaCry?
Page 9
25 years of consultancy!
Page 10
The last word
Page 11
In pursuit of ...
Dynamic Governance
Governance in the healthcare setting, whether that be corporate,
operational or clinical, has the tendency to be about hierarchy and control
rather than enablement. There is no doubt that ‘well-led’ assessments have
helped NHS organisations to recognise the importance of good governance
and in many cases, even the best organisations have been able to improve
following a review. Governance is an expansive topic (encompassing systems,
processes, information, culture, projects, strategy, risk) and with the scale of
this landscape comes the challenge of counting and controlling the ‘how’ and
the ‘when’ rather than the ‘why’? Governance can so easily be arrested by
assurance-seeking activity rather than be made dynamic through value adding
transactions.
Governance, in its most basic form, is simply about how human beings talk to
each other within organisations. In healthcare organisations which are safe,
effective, and well-led you can see elements of ‘dynamic’ governance working
through each and every conversation or meeting, making staff feel safer in the
delivery of care.
Governance is ostensibly all about the systems, processes and controls that
an organisation uses to achieve its objectives. Sometimes, however, in the
pursuit of control, organisations lose the confidence to rely upon the less
tangible, but equally important elements of ‘dynamic’ governance which truly
support continuous quality improvement. The best healthcare organisations
that we have worked with treat soft-intelligence with the same levels of esteem
as hard-assurance and both are equally as important. Senior leaders rely upon
feelings, observations and daily interactions as much as they do KPIs,
dashboards and reporting.
Dynamic governance is all about supporting staff to make decisions, to give
them permission to act and to ensure that staff are motivated by high
standards and that they feel confident in highlighting exceptions to that rule.
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