Creating a Culture of Joy – some practical ideas!

I am hugely passionate about how we create great cultures in which to live and work. One particular thing I love is building a culture of joy! My friends Rachel Pilling and Dan Wadsworth have come up with a super easy way in which to practically build joy in work, through this simple but excellent idea of 15-30. This is the magic that happens when clinicians and managers work together. Watch it, if you work in the NHS then sign up and get involved and if you work outside the NHS – the idea is entirely replicable in any other part of life. By you going the extra mile now, you could save your friend a marathon….Building joy in work is, according to the IHI, the most important foundation on which to build a safe, sustainable and excellent health and care system. With staff morale as low as it is, let’s do what we can to promote joy in the daily grind. Here are Dan and Rachel explaining more in their excellent TEDxNHS talk – well worth your time!:

 

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The Resilience Myth

My friend, Dr Sammy Batt-Rawden knows only too well the dangers of just keeping her chin up and carrying on. In this beautiful, but heart-wrenching TEDx talk, she tells her story.

 

Staff in the NHS (and indeed all our public services) are working against a tide of a huge rise in public demand, funding constraints and dangerously low staffing levels for what is required. The old edict to ‘keep calm and carry on’ simply misses the point. There isn’t a culture of shirking responsibility in the NHS. People are going way above and beyond every day, and it is taking it’s very real toll. Yes, we need to increasingly develop cultures of joy and kindness in how we work, but there must be determined change by leaders in the Government to ensure that the buck is not passed when it comes to who is responsible for ensuring the wellbeing of our clinical teams across the UK. Teams are already doing much to take care of each other and themselves, and yet staff surveys across the UK show that absenteeism is increasing, along with burnout and morale continues to decline. Do the maths!

 

Listen to Sammy’s story and let’s change the tone of the conversation so that we can work on practical solutions together. Those solutions will include everyone. Part of the solution lies with learning to work radically differently with our communities. Some of it lies within our choices of how we use the health service. There is of course work to do in how we care for people who work across the NHS and set good working patterns. But there is still much work to be done by those in power to think more carefully about where and how budgets are spent. The new spending plan for the NHS pays very little attention to safe staffing levels or staff development – it needs much more care and attention.

 

I’m so grateful to Sammy for changing the nature of this increasingly important conversation:

 

 

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Humility Goes a Long Way in Building Great Teams

Tweet I am a massive advocate of a Culture of Joy! I really enjoyed listening to the lovely Yusuf Yousef at TEDxNHS 2019 and his incredible ability to build relationships, cross barriers and connect people together. This is exactly what we need more of in the NHS and across our public services. Simple, but brilliantly [Continue Reading …]

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An Open Letter to NHS Staff – This ‘crisis’ is not your fault – you’re doing a great job!

Tweet If you work in the NHS, in any capacity, this letter is for you, no matter what your role.   Dear NHS Staff Member,   I write this to you as a GP, who cares for many people who work in the NHS and sees the huge stress many of us feel under. I write [Continue Reading …]

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Population Health and the NHS 10 Year Plan

Tweet https://www.kingsfund.org.uk/publications/nhs-10-year-plan   This is an excellent blog from Sir Chris Ham and Richard Murray at the Kingsfund and highlights some important issues that deserve real consideration and debate. Get a cup of tea, reflect on it and then join the discussion. Here are my reflections on it.   Improving population health and closing the [Continue Reading …]

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Four Circles of Population Health

Tweet In my previous blog in this series, I wrote about the ‘Pentagon Model’ which we have developed in Morecambe Bay to help us think about how we manage Population Health. The Pentagon approach actually forms one of four parts of some over-lapping circles, based on 4-Ps (Population Health Approach, Partnerships, Places, People Movement), which [Continue Reading …]

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Creating a Culture of Excellence

Tweet This is the 3rd in a 3-part series on how we can create great working cultures. Culture eats strategy for breakfast. The first two vlogs were on joy and kindness; this one focuses on excellence. If we don’t get culture right, we don’t get care right – and in the NHS, that is fundamentally [Continue Reading …]

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Creating a Culture of Kindness – Vlog

Tweet Here is Part Deux of my 3-part Vlog series on how we can create great culture in Health and Care Systems (or anywhere really!).   “Culture eats strategy for breakfast,” Peter Drucker, but I don’t think we believe this anywhere nearly enough!     Share This:

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Creating a Culture of Joy – Vlog

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Lessons From Helsinkii

Tweet I’m just returning from 36 hours with the Coalition of Partners for Europe, as part of the World Health Organisation. There were a further 2 days of conversations to occur, but I needed to get back to Morecambe Bay. I have learned so much during my short time with this amazing group of people, [Continue Reading …]

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