Creating a Great Culture – Part 1

I’ve recently finished reading the extraordinary book, “Legacy”, by James Kerr. It is a book about the culture of The All Blacks, the most “successful” sports team in the world. If you are involved in leadership, at any level, especially if you are passionate about developing the culture of your team, I would heartily recommend that you buy yourself a copy – it serves as a great manual! As you might expect in a book which flows out of Rugby Union, there are 15 principles to align with the 15 players in the team. I will therefore make this a 2 part reflection, to make it more readable!

 

I’ve written a few blogs on here about the importance of culture (of joy and kindness) in health and social care, and indeed, the IHI so clearly show that building a “Culture of Joy” in healthcare is one of the core pillars to creating a truly excellent, safe and sustainable health and social care system. If we get the culture right, everything else follows. We spend so much time focused on vision, process and measurement, but nowhere near enough time to establishing a really healthy and flourishing culture. So, how do we do it? How do we build a really good culture? Well….I am no expert, but I want to share what I’ve learnt from this book and am learning through the work we are doing here in Morecambe Bay.

 

1) Character – it is everything. Team is not built on good players, it is built on good character, which is far more important than talent. Good character starts with humility. No one is ever too important to do the most menial of tasks. This has to be modelled.

 

2) Adapt – Darwin said, “it is not the strongest species who survive, but those most able to adapt.” In a target driven system, like health and social care, with edicts handed out from on high, we need to develop the kind of culture that is able to take the strain, to bend, to mold and not lose focus at the whim of every new government initiative. Adaptation means we need a compelling vision for the future and the investment in our teams to move well together, especially at times of pressure.

 

3) Purpose – My coach, Nick Robinson, asked me a great question the other day. I have been really struggling with the idea of ambition. For me, ambition is a word that is tied up in negative ideas like selfishness and arrogance (that isn’t true for everyone – just carries those connotations for me!). So, we explored what a better word might be to help me think about the future. The word we agreed on was purpose. So then he asked me, “So, what is your purpose? Who are you here to serve? And where in the world does that need to be manifest?” At one of the lowest points in their history, after crashing out of the World Cup in the Quater Finals – a match they really should have won, a group of the All Blacks shut themselves in a room to rediscover their purpose. One of the coaches spoke 6 words and it began to change everything. “Better people make better All Blacks.” This is true in every context. Better people make better doctors. Better people make better nurses. Better people make better managers. Better people make better receptionists. Better people make better leaders. We spend an inordinate amount of time developing the skills of our teams, making sure they can ‘deliver the goods’, but we invest precious little time, space or energy in ensuring that we develop better people. Do we help people confront their own ego issues? Do we enable people to get to grips with their shadows, their struggles, their root issues? It really matters who people are, far more than what they can do. Perhaps our development days should focus far more on tools like the enneagram and strengths finder than on some of the “mandatory training” we always make the priority.

 

4) Responsibility – this forms so much of the ‘culture of joy’ I have blogged about before. People need to know they are trusted to do the work they have to do. We have to create a culture of ownership, accountability (not micromanagement) and trust. The All Blacks talk about a collaborative culture in which individual talents can rise and flourish. Are we crushing the creativity of our teams by not allowing people to really come into their own?

 

 

5) Learn – for people to be at the top of their game, they need space and time to develop their skills. In a global landscape, we need to look beyond our own boundaries, discover new approaches, learn best practices and push the boundaries. It’s not OK to just settle for something a bit rubbish – learning allows us to strive for excellence in our work. There is wisdom in this Maori saying: “The first stage of learning is silence. The second is listening.”

 

6)Whanau – Rudyard Kipling wrote: “For the strength of the Pack is in the Wolf, and the strength of the Wolf is in the Pack.” The being of team comes from within. In the All Blacks, there isn’t space for “dickheads”. Team is everything and those who want the glory for themselves will not find a place within it. The All Blacks build on this principle. It is better to be punched in the stomach than stabbed in the back, or as the Arab proverb says: “It is better to have a thousand enemies outside your tent, than one inside.” We need to create a healthy culture of being able to challenge damaging attitudes and behaviour so that when we move, we move as one in adaptable formation, like the spearhead formation of birds as they fly.

 

7) Expectations – There is a saying the All Blacks use: “Aim for the highest cloud, so that if you miss it, you will hit a lofty mountain.” Why aim for something a bit rubbish? If we benchmark ourselves against the best practices, we will strive to be the best we can be. It’s OK to fail – that’s what a learning culture is about. But it’s also ok to not set your standards low and expect failure. Let’s expect the best from our teams so that we create a culture of excellence in the way we work.

 

8) Practice Under Pressure – I think this is especially important in a geography, like ours, in which we may not see some things very commonly. Simulation labs are vital and exposure to other working environments, so that we learn how to deal with serious situations with a calm head. When the heat is turned up, as it so often is in our working environments, we need cool heads and steady hands. Ensuring our training is as robust and pressured as possible, makes us ready for the times our skills are needed most. For this reason, we must not mollycoddle our medical, nursing and therapy students too much. We must expose them and our junior staff and help them be prepared for our times of greatest pressure.

 

In the next blog, I will focus on the other 7 principles of building a team culture. Plenty to think about above though, eh?!

 

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We Have a Power Problem!

NHS – we have a problem! This blog forms a hiatus in the middle of a 4 blog mini-series about what I call the four rings of leadership (in the context of healthcare). I have been musing on some statements made at the IHI conference in London, Quality 2017, and before I go any further, I want to take a pause to reflect on the notion of power. Helen Bevan says that the number one issue facing our health care system is the issue of power. I would suggest that unless we seriously reflect on power and how it manifests itself in our systems and in us as individuals, then we will never be able to co-create health and well-being in our society.

 

In my last blog, I mentioned an excellent talk that I heard Derek Feeley of IHI and Jason Leitch, the CMO of Scotland, give together about our need to “cede” power, if we are to build safe, high quality, economically sustainable health systems. They contend that we need to move from keeping power, to sharing power and then ceding power. To cede power, means to transfer/surrender/concede/allow or yield power to others. I do believe this is correct. I believe that true leadership is absolutely about being able to ’empty out’ positions or seats of power, so that all are empowered to effect positive change and build a society of positive peace. However, my contention is this: ceding power is not helpful unless we first deal with the very nature of power. Once we have dealt with its very substance can we truly cede it through our organisations and systems to bring increased well-being for all.

 

I have talked many times over the dinner table with my great friends Roger and Sue Mitchell about the nature of sovereignty and power. Sovereignty is a dominant theme within our political discourse at the moment, at a national and international level. It is worth reflecting that sovereignty (the right to self-govern) is utterly intertwined with our understanding of power, and we need to pull the two apart if we are ever to cede the kind of power that can transform the future. If we do not recognise (have a full awareness/deeply know) this, we will continue to inadvertently create hierarchical dominance and systems that become the antithesis of what they are created to be.

 

 

We see the issue of sovereign power at work every day in the NHS. We see it in terms of power edicts from on high, without understanding the local context or issues worked through in a relational way. We see it in the way these edicts are then outworked through leadership and management styles, which are very top-down and hierarchical in nature, eating up people like bread in the process – what Foucault calls “Biopower”. We see it in the way wards are managed and in the way GP surgeries are run. Sovereign power says “I’m in charge around here” and “we’re going to do things my way”. We see it in individuals who choose to practice autonomously without thinking about the wider implications on the system, prescribing however they would like to, without thinking about the cost implications. We see it in the attitude of some patients, when it becomes about “my rights” with an unbearable or unaffordable pressure put onto the system. If we multiply sovereign power, we simply end up with lots of  kings and queens who defend their own castle, creating more barriers, walls and division in the process. Sovereign power is defunct and dangerous and it is this which is currently destroying our ecosystems and wider society. The “I did it my way” approach is rooted in self preservation and ambition and does nothing to help us build health and well-being in society. Sovereign power stands in the way the very social movements we need to see, because Sovereign power is based on fear.

 

Sovereign power has its roots in certain streams of theology and philosophy which have in turn laid the foundation for a way of doing politics and economics based on the supremacy of the state and within that the individual. However, the damaging effects of this are seen on our environment and on community, with utterly staggering levels of inequality, injustice and damage to the world in which we live.

 

If we are to truly cede a power that is effectual in changing the world, then it is not enough to simply reconfigure (rearrange) it, or reconstitute it ( i.e. give it a new structure/share it). First of all, we must revoke it! In other words, we must look ‘Sovereign power’ straight in the eyes and reject it, cancelling it’s toxic effects on our own selves and on that of others. We must change our minds about it and embrace instead a wholly different kind of power. Sovereign power has not changed the world for the better so far, and I hold no hope of it doing so in the future. No, we don’t need Sovereign power and we certainly don’t want to cede it. Instead, we need kenotic power. Kenotic power is based in self-giving, others empowering love (Thomas Jay Oord). It empowers others, not to live like mini-dictators, but to also dance to a very different beat.

 

I used to play the card game bridge, with my Grandpa (he was an amazing man, who invented Fairy Liquid!). In bridge, to revoke something is to fail to follow suit, despite being able to do so. Kenotic power refuses to play the game of Sovereign power. It embraces an entirely different approach. And as many through the ages have found, this kind of power is truly costly, and can even cost you your career or life; but it is the only kind of power that truly changes the world for good. Jesus, Rosa Parks, Emmeline Pankhurst, Gandhi, MLK, Malala Yousafzai, Nelson Mandela, Florence Nightingale and Mother Theresa are just some, who have embraced this ‘self-giving, others empowering love-based power.’ This is the kind of power we need now. We need it in healthcare and in every other part of our society.

 

Kenotic power is vulnerable but it is not about being a door mat. It is like a beautiful martial art, in which we can say “I won’t fight you and you can’t knock me down, unless I let you” In other words, we lay down our rights and power freely, they are not taken from us by force. So, even when energetic attacks are launched against us, this kind of power allows us to move out of the way, allow the attack to pass through and then to come along side the person and help them see another point of view. Switching to this kind of power is far more creative, less combative and far more fruitful in creating a way ahead full of possibilities without the need for making enemies in the process. We must challenge the deep structural belief that our political and economic systems must be built on and can only be held together by Sovereign power. What if we developed systems based on love, trust, joy and kindness, aiming for the peace and wellbeing of all (including the environment?) – what might such a health system be like? It will take a social movement for us to get this shift, and as I wrote in my previous blog: You might call this a re-humanisation of our systems based on love, trust and the hope of a positive peace for all. But this social movement is not aiming for some kind of hippy experience in which we are all sat round camp fires, singing kum-ba-yah! This social movement is looking to cause our communities to flourish with a sense of health and wellbeing, to have a health and social care movement that is safe, sustainable, socially just and truly excellent, serving the needs of the wider community to grow stronger with individuals learning, growing and developing in their capacity to live well.

 

 

I agree wholeheartedly that the most important role of leaders is to cede their power, so that all can truly flourish, where there is a far greater sense of cooperative and collaborative agency within our (health) systems. But if we do not examine the nature of this power, we will only perpetuate our problems.

 
Martin Luther-King said these famous words – they are seriously worthy of our reflection:

 

Power without love is reckless and abusive and love without power is sentimental and anaemic. Power at its best is love implementing justice, and justice at its best is power correcting everything that stands against love.”

 

 

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A Collaborative Clinical Community 

Tweet *Warning – this blog contains swear words (not that I’m usually a potty mouth!) This last week we had a gathering of clinical leaders around Morecambe Bay – Nurses, Occupational Therapists, Health Visitors, Midwives, Doctors, Surgeons, Physiotherapists, Pharmacists etc. We were gathered from across primary and secondary care to look together at the financial [Continue Reading …]

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