Tweets of the Week, 16 April 2021

The Horizons team features many influential Twitter users. This curates a wealth of insights, knowledge, and information about transformation in health and care from other thought leaders across the world. (Tip: to read an article or watch a video mentioned in a tweet, click on the blue text. To view the original tweet, click on the image).

The School for Change Agents 2021

The School for Change Agents starts on 19 April! Midwife Benash Nazmeen is just one of our inspiring case studies. Sign up now and learn how to become an effective change agent, take part on your own terms, open to anyone from anywhere in the world, a global community of more than 20,000 & free to participate! Sign up here.

In this blog post, our colleague Claire Shields remembers her late former colleague Dawn, who taught her about new power (which you can learn about in The School for Change Agents).

#OurNHSPeople

Civility really does save lives as Chris Turner said in this week's wellbeing session. Find out more about why civility and respect matters so much for patient and staff outcomes by catching up with the latest #Caring4NHSPeople session:

Ramadan Mubarak to all our colleagues observing the fasts this month! Learn more about Ramadan in this thread by Areej AbuAli.

Culture

Leaders often say "culture eats strategy for breakfast". Yet culture can't eat strategy. They're inseparable -each reflects/amplifies the other. Actions leaders can take to coax a beneficial culture in the wider context of your organisation.

Our health & care system is moving more & more towards systems thinking so that we are better joined up to support the people we serve. It's not just about how services are organised. We need the mindsets & habits of system thinkers.

British Columbia Patient Safety & Quality Council, Canada @BCPSQC has just published an insightful report on how you can measure culture in a health & care setting. It's tricky: no one tool gives a gold standard, but lots are useful to foster improvement.

People skilled at bridging differences (have diverse networks & high tolerance for differences of opinion etc) tend to have better health & better educational & work outcomes. Take this "bridging differences" quiz to see where you are.

Change

Here's a set of "cards of change" newly created by @BainAlerts. They give some very good perspectives, particularly for senior leaders tackling complex change. They might be useful in a facilitated discussion with a leadership team about upcoming changes.

This is a useful article for system leaders as it sets out a whole series of systems thinking tools, frameworks & approaches, several of which Helen has found to be helpful & practical (Soft Systems Methodology, Back-Casting etc). Thank you Catherine Hobbs.

Helen is looking forward to running this workshop for the #IHSCM next Monday 19 April 5-6pm. The focus is how we build the confidence, courage & power to challenge the way things are & get things changed. It's free for IHSCM members. Register here.

Covid & beyond the pandemic

It's up to us as leaders to guide the transition to new working patterns beyond the pandemic. We might: 1) Change the language - stop calling it a "return to work"; 2) Ensure fairness; 3) Engage people; 4) Provide transparency; 5) Be human by Susie Hall

Helen went through some powerpoint decks she created eight years ago. This slide is a quote about changing "eras" of management. Who would have thought that all this time later we would have a pandemic, the experience of which might actually hasten this coming true?

Many people have been at their most innovative & ingenious in response to #COVID19. How do we ensure this amazing creativity continues beyond the pandemic? It won't happen unless we create an environment for innovation where learning & failure is welcome. Graphic: Julie Woodard

Is this what your house looks like now that you've been working from home for a whole year?

What the team has been up to 

At the @HorizonsNHS weekly team huddle this week, we experimented with the video meeting hand signals developed/studied by Daniel Richardson & colleagues. It was a lot of fun & we are likely to keep using at least some of the signals in future:

And finally...

Where do brilliant ideas for action come from? They may come from moments of stillness or through abstraction (try "thinking outside the box"). Or the ultimate idea might come from a small simple idea. What a fabulous sketchnote Grant Snider