Let’s talk books.
What’s come out this month and might be put to one side, ready for the teak-lounger, the fluffy towels and the Bougainvillea petals, drifting across the azure pool…
… you remember… holiday!
David Hockney will be on my list, with ‘Spring Cannot be Cancelled’, about life, art and the upside of lockdown, holed-up in his Normandy farmhouse.
‘How to Kidnap the Rich’, a satirical thriller by Rahul Raina.
‘Run Rose Run’, Dolly Parton and James Patterson. I didn’t like Patterson’s collaboration with Bill Clinton but Parton has had ‘one-helluva-life’….
… so, might be worth a go… it’s seventeen quid in hardback. The Kindle version is cheaper but it’s a screen-thing and we’ve all had enough of that.
However, before we all get carried away with bikini-waxing and losing two stone before August… there’s work to do here and stuff to read.
No less than the little bodice-ripper known as the Mandate… it’s just been published.
It’s a legacy of LaLa Lansley’s Disney-NHS. His idea was to distance the NHSE from the DH. Give the health service an annual shopping-list of things to do, stand back and watch it happen.
It never worked.
Secretaries of State are all tinkerers and fiddlers. At the first sign of trouble, on the front page of the Daily Mail, they’re poking their nose into the cost of lavatory paper, in the loo at the St Someplace NHS Trust’s, monthly bunion-clinic.
This year’s Mandate has five objectives…
… which is two too many… business guru Sir John Harvery-Jones said; no organisation can manage more than three.
In truth, this is really nothing like five.
There are actually 45 objectives in the mandate and ‘thirteen priority commitments…’
… thirteen priorities is the ultimate management oxymoron and for good measure, there’s this little beauty;
‘…they do not reflect everything that the Government expects NHS England to deliver on…’
For any student of management this 28 pages of confusion is a gift for an MBA study; ‘Basic planning errors that not very smart organisations can make.’
For clarity, objectives should;
- Be agreed with people who will deliver them
- Be focussed
- Be both quantitive and qualitative
- Be motivating and stretching
- Be the subject of regular feedback to allow for encouragement, coaching and problem solving
- Be monitored, avoiding long delays in the reporting cycle
- Be based on the principles of growth, learning, encouraging openness, without penalties
This collection of bonkersness is none of the above and includes;
Incentivise GP referrals to weight management services, for eligible adults.
Why would GPs refer ineligible adults?
Dunno.
Improve coverage of … the adult shingles programme.
This is operational management, isn’t it?
Dunno.
You may be delighted to hear, on page 24 there’s a list of ‘manifesto commitments’. The NHS is now a branch of Tory Central Office…
There’s a lot of blue-bilge the NHS is locked into: build 40 new hospitals; increase the number of doctors in general practice; 50,000 more nurses; 50 million more appointments in general practice; 26,000 more staff in additional roles.
No19 can promise what he likes to his gullible voters. The NHS ain’t-gonna-be delivering any of that. There’s not enough time, people or money.
There’s nothing substantial about the role of digital, data and technology but there is this;
‘Health Education England and NHSE will, with DHSC, jointly develop a workforce strategy…’
I’m not holding my breath. HEE have made a mess of workforce thus far, NHSE Board seem to go out of their way to avoid discussing it and DHSC will look for ways to save money.
A proper workforce plan involves understanding innovation and how work might change.
In ten years, trained people will be doing jobs in healthcare we can’t imagine today, in ways we haven’t dreamed of, with kit that’s yet to be invented… all in the lifecycle of a doctor in training.
We have to prepare for a different future.
It will need to look at the nation’s workforce and education attainment. Find a way of not giving Uni vice-Chancellors nine-grand a year for what most people can learn on-line and on-the-wards…
… and with research, consultation and palaver, it’ll take two years to get to the first draft of a plan.
Objectives… gimme-strength .
Look at No1 on my list… if the NHSE Board have agreed to all this nonsense… and they are looking for some summer reading, I suggest the Riot Act.
News and Comment from Roy Lilley
Contact Roy – please use this e-address roy.lilley@nhsmanagers.net
Reproduced at thetrainingnet.com by kind permission of Roy Lilley.
