What makes NHS strategy actually work: ten years of successes (and fails)
Strategy is supposed to give direction, energise your organisation, and make better decisions possible. Most don’t. Here’s what separates the ones that do.
Here’s what we’ve learnt
After a decade supporting NHS organisations to develop strategy, we know that good strategy doesn’t happen by accident. The organisations that make strategy work tend to get three things right:
- they make genuine choices about what matters most, rather than trying to do everything;
- they use the process of developing strategy as cultural change in its own right, not just to produce a document; and
- they keep the energy alive through implementation, which is where most strategies die.
Yet it still remains hard to balance a clear five-year direction with a world that keeps shifting. Or to keep staff engaged after the strategy launches. Or to move from having a strategy, to changing how your organisation actually works.
We certainly don’t have all the answers. But in this session we tested these questions with NHS leaders who’ve lived them.
What the session covered
An honest conversation about what works, what doesn’t, and what questions still don’t have easy answers:
- what separates strategies that stick from ones that gather dust;
- how to keep strategy alive throughout development and into implementation;
- practical examples from NHS leaders on how strategies can really change how organisations operate.
Who spoke
- Rachel Evans, Interim CEO and Executive Director of Strategy and People, Oxleas NHS Foundation Trust
- Dr Jag Ahluwalia, Chair, Royal Papworth Hospital NHS Foundation Trust
- Rich Taunt, Kaleidoscope Health and Care
- George Dellal, Kaleidoscope Health and Care
Who it’s for
Anyone leading strategy or responsible for making it work in the NHS: developing a new strategy right now; wondering why the last one didn’t land; in the middle of implementation and losing momentum; or trying to keep strategy real and alive in an organisation.