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Gather 60 people together from around the world. Put them in a magical palace. Give them an unsolvable problem to debate, and five days to do it.

In 2018 the GMC commissioned me to carry out qualitative research aimed at understanding how doctors in senior leadership roles approached the goal of sustaining and building positive workplace cultures.

“Making something a reality.” Roll the phrase around. When would you use it? In your personal life, if you’re anything like me, not much. If so, it’s probably something which won’t actually happen. Making daily gym-going a reality. Making my-attachment-to-ebay-less-all-consuming a reality. 

Our event series with AbbVie UK, involving face-to-face and digital events with a host of interesting and inspiring speakers, has focused on the nitty gritty of how change happens.

There are lots of different styles of clinical leadership, for example transactional, transformational or situational. There are also lots of roles undertaken by clinical leaders, such as medical director, chief clinical information officer or chief nurse at a clinical commissioning group.​

"In a hierarchy every employee tends to rise to their level of incompetence." It was in the late 1960s that Laurence J. Peter introduced us to the Peter Principle in his book ‘The Peter Principle: Why things always go wrong’. His view - people are promoted based on performance in their current role. They eventually rise to a point where they are hopelessly out of their depth. 

Are you the same person at work as you are at home? Some? A bit perhaps? This might matter to you immensely, or not at all, but almost all of us would see there being some difference between how we think personally and professionally. Sometimes this is helpful (not everyone needs to know about your Panini sticker fascination), but sometimes it’s not.

There is a long running joke in my family that I don't like change. It's true, I don't (the irony of having to make four major geographical locations over eight years working in the NHS hasn't been lost on me). Change is hard, especially when it isn't on your own terms. 

It is a commonplace assertion that society, the economy and public services face unprecedented challenge: from demographic pressures to a stuttering economy; to critical workforce shortages and developments in technology that outpace our ability to harness them for public good. In order to survive (let alone thrive) we must change; work differently, think differently, live differently. 

By 8pm in most departments in most UK hospitals, the majority of people whose title implies a leadership or management role are on their way home, returning the following morning at, let’s say, 8am plus or minus one hour. ​Does this imply that for around half the average day, our great NHS hospitals are ‘un-led’?