Developing system leadership for an ICS
As part of our role as the organisational change partner for South East London ICS, we helped develop a new system leadership academy and a model for organising and maximising clinical and care professional leadership.
The challenge
Leadership in health and care has generally been defined and governed by organisational boundaries, policies that encourage competition, and performance that is measured at the level of individual organisations rather than a whole system.
The creation of integrated care systems provides an opportunity to work in new and more collaborative ways to help address some of the biggest challenges for the benefit of patients and local populations.
South East London ICS recognised that If they were to seize that opportunity, they needed to lead in a new way – as ‘system leaders’, collaborating across organisational and geographical boundaries, beyond individual professional disciplines, and with a broad range of stakeholders.
Our approach
To define a vision of the future and an approach to achieve it, Kaleidoscope designed and ran an intensive process of co-development with hundreds of leaders across the ICS. This included patient, charity and voluntary sector, and local authority leaders.
We used a range of approaches including large scale community events, surveys, individual and group interviews and inspiration learning events with systems beyond south east London, both nationally and internationally.
Results
The outcomes from our initial work, which took place over 12 months, included:
- a bold, shared vision of a diverse and vibrant community of system leaders throughout the system, with the capability to support the ICS’s strategic ambitions as a partnership
- a set of principles to guide all future system leadership development towards the agreed vision
- a set of ‘Five characteristics of a south east London leader’
- a system leadership academy for the whole ICS, organised around three core offers: community development, capability development and spread and scale of innovation
- a model for clinical and care professional leadership roles and capacity outlining: priority functions, where capacity would be located in the system, and how they would be embedded in ICS governance and ways of working
- a thriving community of more than 150 system leaders emerging from the co-development process itself.
Creating leadership capability
The ICS wants to create leadership capability at all levels and parts of the organisation. It has an initial aim of 2% of the potential system workforce, or 1,600 people, having access to development opportunities through the System Leadership Academy by April 2024.
Significant progress is being made toward the 1,600 participant target and we continue to partner with the ICB leadership team to achieve this aim.
Our specific work with the system leadership community has resulted in:
- almost 500 registered members from all parts of the system actively involved in programmes and activities
- a series of interactive skills development workshops on each of the five characteristics of a south east London system leader, attended by more than 400 community members
- a ‘Walking in their shoes’ programme, connecting leaders across professional, place, programme and organisation boundaries
- a series of learning community events on topics such as empowering communities, and collaborating with the voluntary and community sector
- up to 90% of participants in community events report they have made new connections and improved their system leadership skills and capabilities.
Meanwhile, the ICS has made significant progress in implementing the co-developed framework and approach to the distribution and governance of clinical and care professional leadership roles and capacity.
Find out more about the work of the South East London System Leadership Academy.
Our ambition for a leadership culture and capabilities associated with cross-organisational, population focused, system working required a deep understanding of how organisational and system change happen, and the skills and expertise to translate this into new ways of working. No one I have worked with understands how to do this better than Kaleidoscope. They brought wide insight and experience – perhaps more importantly, they took the time to get to know us, understand our particular challenges and opportunities, and ensured that their support felt authentic and deeply relevant to our partnership and our population.
Dr Jonty Heaversedge, Joint Medical Director, NHS South East London ICS
