Supporting executive and clinical leaders at the Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust

The challenge

Sussex Partnership Foundation Trust (SPFT) is a specialist NHS organisation providing mental health, learning disability and neurodevelopmental services to people living in South East England.

They were experiencing a lot of change within the organisation, with the arrival of a new CEO and executive team. There were a number challenges the executive team needed to face to successfully meet their organisational objectives, including:

• ensuring team alignment around purpose, ways of working and priorities
• establishing a streamlined, effective and empowered senior leadership team to support the executive team
• enabling an organisational delivery model aligned to a system approach, meaning services are better connected and provide more joined up care for patients.

Our approach

Kaleidoscope worked in close partnership with the executive team throughout this project. It was important that our work began by understanding where they faced barriers to working effectively together.

Using our High Performing Teams model, we started with a survey to identify priority areas. That gave us insight into what the team wanted from the project, specifically to look at their structure, provide clarity, and develop a culture of continuous improvement.

We delivered sessions for both the executive and clinical and care professional leadership groups. Participants worked together to identify and collectively commit to behaviours and ways of working which would enable to be a high performing team.

The impact

As a result of this programme of work the executive has successfully:

• established triumvirate leadership teams to deliver services across Sussex, ensuring all decisions are clinically-led and have the patient care at the centre
• identified 50 senior leaders and established a senior leadership team – reducing from a senior leadership group of almost 200 people. They also designed and resourced an ongoing development plan for this group, and triumvirate leaders
• re-designed and streamlined governance systems, to increase clarity and cement accountability as an organisation.

I did not appreciate what a significant impact investing in this work would have on our leadership. Kaleidoscope has been thoughtful and flexible in responding to our needs. I have valued their honest appraisal of our strengths and challenges, as well as openness to developing the programme as it progressed. A great team!

Dr Jane Padmore, CEO, SPFT