Weeknotes s02e48
By: Andy Callow
Tags: Mentorship, Diversity, Nhs, Inclusion

TL;DR: Finally I can reveal I got the Group CDIO job! Experiencing reverse mentoring and discussing unconcious bias training.

[week ending 24/12/2020]

Short one this week due to only working 3 days. Last weeknote for the year — 48 this year, 46 last year. Season 3 ahoy!

Who did you talk to outside of your organisation? The good folk from EMIS, talking about the forthcoming NGH EPMA implementation.

What was notable? It was confirmed this week that I’ve been appointed to the Group Chief Digital Information Officer role, with Debbie being appointed as the CEO for Kettering. I’m really chuffed to continue the work I’ve made a start on over the past few weeks whilst acting up into the role. I’ve had some lovely comments and some great ideas fed to me already. I put a lot of effort into the prep for the interview, but took more out of me that I realised, so I’m looking forward to a bit of a rest over Christmas and then kick things off in the New Year.

What do you wish you could have changed? I started some work to understand the supported discharge process at NGH and KGH and soon realised it was a lot more complicated that I’d appreciated, such that I’ve not yet talked to anyone who fully understands it. This is a prime candidate for doing a short sharp piece of service design in the new year. This has been on my job card for a few weeks, so I’m a bit annoyed to only getting round to looking at it in more detail this week.

What did you learn? I had my first reverse mentoring session. All of the Exec team at KGH are being paired with mentors from our BAME staff group. I can tell already that I’m going to get a lot of the sessions, and my mentor is clearly not going to hold me accountable for the things we agree, which is fabulous. We talked about a lot of stuff, and I know I’m going to ask questions and learn a lot to be better equipped to help drive our Trusts to be more inclusive. I was able to talk to this person about a situation earlier this year with my barber and talk about if there was anything I could have done differently.

I also talked to the BAME Network chair and co-chair in the week about Unconcious Bias training and that the Civil Service had cancelled their training programme after research showed it didn’t work. We talked about alternatives and methods that would help people to be more culturally aware. We agreed to work some ideas up to discuss next year.

I had a 1–2–1 with Simon, the first one after my appointment. He talked me through the feedback from the interview; the good, the bad and the ugly. I’m not planning on having any more interviews any time soon, but good to note the things that worked and things that could be improved. We also talked about some draft objectives I’d put together for 2021, which will get another iteration early next year.

What did you enjoy? Observing our teams across the group working really hard to stand up the process around vaccination booking and tracking. Really impressive at the pace they’ve done it across both Trusts.

What did you achieve? I pulled some stuff together in preparation for a session on our Group Digital Strategy in January. My aim will be to get the final Strategy to the Boards in March.

I reviewed the Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for the RPA Centre of Excellence at NGH, which I was happy to sign. Looking forward to that kicking off in 2021 -there’s a lot to do between now and March 2021.

What are you looking forward to next week? Some time off with the family, watching some Christmas films, working on a blog that’s been brewing for a few weeks and riding my bicycle.

Interesting Stuff read/consumed:

Books finished this week:

Fiction: None.

Non-Fiction: None.

Currently Reading (challenge is on to finish all this by 31 Dec 2020 to score an all time PB for books read in a year):