Seek forgiveness,not permission

When I’m out and about visiting teams, I’m always struck by the fact you feel that you don’t have permission to take your bright ideas forward.

It puzzles me, as I’m not sure why people feel they need permission to make improvements they think will make things better. At the end of the day, you know your services better than I do.

And I always think its better to ‘seek forgiveness, not permission’ and to trust in people to do the right thing. The role of the Board, clinical and professional leaders and managers then becomes one of encouraging this approach and providing air cover to those brave enough to try new things.

Of course we can’t be reckless or irresponsible. We do need to respect that many protocols and processes are there to keep people safe.

But its about knowing when to push the boundaries or not wait for approval to do the things you need to do in order to make things better. We trust you with people’s lives, so we should trust your judgment when it comes to making changes.

This is exactly what two of our new values are about; ingenuity and determination. And this is how we build an innovative culture.

So, the next time you're on the fence, wondering whether to take a small, considered risk that could propel things forward – just do it.

And, if it doesn’t work out, then I’m sure we’ll all agree that an ‘oops’ is better than a ‘what if’ and we should use our Just Culture approach to learn from this.

Because small mistakes can be corrected and creating a culture of ‘seek forgiveness, not permission’ can empower a workforce. What’s the point in having lots of fab ideas if we aren’t able to put them into action?

Ingenuity is a solution to so many problems and its often not about money. The ability to balance creativity with canny use of resources is at the heart of so many of your ideas.

You are an ingenuous group of impressive people, but we’ve not yet managed to create the right environment to nurture this consistently. Many of you feel ‘the organisation’ won’t have your back and that you will be questioned and criticised.

We want to be a continuously improving organisation, where we value ideas and that’s why we’re putting a lot of effort into supporting and developing an all encompassing improvement approach.

At our board development session this week it was brilliant hearing how we’ve recruited 15 people with lived experiences of mental health to work with us on different improvement projects.

We’re also developing a clinically-led improvement team, and teams will be able to bid for money to take forward ideas that need a small amount of funding. A ‘dragon’s den’ style approach, but much less stressful and dramatic than the TV show!

A new improvement academy will offer different levels of training in improvement methodologies, and our #MakeOneChange initiative will encourage everyone to think about the small things we can very quickly do to keep making things better. Small changes eventually add up to huge results.

The plan is to weave improvement across absolutely everything, from the tweaks to the major transformational pieces already in place such as the integrated mental health programme and informatics.

We’ll be launching our long-term improvement campaign in the autumn to bring this to life and inspire, celebrate and share your stories and successes.

Let’s not forget also, that our fairly recently introduced Just Culture approach goes hand in hand with improvement. Our values of ingenuity and determination will feed an improvement culture, and our kindness and fairness values underpin a Just Culture where we steer away from blame.

Our patient safety lead Matt Walsh spoke recently at a national conference (well done Matt) and said, ‘If we want Just Culture to mean something more than simply political glitter, we have to put the effort into polishing our approach until it truly shines’.

If everyone feels the outcome, then it’ll have lustre – meaning a deeper and more lasting legacy than simply shining for a short time.

So true, and exactly the same goes for an environment that enables ideas to happen.

We’ve got a way to go, as these things take time and effort. But every time I visit teams I’m inspired by the abundance of amazing qualities you have and the incredible results we can achieve by supporting you to maximise this huge potential.

I visited Orchard House day hospital in Oldham last week and spent time talking to the service manager Liz, and occupational therapists, Donna and Marie. I was bowled over by their passion and commitment and what they’re doing to champion their profession; because they see the huge value and contribution of what they do for our patients and organisation. We had such a good chat, particularly in light of our new emerging strategy, about the significant role the profession can play.

It was also heart-warming to hear about the Pretty Muddy 5k efforts and determination of our Taylor ward team this weekend. The Tameside ward was named after their colleague Martin Taylor who sadly died from cancer in 2010 and the pink T-shirt group braved the mud to raise £1400 for cancer research.

You are awesome and we want to help you do awesome things. So, I would encourage us all to stay constantly curious and if you have a small change you want to make, crack on and do it.