2022–23 holding space

Less delivery, more content creation this week, including drafting a proposal for new work. And some time reconnecting with 3 amazing women who I haven’t seen for a while (pandemic and all that). Continually blown away by the thoughtful, considered work they’re all doing, in different areas, but all about holding the space to enable imagination and thinking.

So what happened this week?

1. We ran another in-person board session which went really well — ‘I’ve had lightbulbs going off in my head all the way through’ was a great bit of feedback. Much of the work of these sessions is about holding the space for board leaders to reflect and think, alongside sharing expertise and experience. At the start of the session we play back what we’ve heard from our discovery interviews, and from reading the trust digital strategy and other background material. This time we extended that part to ask how it had resonated with everyone — this gave people a chance to agree/disagree and opened up the discussion early on, which gave us a valuable steer for the rest of the session.
2. I spent time preparing for an upcoming workshop with NHS trust board members on digital inclusion — there’s a live and important debate in health at the moment about the role of digital in enabling better healthcare and reducing health inequalities, when done well, but also a good deal of nervousness about the risks of doing ‘it’ badly.
3. NHS providers published our blog post on digital inclusion
4. Spent time preparing for the next board session coming up in a couple of weeks — another in person session, and it’s with a trust that the team have worked with before, so I’m making sure we’re building on the previous work.
5. Started thinking about the shape and main themes for our first ICB session in December — the detail will come from the insight generated from our pre-calls but I’m finding helpful to think about the overall flow by creating a skeleton slide deck.
6. Met up with Alex, Gurpreet and Deepali over coffees and lunches, and had brilliant conversations ranging from equity and relational change to being a super connector, confidence and finding our voices.

What did I read this week?

This from Ian Levy — outgoing technical director of the National Cyber Security Centre is excellent — honest, to the point and thoughtful.

‘’We’ve got to be much more honest about what assurance activities are worthwhile and what they tell us in the real world’’

So long and thanks for all the bits

also partic see point 8 about market shaping . . .

This brilliant essay from Rachel Coldicutt which was commissioned as part of the Joseph Rowntree series Social Justice in a digital age**

“Care is everything that we do to maintain, continue and repair ‘our world’ so that we can live in it as well as possible. That work includes our bodies, our selves, and our environment, all of which we seek to interweave in a complex, life-sustaining web.” Joan Tronto, Moral Boundaries (1993)