Bradford & Airedale Primary Care Trust
Our challenge
In 2006 four primary care trusts merged in Bradford, to form the Bradford & Airedale Primary Care Trust (PCT). There were potentially many benefits from working across a whole health economy to confront health inequality; however it would be necessary to integrate four different cultures and leadership styles, while maintaining the best each had to offer. The Trust needed new approaches which would enable it to deliver better health services and best utilise its limited resources.
Bradford University School of Management was commissioned to develop a leadership and development programme which would reflect the new challenges which had emerged from the merger and assist the development of a sea change from an approach where people and resources were managed to one of the application of more intellectually-based, strategic thinking.
We were aware that the leadership vacuum created by the merging of four different primary care trusts needed to be carefully addressed. Different levels of management needed to have a holistic understanding of issues across the entire structure, enabling them to arrive at decisions which took the Trust in the desired direction and in ways which effected the greatest impact in the organization. Our challenge, then, was to create a bespoke leadership programme for three different levels of management. This programme was:
- Higher level and strategically focused – as required by directors
- Strategically focused and operationally aware – as required by assistant directors
- Operationally focused and strategically aware – as required by front line managers
We also accommodated the needs of GPs and non-executives within the group to be targeted by the programme.
Our long-term aims were to enable managers within the Trust to have a strategic and sympathetically commercial outlook, to be able to use specific management tools to make better informed decisions, and to further an understanding of how these tools could help deliver a seamless health service for the region.
Approach and delivery
We delivered the Bradford Leadership Programme to:
- Level 1 - 2 cohorts of higher level and strategically focused directors
- Level 2 - 3 cohorts of strategically focused and operationally aware directors and managers
- Level 3 - 3 cohorts of operationally focused and strategically aware managers
Each cohort on each level came together to learn for two days every month at the Heaton Mount Executive Education Centre. The courses delivered included:
- Level 1
- Higher Level Strategically Focused Leadership
- Key Strategic Issues & Responses
- Commercial Decision Making
- Change Initiation
- Applying The Corporate Level Marketing Concept
- Level 2
- Leading & Team Building
- Strategic Coaching & The Successful Organization
- Thinking Strategically
- Commercial Decision Making
- Change Initiation
- Applying The Corporate Level Marketing Concept
- Services Marketing
- Level 3
- Successful Leadership
- Strategic Coaching
- Thinking Strategically
- Change Initiation
- Applying Marketing In The NHS
- Developing An Effective Service Operation
- Financial Management
Success of the programme
The Bradford Leadership Programme helped to create a collaborative culture within the NHS Trust, where managers, dentists, doctors and nurses can work together more effectively for better patient outcomes. Each management group was able to learn from the others’ experience and gain a better understanding of how they could work together more efficiently and to greater effect. The programme helped clinicians to understand how managers assess specific issues, and vice versa. This greater understanding has helped forge quality relationships which have benefited important health projects, and the programme has contributed to The Bradford & Airedale PCT achieving a prestigious award for clinical leadership in a world class government commissioning assessment.
“The benefits of the programme have improved decision making; improved ability to analyse key strategic issues; increased awareness of commercially based analysis, and decision making. There are some common behaviours and a new ‘language’ spoken by those who learned and work together,’ Helen Hirst, Deputy Chief Executive.