NHS Tayside Transformation Support Team: report

10. AAG Recommendation 10 – Leadership Development

"The Board must continue to foster and enable leadership development at all levels. As NHS Tayside moves forward, strong clinical leadership will be essential to realise the ambitions of the Chief Medical Officer's Report on Realistic Medicine and the National Clinical Strategy."

10.1 NHS Tayside's Assessment – Rating = Amber

"The initiation of executive team development, culture, design and compassionate and inclusive leadership programmes are enhancing the capability of the organisation to develop leadership at every level. The "clinically-led, managerially-supported" approach to operational management will enhance our ability to deliver clinical service change. There are now coaching arrangements in place for key senior staff and there are plans to revise the clinical leadership structure. The involvement of clinical leaders and managers at every level in the rapid improvement events and ICS developments has further ensured effective leadership engagement within the transformation and strategy work. At this stage, given the need for fuller, wider and deeper engagement, the status of this recommendation is 'Amber'.

We would wish to gratefully acknowledge the expert advice and support provided by the Scottish Government Transformation Support Team and NHS National Services Scotland in assisting NHS Tayside in the design and implementation of improvement actions.

In summary, NHS Tayside has made steady progress to deliver improvement actions against each of the AAG recommendations. There remains, however, a demanding programme of work to be completed by the end of December 2017. Our aim is to strengthen our delivery within a recurring, balanced financial framework."

10.2 TST Comment - rating = Amber

Coaching arrangements have been put in place for all Executive Directors, individually and as a team. There is also a high-level plan to implement the King's Fund diagnostic tools on workplace culture by designing and implementing communication and leadership strategies.

The TST would expect to see an analysis of the outcomes of the coaching arrangements together with a detailed leadership development plan by December. This should include detail of how the development plan is anticipated to impact upon the organisation's culture at all levels, and how this will be measured.