Ten years of the Leadership Academy
In 2012, the first and second judicial reviews by Robert Francis QC into care at Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust highlighted leadership failings, with catastrophic consequences for many families. The culture of indifference, lack of leadership and, especially, the lack of compassion shown by those entrusted with the care of others brought NHS leadership into sharp focus.
In his 2013 report, Francis talked of enforceable standards; openness; transparency and candour; improved support for care and nursing; strong, patient-centred healthcare leadership; and accurate, useful information. He specifically said:
Non-urgent advice:
‘a leadership college should be created to provide common professional training in management and leadership… [It] should be a physical presence that will serve the role of reinforcing the required culture through shared experience and will provide a common induction into the expectations of the NHS of those who lead and work in the system.‘
A new organisation
Following these recommendations, there could not be another short-lived organisation with few staff but a huge remit. The ‘leadership college’ – as Francis originally termed it – had to be different. With this in mind, the new organisation – named the NHS Leadership Academy was born. Speaking in Parliament on 16 July 2013, Lord Howe said:
Non-urgent advice:
‘If we are to strive for excellence in the health service, leadership is essential. That is why the NHS Leadership Academy has been established.‘
The Academy was set up with a five-year strategic plan and, crucially, adequate funding to achieve its remit, accompanied by very high expectations and close scrutiny. The new organisation would be recognised as a national centre of excellence and a beacon of best practice for leadership development and talent management. It would achieve this by developing outstanding leadership – which, in turn, would improve the quality of services and outcomes for patients.
The early years
The Leadership Academy began out of a basement in the centre of Leeds in 2012 and aimed to have programmes up and running within a year.
At this time, there were ten administrative regions within the NHS: North East, North West, Yorkshire and the Humber, East Midlands, West Midlands, East of England, Kent, Surrey and Sussex, Thames Valley and Wessex, South West and London. Each of these had well-respected, well-established leadership teams, led by experts, delivering leadership development and organisational development interventions across the region.
The national team concentrated on the core offer of programmes and nationally available interventions. Meanwhile, the regional academies played a vital role, providing a link between the central team and every NHS organisation in England.
The first 12 months saw frenetic levels of activity. As well as continuing the Graduate Management Training Scheme and Top Leaders programmes, the Academy sought partners to deliver the public sector’s largest-ever suite of leadership development programmes. Overnight, the Academy was deemed the largest business school in Europe.
Growing and consolidating
By the end of 2013/14, the fledgling team had outgrown the basement and reliance on hotels for face-to-face programmes no longer provided the quality needed. The Academy moved into its own premises at No 3 the Embankment, in central Leeds, with office and teaching space all in one building. The “core” programmes were fully operational and oversubscribed.
Having proved that it could deliver at scale and pace, the Academy sought to expand its range of interventions in direct response to service need, including designing and delivering 2 bespoke programmes to over 6,000 nurses, an executive fast track scheme, an aspiring clinical commissioning leader intervention, a director level programme and a ground-breaking system leader offer. In close collaboration with NHS Providers and NHS Improvement, the first NHS Aspiring Chief Executive programme was launched, and a Chief Executive Development Network began to take shape. The Executive Search team expanded and became self-funding, while a co-payment model for programmes allowed core funds to be put to a wider use with no loss of uptake. More innovative models of delivery were implemented to widen access to the programmes, and the refresh of the Mary Seacole programme presented the opportunity to offer a train-the-trainer licence approach, providing localised context and significant return on investment, and a new non-academic mid-level programme, Rosalind Franklin was developed to compliment the Master of Science already in place. As well as supporting the national team, the regional academies expanded their own work. Now, more than 500 individual interventions were on offer, meeting the leadership needs of individuals, teams and organisations around the country.
Two wide-reaching reviews into leadership in the NHS now guided the work of the Academy: one chaired by Ed Smith, Deputy Chair of NHS England, and the other by Lord Rose. In response, the Graduate Scheme was greatly expanded and a new framework – which became Developing People: Improving Care (DP: IC) – was launched, to guide action on building improvement skills, leadership development, and talent management for people in NHS-funded roles.
The demand for positive action programmes resulted not only in the Ready Now programme, but another new programme to support aspiring black and minority ethnic leaders – Stepping Up was developed, with plans for both openly recruited and organisationally-commissioned models. The Leadership for Inclusion team expanded to meet this need, under the direction of an expanded Inclusion and Systems Leadership Team.
Joining forces
By the time the Academy had reached its fifth birthday, being a standalone organisation no longer seemed appropriate. The Academy formally joined Health Education England but still retained its structure and unique identity, operating under the strapline ‘The NHS Leadership Academy, Proud to be part of Health Education England.’
At this point, the Academy commissioned independent research into its impact on the NHS. The study concluded that that the Academy had impacted positively on leaders and leadership – and that, had it not existed, it would need to be invented. However, it highlighted that the Academy still did not have the universal reach needed to be truly transformational and there were still areas it was not touching. Joining Health Education England (HEE) provided some of this additional reach.
Integration into the People Directorate
In April 2019, two years after joining HEE, the Academy moved into NHS England and NHS Improvement, to form the major part of the newly formed People Directorate.
The integration into NHS England in 2019/20 radically altered the Academy. Suddenly, it was no longer and organisation on its won but part of a bigger directorate and larger organisation..
The People Directorate aims to transform the ‘people element ‘of the NHS. Attracting the very best people, developing and training them, providing them with an employee experience that makes people want to stay, develops leaders who look after people and create compassionate and inclusive cultures.
The first two years of the People Directorate, like the rest of the NHS have been completely dominated by the COVID 19 pandemic during which we have moved to virtual delivery of the programmes described above, deployed our teams to directly support the front-line teams of the NHS and created many more bite-size learning packages of learning and support for busy clinicians and leaders.
Today, we operate as the Leadership and Lifelong Learning and Talent Management Teams – part of the People Directorate of NHS England and aims to help achieve the wider ambitions of the People Directorate – more people, working differently retained in inclusive and compassionate cultures.