The Long View is a Radio Four programme hosted by Jonathan Freedland where he uses stories from the past to increase understanding of current affairs and events. At Rewired tomorrow (25th of March) we are reusing some of the format, bringing heroes of past digital healthcare to the stage to shed a light on the lessons we can learn from the past and ensure we stop making the same mistakes time and time again. Why do we study history? I remember a teacher once saying to me, of course the answer was to do things better in the future!

Are we looking at heroes of digital as an example of the changes in the digital market place for health care today? If we are maybe it’s not an Alan Turing type hero we need (full genius style) but in-fact a mind more akin to Professor Richard Feynman, his famous four productivity strategies included;

  • Stop trying to know-it-all
  • Don’t worry about what others are thinking
  • Don’t think about what you want to be, but what you want to do.
  • Have a sense of humour and talk honestly.
  • Tomorrow’s heroes live on stage have been Feynman-esque in their approaches over the years.

 The Feynman way of working may be the best approach for leadership in the digital health and care arena that we could adopt.

“The only way to deep happiness is to do something you love to the best of your ability.”

And the heroes of digital health that take to the stage with me tomorrow are the embodiment of that quote. Professor Gwyn Thomas, Andy Williams and Beverley Bryant all overachieved (and continue to be huge parts of) the grand digital healthcare plan. They also applied the Feynman further principles of trusting in knowledge through teaching and taking others on a journey with them and trusting in people as friends and colleagues, not as competitors and antagonists.

Trying to shape the face of the next hero of digital health care is a challenge. We could try to use the Hasbro game Guess Who to create the ‘picture’ of the new hero we all need to step up to the front. Does it feel like the change is just about to come over the hill though with NHS X and a minister and team that seem to ‘get it’ so maybe we don’t need a Guess Who, more a guess how!

Although a hill that today has hidden Brexit shaped traps that could scupper all of our ideas and plans. We need that Long View vision of the future enabled by the lessons of the past to truly give us the blueprint we strive for. When we came up with the game we had a long list of the digital heroes of the past that we wanted on stage, Richard Grainger, Katie Davies, Nigel Bell, Gordon Hextall and Tim Kelsey all made that long list, but hero is a strong word and not everyone could agree to be on stage described as a hero.

“… but we’ve always done it like that!”

In Ireland, as Chief Information Officer I pushed hard for the removal of the culture of not trying something new. I even asked that the council of Chief Clinical Information Officers adopt the famous quote from US Navy Rear Admiral Grace Murray Hopper’s as their vision statement in year one,

“The most dangerous phrase in the English language; we’ve always done it that way!” became a way of trying every day to change the paradigm, a way of simply pushing harder to do something differently, sometimes simply because it is different it worked.

Looking to the past does not mean do it like that again, it means consider what happened, learn what needed to be done to get it right and avoid the mistakes that were made. We are rightly so concentrating on blueprinting the success at the moment, we do need to be careful not create one size will automatically fit all environment. My heroes of the past in digital and business didn’t simply take the blueprint and press copy, they tried hard to reapply with the lessons they learnt and make sure others could see how to apply and learn next.

My heroes from my reality today include; Tony O’Brien for his calm considered leadership. Jonathan Sheffield for his vision and steadfast refusal to take second best. Russ Branzell for demonstrating compassion as a leadership trait in the face of global influence. Kevin Holland for showing that expertise is a leadership trait best served shared. Gwyn Thomas for delivering the most inclusive organisational change a person could experience. Carrie Armitage for ensuring that the team around the leader is the most important. Phil Randles for never guarding his knowledge. Rachel Dunscombe for being all of our Messi. Andy Kinnear for leading us from the dark ages to the light. Molly Gilmartin for bringing an approach to innovation that others are just too frightened of. Gary Venchuk for teaching me when to swear appropriately. Ted Rubin for inspiring magical thinking on reputational importance. Amy Freeman for taking knowledge and constantly learning more with a goal of doing better. Sarah Moorhead for caring so much about the next person in the queue and frantically finding a way to take them with her. Dan and Chip Heath for delivering the most amazing stories and Frank Buyendijk for being my own stage presence inspiration.

Then I consider the Leeds team I am part of now and know as I look around we have a group of people that embody the long view in everything they do, a Chief Executive, an Exec, a Chair a team of digital professionals like none I have been able to work with before supporting a clinical team who learn lessons and apply them every day and can and will deliver with the patient at the centre of every moment of the day.

Heroes from a different reality and how the impact on our style is interesting as we head to London for two days of being Rewired. Seeing old faces is always a new inspiration and that’s whether we are laughing together in a social environment or listening intently to the latest story Rewired will bring us together for the first time in 2019 as a group of professionals who know how to do this, we just need to collectively move the blockers out of the way. The nations CCIO Dr Simon Eccles will undoubtedly remind us why we need to do this and why we need to do it in a better way, no jam for tomorrow but the reality of today.

Heroes of tomorrow, aspirational people who we know we can follow, stand up at Rewired and be counted because inspiring the next generation should be all of our most important job!

We could be heroes, just for one day, (or maybe at least the two days of Rewired)!