What I learnt from you

I ran a break-out session at the New Types of Working Skills for Care/Skills for Health conference last week. It was very instructive – for me!
I took a 4 month programme that I’ve now run twice in different contexts (http://minney.org/?q=benefits_third_sector and http://minney.org/?q=Benefits_Framework) and again as a whole day workshop led by Ann James CBE (http://minney.org/?q=Commissioning_Innovation). For the New Types of Working conference I tried to present this as a 1 hour break-out entitled “A way forwards – aligning services with strategic objectives in Health and Care”.
Bernice McCarthy was wrong – 80% of people don’t want to discuss WHY, don’t want to know WHAT, they simply want to know HOW do we do it. Perhaps Jay Abraham was right?
Anyhow, back to the workshop. Essentially three audiences:

• commissioners (statutory, NHS and social services; there were no charity commissioners in the audience);
  
• providers (NHS, Local Authority, Independent Sector, Third Sector (not for profit); and further and
  
• higher education.

We included at least a few from each.
We started discussing how to set strategic objectives (common misconceptions such as everyone understands each other and everyone shares the same language and priorities).
Then we talked about engagement – again misconceptions (everyone thinks exactly the same way that I do, and my priorities are shared).
There wasn’t time to run a strategic alignment workshop (which anyway takes around 3 hours to 1 day).
Some people wanted more (can we have this as a full day?), and others were disappointed (he didn’t answer the question). I look forward to feedback.
If you want a programme to understand your region, I’d be pleased to discuss (http://minney.org/?q=node/44) it though I would suggest more than 1 hour with the stakeholders.