FUTURE REGIONAL MANAGEMENT NETWORK MEETINGS

As we are now well into 2007 and January is nearly at an end, most of us will have long since caught up with the pre-Christmas backlog, settled into the final quarter of the financial year and be planning future workloads and projects. With this in mind, the National Management Network is resuming its f-2-f meetings in a growing number of regional areas. See below planned activity and amended dates - good idea is to pop these into your diary TODAY!

WEST MIDLANDS (WMidsMN)
Their last event on 11th January was about service improvement using LEAN design, the next one will be an IHM AGM and a session "How to use the Clinical Governance Structure to reduce Hospital Mortality" and will be held in Dudley on Thursday 22nd February - for more information and to attend please contact harjinder.taggar@walsall.nhs.uk

SOUTH CENTRAL (SCMN)
Following on from its very successful launch before Christmas across FOUR different venues, SC is again running a second round of meetings this time on "Speed Mentoring" with Alison Jennings who was involved in setting up the highly successful mentoring scheme in the North West. All meetings will start at 5.00 with tea/coffee and biscuits, 5.30-6.30 with Alison and from 6.30 an 'Open Space' experience, dates as follows:
Berkshire (Tues 13 Feb) - Berkshire West PCT, Learning Zone, 57-59 Bath Road, Reading
Hampshire (Tues 27th Feb) - Education Centre, Royal Hampshire County Hospital, Winchester
Oxfordshire (Thurs 8th Mar) - SHA's Oxford base at Jubilee House, Oxford Business Park South
Buckinghamshire (Tues 20th Mar tbc) - possibly Wycombe General Hospital - venue to be confirmed shortly
For more information and to reserve your place please contact j.fawcett@ihm.org.uk
PLEASE DO MAKE CONTACT SO WE KNOW THAT YOU ARE ATTENDING!

LONDON (LONMN)
We are planning the launch of a London Management Network on Wed 28th February at the University of East London's exciting new campus in Docklands. This first meeting will "Establish the Network and identify the priorities for future meetings" - register interest and your thoughts about how this network should be used to meet your needs direct to j.fawcett@ihm.org.uk

SOUTH-EAST COAST (SECMN)
We are just at the early stages of planning a SEC Managment Network with a first tentative date of Tues 27th March. The proposed venue will likely be in Surrey to start us off and participants should register their interest to help us gauge numbers for refreshment etc.. This first meeting will "Establish the Network and identify the priorities for future meetings" - register interest and your thoughts about how this network should be used to meet your needs direct to j.fawcett@ihm.org.uk

SCOTLAND MANAGEMENT DEVELOPMENT NETWORK (SCOTMDN) Following the successful launch of the Ayrshire and Arran Management Development Network last June the first event of a series of 3 in Ayr will take place on Thursday 15th March focusing on Coaching Skills time: 12.00pm – 2.00pm at Ayr Racecourse - for more information and to attend please contact hilary.iannotti@btopenworld.com

In addition to this there is also another network meeting in the Dumfries & Galloway area with the key speaker John Burns, CEO, NHS Dumfries & Galloway, on Thursday 22nd March in Dumfries, time: 12.00pm – 2.00pm - for more information and to attend please contact iain.boddy@nhs.net

Hope you can join us at one of our management networking events and look out for one coming soon to your area.

HOW WELL DOES MANAGEMENT LISTEN?

Communication, as ever, plays a vital role in healthcare management today. One example of its importance was aired on the BBC recently (8-10 Jan). They featured a series of programmes charting the progress (?) of a certain business guru, Sir Gerry Robinson, who believed that any organisation can be made to run well, including the NHS. This was somewhat reminiscent, for those of us old enough to remember, of a certain Sir John Harvey-Jones saying similar things back in the early 90's.

The programmes captured Gerry's visits to Rotherham General Hospital, the purpose of which was to find ways to reduce waiting times over a six month period. Each of these programmes seemed to enforce the same underlying message – a distinct lack of communication (and subsequent action) between management and staff within the hospital. Many of the scenes showed him getting people together and talking to each other about the problems and how they wanted to see them resolved.

What struck me what not only the simplicity of what he was trying to do, but the fact that getting people to talk to each other is only part of the solution. What was also clearly needed was some way to help those talking to each other to really listen as well as hear what was being said.

All of this is great of course if you can hear, but what about those who can’t? What is illuminating is that it is often the case that people who are deaf or hard of hearing, listen better than those of us who have so-called 'good' hearing.

So perhaps some refections?

• If you don't want to know the answer, then don't ask the question
• If you ask the question, then have the good grace to really 'listen' to the answer
• Once you have listened - TAKE ACTION AND CHANGE SOMETHING!

The programme, produced with the OU raised a lot of other key managerial issues affecting healthcare managers today - why not read about others' views on the programme and maybe even have your say and post a comment on the OU discussion forum