Bee-inspired leadership conference on international day of happiness

Andrew Walton, Executive Chair, reflects on our leadership conference held on 20 March.

29 March 2018

It was our second annual leadership conference last week – reflecting on what we have achieved over the last year, and helping our teams plan for the next few years was the theme of the day. We were also able to focus on our happiness and pride in the team who have worked so hard to grow our professional reputation, drive up standards and work towards being “brilliant at the basics”.

I remember saying at our event a year ago – the event was a wonderful day and a great opportunity to be inspired, learn something new and look to the future with “Oomph” and positivity. Again we had Oomph and we definitely had action.

Arguably the last 12 months have been our most successful yet in terms of growth and investment in the business. What was clear as we went through the day, that collectively we have a desire to be outstanding in what we do, whether that relates to clinical expertise, mobilisations, innovation and patient outcomes.

Our Bee-inspired theme went further and we worked through a team exercise that involved solving a bee-themed problem. There were some great stories to be had from cross pollenating ideas, coming up with performance related honey incentives, working through a honey operational plan and negotiating bee-takeovers. Perhaps you had to BEE there …Great fun but all with important lessons to be learnt about working as a team to solve a problem.

So collectively we have spent 41 man days, that’s 2 months, over one day, which is a big investment in time and resources, to genuinely engage some of our leaders in planning for the year ahead and we urge all teams to take the initiative to run the business.

I encourage you all to grow and take some measured risks. Don’t procrastinate – if you don’t make mistakes, you don’t learn, so push your chests out and bee-inspired.