Myron’s Maxims sounds like the title of a sci-fi novel, or possibly a nightclub (remember them?) but in reality, they are a set of principles by which a complex living system can work to the best effect. I used the maxims extensively over the past eight months as I designed and launched a new ‘flex team’ within the communications directorate at NHS Digital.
by Andrew Kirby
It wasn’t exactly child’s play, but it did involve soft play. More on that later. What you won’t get more of is the irony that I’m the least flexible person in the world (I’m flat-footed like my Dad and like my son) and here I am, captaining a flex team. I’ll just leave that one here.
Anyway, on 1 April – April Fool’s Day - I started what was initially a three-month role to bring the concept of a flex team to life. The rationale for doing this was obvious: within the communications business partner network we were required to work on something like 70 large-scale, multi-million national programmes from across the organisation, and yet there were only fourteen of us. We were spread very thinly. The flex team would allow us to flex our resource and talent to offer support for programmes’ short- and medium-term needs. No longer would we work solely with one programme.
And on that first day I truly did feel like a fool; a fraud. I had absolutely no clue as to how to get cracking with the job. There just seemed to be far too many moving parts. But that’s where Myron’s Maxims come in. They help make sense of what seemed at first to be an overwhelming project comprising people and processes. What’s the best way to eat an elephant? One bite at a time.
Maxim one: “The process you use to get to the future is the future you get”
NHS Digital is all about good design and uncovering user needs to fully understand complex problems. In order to best design a team from scratch I conducted a lot of user research and scoping work in April. I spoke with a wide range of people including colleagues at NHS England, staff at comms/ marketing agencies, heads of programmes and project managers at NHS Digital, the communications management team, and the staff who’d eventually become the team: five senior communications officers (soon to be seven as we are drafting in some new talent, though more on that later).
Following this engagement, I then made like Hannibal Smith in the A-Team (get my up-to-date references!) and put together a plan as to how I would deliver against my objectives which were as follows:
Begin to set up the flex team, including processes for managing assignments and resourcing – ensuring an accurate and continually monitored view with balanced workloads
Define the structure and ways of working of the flex team – we already had agreed, co-produced behaviours, which provided a great foundation
Establish which programmes require temporary or light-touch support, reviewing documented milestones, project plans and associated charging.
It wasn’t all plain sailing, however. I made several false starts. Oh, the time I wasted trying to get to grips with Visio; trying to design massively overly complicated process maps which needed their own process maps just so anyone could understand them. And then starting over; taking the digital out of the process for a while (yes, I do work for a tech organisation; no, I’m not very tech-organised) and laying out some massive sheets of paper on the kitchen floor and populating them with post-it notes, only for the cat (Eric) to come along and decide all those lovely pink and orange slips of paper looked great for chasing under the fridge or to nibble on. Then, finally, getting to grips with MS Planner and Forms, two programmes whose very names would have once upon a time had about as much appeal to me as they would for Eric. And then stress-testing these fledgling processes. And iterating. And user-testing. All of those things which NHS Digital do so well.
Maxim two: “People own what they help create”
I was clear from the very beginning that I needed the ‘buy-in’ of my colleagues who’d eventually be working in the flex team. I ran several workshops to reach an understanding of our clear combined purpose and direction, together with clarity about roles and goals. We also ran sessions ‘Introducing the flex team’ and our ways of working to the wider comms team. At these sessions we defined our scope, outlined the processes for commissioning work, and identified next steps.
In formal terms the success of the flex team became a collective responsibility because it was built into objectives for annual performance reviews for everybody. But more informally, all the team felt as though they had key roles to play in this process of ‘co-creation’. I wanted them to feel proud of the model we have made together and the success of it moving forward.
Maxim three: “Third maxim: Those who do the work, do the change”
I successfully launched the team in early July. But standing up the team was only the first part of the job. Getting all the moving parts working in harmony, like a well-oiled machine, was my next task. We had proved the concept of the flex team and my other management colleagues were knee-deep in COVID-19 work, so I was granted a six-month extension in order to do this.
I’m now twenty weeks into properly managing this fabulous team. Twenty weeks, most of them under one form of lockdown or another. This has, of course, necessitated virtual meetings, which obviously aren’t the best way of building a team. But we are a team nonetheless. We support each other, we listen. And every member of the team knows that I value their input. When the lockdown restrictions eased ever so slightly back in September, we met face-to-face in a carefully socially-distanced way of course. I’d really struggled to find a venue for this get-together: should we all meet outdoors at the bandstand in Roundhay Park, perhaps? Nope: we couldn’t rely on the weather. At a café then: but how about the rest of the customers? When our team gets talking we can be really loud. I think that’s something a lot of us communicators have in common.
In the end I had an idea straight out of left-field. A friend of a friend owns a small soft play centre in Headingley. After her business had been ravaged by not being allowed to open during the first lockdown she was taking the first small steps to reopening in a new way. The space wasn’t open to the public. You couldn’t just rock up and pay on the door to get in. But small parties of six or fewer were allowed to book out the whole place. All the windows would be left open and the chairs and tables spread out two metres apart. On a whim I decided to book us in: that way we could talk as loudly as we wanted and we didn’t have to worry about the weather. It was only after I booked it that I started to worry how my team would take it. Would they think I was making some reference to them behaving like kids?
I needn’t have worried. The team took it really well and it’s testament to the way they all are behaving within the parameters of the team: they’re all rolling their sleeves up and mucking in. But I’m sorry to report that none of them tried out the slide.
In all seriousness though, we’ve created a very healthy team environment in which we are all clear on the objectives for the team, as well as our own personal goals. We operate with an open mindset: everyone has a voice and is able to contribute new ideas. We work co-operatively and collaboratively: I willingly give help and support to my team but know that they are proactive, too: they know to come to me with solutions as well as problems.
Our co-created behaviours are always at play: We’re inquisitive and optimistic. We are curious and keep asking ‘why?’ We take initiative and are not afraid to challenge or be challenged. We’re supportive, collaborative and deliver on promises. We listen with fascination. We evaluate what we do so we can continuously improve. We are generous with our knowledge and eager to develop. We’ve got each other’s backs: we have empathy and we’re friendly and kind. And yes, for sure, we love to laugh… despite our reluctance to go down toddler slides.
But what’s been key has been the fact that the team have always met me halfway. And a key reason for that – I believe – is because I engaged with them early on, and truly valued their input. I couldn’t have done this without them.
Maxim four: “Real change happens in real work”
The changes we have made have massively improved not only what we do but how we do it. Because of the new processes and procedures we have been able to fully articulate comms delivery from within the flex team including instantly sourcing and sharing up-to-date plans and logs with the wider communications team, with partner organisations and stakeholders. We’re also much more responsive and customer-focused than we used to be.
Because of the new process for booking in work we have greater control and visibility of what each person is doing, day to day. We can also ensure that all assignments are linked to relevant charging models. This means we never work for free, or on “vanity projects”.
But more importantly, the people within the team have taken responsibility for the overall performance of the team. It makes my job an absolute joy.
One of the main drivers behind the establishment of the flex team was to ensure equity. Not just for those programmes which are requesting work (in terms of matching our capacity to charging) but also for the people in the team. We’ve established models which ensure fairness and transparency across the board. No one person gets all the “sexy” projects. No one person gets to do all the easy, quick-win stuff. No one person gets bogged down in that one programme which sucks the very life out of you.
And new work? The allocation of new assignments has to be transparent and fair. Of the 28 new assignments which have been briefed in, each member of the team has been allocated the same number each (there is some wiggle-room due to discrepancy around the size of some of these projects). What’s more, each of the colleagues have been given the opportunity to enjoy at least one new exciting stretch assignment, one which will show their ability to flex across different areas of the business and take them outside their comfort zone (which is one of their own personal objectives) and one ‘quick win’ project which they can close off relatively quickly and with minimum fuss.
Successes
Thus far the flex team have met (and in some cases exceeded) all our key performance indicators. This is a fantastic result given the challenging circumstances we find ourselves in. I mentioned in my introduction the sheer number of programmes we’ve been having to spread ourselves across, and the risk of us missing something. This picture became even more complex with COVID-19 projects accelerating through spring and early summer (we’ve covered some of the flagship tech projects during the pandemic such as the shielded patient lists and 111 online, for example). In August, like in the rest of the NHS, business as usual stuff started to pop back up again, and in September those projects and programmes which had been paused started to ramp up again. Which meant we were required to be even more flexible, and we had to keep an even closer eye on capacity.
The cavalry’s on the horizon. Next week two more senior communications officers will be welcomed into the team on a temporary basis. And I take this as the biggest indicator of the success of the team: we’re being trusted to grow within the parameters I set out back in March, April and May. Back then, though, it was all being done ‘on paper’. The people – the most complicated moving parts – weren’t yet part of the team. I could set down as much theory as I wanted, talk to as many stakeholders as I wanted… the proof of what I was doing was in the eating. Thanks to Myron’s Maxims, the process has been less complicated. It’s been some journey, taking in soft-play, April Fool’s Day, and a nationwide lockdown or two, but twenty weeks on, the flex team is going from strength-to-strength. And I simply couldn’t be prouder.
As Hannibal Smith would say, his jaws chomped firmly around his stogie: “I love it when a plan comes together.”
Andrew Kirby is communications manager and flex team captain at NHS Digital. You can say hello on Twitter at @andrew_kirby1
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Image via Alex Barth
