So, what is Transformation?

As someone with the word Transformation in my job title my self-esteem took a real knocking last week. I had a terrible experience. For what felt like a week I found myself watching Michael Bay's latest crime against humanity: 'Transformers: Age of Extinction'. When someone uses my title I will forever be taken back to that dark night. I no longer wanted to be a Transformer. But as I saw cars and trucks turn into fighting robots it made me ask the question, 'So what is transformation'?

We all know what an electronic transformer does (or at least I do now that I have Googled it). It is an apparatus for reducing or increasing the voltage of an alternating current. This is not making it a little more or a little less. What comes out of the transformation is of a fundamentally different nature to what went in.

But in a business sense, and in particular for a provider of healthcare services, what does it mean? We are constantly being told we can't just improve in the old ways. Improvement cannot be incremental, it must be transformational. Costs cannot be 'salami sliced', they need to be stepped. A little bit more activity is not enough, pathways need to be 're-designed'.

At Lancashire Care Foundation Trust we've tried to simplify things. We know that the collective impact of everything we do needs to be really big but for us Transformation simply means doing things better.

This change can be quick or slow, small or large, simple or complex. It can be about doing what we do better, doing something differently or stopping something we used to do. It can be doing something more quickly or removing the need for that thing in first place. It can be about doing things for less money, improving quality or ideally both.

It can even be about getting the basics right if change is required to make sure we do them better than we do now.

Transformation often takes place at a local level; in our individual and everyday work practice, and in the teams we work in. It will happen because everyone wants to improve, has the permission to improve and the tools to improve.

Where change is large, complex and / or risky staff will likely need support from clinical colleagues or from corporate services to make it successful. Similarly, leaders will want to know what change is happening so they can manage risks, offer support, share best practice and celebrate success.

When change is across services or different locations, or is very large, complex and / or risky it will be necessary to have clear sight of this at an organisation-wide level. In a small number of cases the leadership for these changes will need to be owned by the Executive Team and led from the corporate centre in partnership with clinical services.

We cannot do everything at once so it is important that we are clear about why we chose to do some things and not others.

What does Transformation mean to you?