You have an idea... (part 1) and Wes Streeting wants bold ones (part 2)

This is in two parts - 1. the product of an unnecessarily poetic bit of self reflection (humour me), and 2. some reflections about innovation.

Part 1 - Liam had an idea (self reflection)

You have an idea.

It feels like a good one.

You talk to people about it and they say YEAH! 

You emotionally commit.

The next thing you know…

You've spent 3 months writing a 60,000 script (in between client work), which is basically a book word count.

You've created a slide for every paragraph in that script (often agonising over each picture being perfect) over 4 months. A good proportion first thing whilst on holiday with your family and friends in Devon.

You've spent your evenings learning OBS Studio so you can record.

You've bought a green screen, new camera, teleprompter, stream deck, and a bunch of shit that felt like a good idea but you never used.

You've spent 6 weeks in the middle of summer with big lights on you whilst reading the script, trying not to sweat. You're on numerous lozenges a day so your voice doesn't crack. Initially it's agonisingly hard but you learn to do it (new skill yay).

One day your camera software crashes and you have to reinstall it and lose your settings, and can’t get it right for 5 hours. You have a little cry that day.

You have that one afternoon when you're knackered and it takes 34 attempts to get that one bit that you keep fumbling. You probably should have stopped but you’re not going to be beaten by a f****ng paragraph.

You've spent your evenings learning CapCut and video production, and your days getting it wrong until you get it right…

You've spent mornings, evenings and weekends editing your videos, spending ages on putting a popup Liz Truss and falling Iceberg lettuce in just to make your niche joke (that may not be funny) come to life.

You've researched online education platforms, and a range of other things where if you f**k up then it’s going to ruin the experience.

You’ve had bouts of anxiety, days of pretty crippling stress, sore eyes from reading with lights on you, self doubt (which I’m not usually prone to) and turned down work because you’re too far down the rabbit hole to stop now. Oh and a second child is coming so the deadline is on.

You’ve wondered why you do this to yourself, and have croakily asked your therapist this exact question numerous times. He sits silently because I know the answer (this is not my first overwhelming work rodeo) and yet still I ignore it.

You find that it’s dominating your life so much that you don’t really have a lot else to talk about, and are probably pretty boring.

And the output…

7 hours and 40 minutes of video.

Seven. hours. and. forty. minutes. of. video.

It feels such a small thing for what has felt like such a huge thing.

Creativity and creating is a funny thing. You have one nice convenient idea… and the rest is a jumble of rolling consequences that you ride.

Was it worth it? I’m not sure. I can’t really know until I put this thing into the world. Maybe it will change a little tiny corner of it. Maybe nothing will change.

As Seth Godin outlined in The Practice: creation - is art - is vulnerability. It’s a noble endeavour, and there’s something very special in creating something massive on your own. Step by step, and day by day. Learning new skills and tools, and trying to make something good enough to achieve what you can see in your mind.

If I could go back and decide to do it again, would I? 

Yes.

Even if it fails?

Yes.

Even if people see all the imperfections I see?

Yes.

Even if it changes nothing?

Yes. Because I wanted to change something, and that’s enough.

Very quickly before we go to part 2 - if you're curious about the idea and the resulting 7 hours and 40 minutes here's some info:

Part 2 - on innovation (and Wes Streeting's request for 'bold ideas')

Firstly, I write the above not as a case study of success: it might fail, in multiple different ways, and in front of everyone. So if it comes across as some kind of self aggrandizement (which I always worry about when using myself as a case study for my arguments).

Instead I'd like to focus on The Practice as defined by Seth Godin, and the innovation challenges we face in our system. A term I love and from his 2020 book The Practice: Shipping Creative Work, that I often refer back to.

The practice describes the daily commitment to creative work, regardless of the outcome. He emphasises that true creativity and professional success are built through consistent effort, not by waiting for inspiration or seeking perfection.

A few of the headline topics are:

1. Commitment to Process: success comes from showing up every day and doing the work, not necessarily focusing on achieving perfect results. It's about trusting the creative process rather than getting attached to outcomes.
2. Creative Consistency: Creativity is a skill that can be honed through consistent effort. The more regularly you engage in the practice of creating, the better you'll get, and the more resilient you'll become in the face of failure or rejection.
3. Letting Go of Fear: creators need to learn to let go of fear, self-doubt, and the need for validation. The practice is about producing work even when you're unsure how it will be received.
4. Shipping the Work: An important part of the practice is "shipping"—releasing your work to the world, even when it feels imperfect. Godin advocates for this because waiting for perfection often leads to procrastination or stagnation.

So the practice is about committing to regular, disciplined work, focusing on growth, and continually creating and sharing, without being paralysed by the fear of imperfection.

There's other great sources I could draw on but I want to highlight the self endeavour that underpins the creative process.

Let's now look at the NHS as an environment.

The qualities that I describe above are ones I'm sure every leader, national policy and secretary of state would want in our staff.

Just this week Wes Streeting sat down the head honchos at NHS England and the Dept of Health and Social Care, and said he wanted bold ideas.

Now the subjective definition of bold is just that: subjective, and we have no clarity around what Mr Streeting is actually advocating - he just wants them big or you don't get the dosh.

Well here's a big idea.

What about if we consider the fact that the NHS as a root and branch institution creates the exact opposite conditions for innovation:

We value downward designated skills-as-compliance mentality. I remember reading Health Education England's competency framework for digital innovation 3 years ago and being shocked - clearly the person who wrote the framework had no practical knowledge or experience of innovating because anyone innovative I know would not come up with this.

(I'll show you mine if you show me yours folks 😉)

Here's my slide to highlight this from my exec course.

More widely I see day in day out that the individuals, teams and organisations who are responsible for working with innovators... don't, or can't actually innovate themselves. I'm not saying they're not innovative, but where is The Practice being demonstrated?

Secondly, do we need to talk about psychological safety? Right now risk aversion and fear of doing the wrong thing has never been higher in this system, and at all levels. We're terrified of things that are too risky or too difficult, and governance is rampaging across most if not all decisions looking to grab every early stage idea or proposal to extract the risk - even if the idea hasn't had time to fruit.

It's not lost on me that whilst failure for me is my business going under and not being able to pay my mortgage, I do have absolute freedom and relative safety to let go of that fear - because it's mine and I'm not surrounded by an operating system that has something different to say about my taking risk in pursuit of a noble failure.

Finally, we have, as a form of duplication of the above, an NHS addicted to perfection, applied to imperfect things. This wonderful digital world, and the complexity it brings is imperfect. It has different dynamics to more complicated things.

And yet, try and tell your SRO in the NHS or review board, or customer if you're selling in that your thing is imperfect, complex and needs to be safely explored in real time in order to be tested to success or rational destruction.

Sum

Asking for, and endorsing, bold ideas is easy work. Lots of people will be taking to different podiums and stages to endorse the need to innovate and bring bold ideas.

But the real hard work, and potentially the boldest idea of them all, is to genuinely connect with the pursuit of innovation...

[red team] - WAIT - is that the big idea Liam - that's pretty fucking fluffy!

[Liam] - Ah hello internal critical friend, we haven't seen you for a few articles - yes, it is, but this is a more poetic and philosophical article, and I have many many tangible things I've outlined in my innovation practice and the exec / manager courses I've created and taught - I'm just trying to not write another 60,000 word script.

[red team] - OK fair play - we want a few months before we go through that rigmarole again - carry on.

...

As I was saying, we need to genuinely connect with the pursuit of innovation, and that means that we need to innovate in removing all of the barriers and blockers of innovation within our mindset and operating systems.

Otherwise all we are advocating for is a dichotomy, that leads to contradictory demands, huge frustration and more FAILURE to justify our ongoing pursuit of eradicating failure.

So let's be bold and build an NHS for people who want to pursue their own creative practice in order to nobly improve the NHS.