Session Three - NHS

What can we learn about effective Strategic Leadership from the Gerry Robinson case study? What were the most memorable examples of effective or ineffective strategic leadership?

Gerry Robinson was never intimidated by the complexity of the NHS which is the third largest organisation in the world. He said "Good management is simply good management, no difference between managing a corner shop and large organisation such as NHS; this entails the believe and the confidence that he could analyse and diagnose the strategic issues with NHS. He wore Surgeon's uniform in order to come across as a legitimate expert in the medical field rather than wearing a suit and tie for appearing to be bureaucratic office manager. 

Gerry Robinson was able to question all the different groups involved in the hospital such as the management, consultants and nurses. He found out that there were no structure in the internal management of the hospital for example nobody could positively indentify who was in charge and the management could not enforce any policy and are there as caretakers. He found out that waiting time could be dramatically reduced by persuading the consultants/surgeons to work on Fridays. 

What did you learn about persuasion and influencing from the case study and from today’s session?

Gerry Robinson persuaded by bringing facts that theatres are poorly utilised and revealed that many theatres are just empty and can definitely be used for operations. He also persuaded that doctors could work a little bit more hours.

How does this case study compare with Carrefour? Any major similarities or differences?

Carrefour's strategic issues are loosing profit by not embracing technological changes such as providing online services as well as the company's creditors are asking for quick turnaround of profit-making which does not give a chance for the process of changes to take an effect into converting the organisation to be profitable. However NHS's issues is organisational structure failure which resulted long waiting lists for patients. The similarity is that both organisations are not meeting their targets and both leaders of the organisations failed to persuade their respective followers to embrace their ideologies.