The Challenge
Nottingham University Hospitals Trust (NUH) was formed though a merger in 2006, to create the fourth largest acute teaching trust in the country. Dr Peter Homa was appointed Chief Executive to lead the new organisation.
Any merger stretches leadership capacity. The new organisation is significantly larger than its predecessors, and new structures take time to bed in.
Senior managers have to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity – delivering day-to-day while also planning the future.
This was a challenging and exciting assignment, and we were called in to support the recruitment of eight senior roles to lead the organisation. In merger situations, candidates tend to come from both inside and outside the organisation, but roles in the new organisation may be different.
Our Solution
We started with a series of in-depth meetings with the new Chief Executive, in order to understand the context and the skills needs.
The new organisation had no history, and therefore no reputation, so it was essential to communicate to candidates a clear message about the scale and ambition behind the new organisation – making the proposition tangible by describing how things would change.
At the same time, we helped to define the skill-set required for each post within the new structure.
We were able to call upon our networks across the health sector, and the search yielded excellent candidates across the entire range of functional specialists, which included Directors of: Nursing, Midwifery and Services; Finance and Procurement; Marketing and Communications; HR; Strategy; Health Infomatics; and Estates and Facilities.
As trusted advisers, we were also able to support the new Board with an assessment and business psychology package to help them to anticipate conflicts and synergies among the Board itself – and so perform at maximum capacity.
The Result
A year on, the NUH Board has published an ambitious ‘vision’ statement Shaping the Future, and is driving through an exciting programme of development and change.