"Leading Beyond Sustainability" - celebrating the work and talent of Matt Walsh

My latest book, "Leading Beyond Sustainability - Six Aspirations for a Brighter Future" will be published by Routledge in September. The essense of this text is that I have discovered (by engaging with people around the world since 2015) that most people want to see a brighter future, one that can be defined by six simple but powerful aspirations as shown below.

I describe these aspirations, chapter by chapter, and provide examples of them playing out from people I have encountered personally. These will not be the most famous or celebrated case studies. I doubt that you will have heard of most of them. I celebrate them because each one is powerful in its own right, whether it is the story of a global corporate empowering its 20,000 staff to own their careers (aspiration of opportunity) or of one man who retired early to care for his wife when she was diagnosed with dementia (aspiration of vitality).

These are everyday stories and they are as powerful as they are ordinary. Ordinary and yet extra-ordinary. The thing that most inspires me is that I know them all personally and I know that you will know just as many stories from your own encouters. The thing that makes them extra special is their vast number - millions of these stories are in play right now and they're all aimed at the same brighter future.

As we approach and pass the time when "Leading Beyond Sustainability" is due for publication, I have my publisher's blessing to share some of these stories. This is partly to whet your appetite and partly to get you thinking the obvious next question:

Who do I know who is changing the world?

Throughout the book I make no apologies for reminding you of the following belief that I hold very dear:

Every time we notice, encourage and celebrate someone who is changing the world, we are changing the world

I want nothing more than for readers (of this article and of the book) to remember these three powewrful words: notice, encourage and celebrate. And to live them every day with people and organisations you know personally.

In this article, I celebrate one of my personal encounters

I've left the title of the encounter below just as it is in the book. It tells you that its in chapter three, relating to our third aspiration, that of "Vitality". It tells you its the fifth encounter in the chapter. As you will see, I could easily have placed this encounter in Chapter 2 (Peace) but chose to include it in Chapter 3 as the expressed purpose of this work is to improve the health of communities and the people who live there.

There are countless people all over the world helping to make communities become more peaceful, more harmonious and more conducive to meaningful and healthy lives.? I’m fortunate to have had the opportunity to meet, get to know and listen to one of them.

PERSONAL ENCOUNTER 3.5 – Matt Walsh “Communities of wellbeing”

One thing that really stuck in my mind from my studies for my MSc in Safety and Reliability in the 1990s, was watching my professor, Dr Alfred Z Keller scribe a formula on the blackboard in good old-fashioned chalk.? “Do you know what this means, Clive?” he asked.? I confessed that I had no idea and he explained that anything invested in maintenance will save us at least ten times that amount in repair.? Since then, I have appreciated that this applies to just about anything in life: machinery, buildings, roads, climate and even health.? With this in mind, I have often wondered what vast savings could be achieved in the work of health services if more was spent of the wellbeing of communities.? Savings, that is, in terms of money and ill health.

Just as the global pandemic was forcing populations all around the world into lockdown, I was introduced by a mutual friend to Doctor Matt Walsh[i], previously a Health Service Chief Executive, who had started a consultancy aimed at helping the disparate organisations involved in delivering health and wellbeing to work together in promoting vitality in communities and thereby reducing the burden on the UK National Health Service.? ?One of Matt’s projects has been to support the work of Bradford District and Craven healthcare partnership, a partnership of statutory and non-statutory organisations working to the declared ambition of keeping people ‘happy, healthy at home’.

The focus is on preventing ill health as much as possible by creating opportunities that help people stay healthy, well and independent and tackle inequalities across communities. ?Priorities include prioritising prevention and early intervention, fostering healthy lifestyles, self-care and nurturing active communities so that people are happier, healthier and more independent.

When people need care and support from these services, they become easy to access, joined up, designed around their needs, and provided as close to where they live as possible.

The aim is for people to be healthier, happier, and have access to high quality care that is clinically, operationally and financially stable. ?In other words, people will be as safe as possible when accessing care while ensuring best use is made of the resources funded by taxpayers.? Not just that, but communities and professionals get to work together in the creation of happier and healthier communities.

Matt is an experienced coach, mentor, facilitator, and leadership development practitioner collaborating with clients from a range of settings and levels of seniority within and outside health and care. He is a former General Practitioner and senior National Health Service (NHS) leader, he now works within the field of leadership and has extensive experience of organisational and systems development. ?Matt’s approach is to establish safe developmental spaces for those who are responsible for leading organisations and systems. With a keen interest in the relationship between humanity, creativity, and wellbeing, in his role as co-chair of The Creative Health and Wellbeing Alliance he convenes environments where creative people from the worlds of health and the arts can meet and work together. He also provides strategic advice to those working to develop their thinking about systems working, and the role of primary care.

Here Matt describes an example of where this has worked well and which we can all relate to:

“After spending most of my professional lifetime completely committed to improvement and to the reduction of inequalities in health that I encountered along the way, I realised that rather than things getting better, things had in fact, in many ways, got worse. My first response to this insight was that this fact was itself a demonstration of my complete lack of impact and my extraordinary incompetence during my time as a doctor in general practice. Some, I am sure, would agree. But stepping away from a role in which I had accountability for work to address quality in inequality, I can see now, and I suppose always knew, that the drivers for these perennial challenges are many and complex. As I get older, I understand better that relationship is at the heart of everything. Love is what first drives improvement, and it will be love that wakes the world up to the need to address inequality.?

It was with this knowledge in my heart that I embarked on a project with colleagues in the Bradford, Airedale and Craven (BAC) district in 2020 to establish an approach to what is known as Population ??Management (PHM). ?PHM is an attempt to identify within populations, those groups of people who are at greatest risk from disease, on the basis of better analysis of data that the health and care system has already gathered within the process of caring for people at an individual level.

We know, because the evidence tells us, that if we more proactively identify and manage risk then we can reduce the impact that disease can have and we can increase the number of years that people can live without being dependent upon medicines, others or the state. That is a ‘good thing’, though I would be the first to agree that thinking like this already is too heavily invested in a medical model; happiness, joy and fulfilment is about so much more than the absence of disease, and their presence in our lives is dependent upon so much more than ‘the identification and management of clinical risk’.

In bringing people together, we convene a space between those working within organisations, enabling a conversation about priorities, about how we will work together, about how we will share information and share our resources in support of a shared endeavour to improve the lives of the citizens we are here to serve.? We are able to agree how we will do that with people and not do it to them. ?We are able to go where the energy and momentum is, settling on the one priority that everyone could agree upon – the better identification of those in the earliest stages of diabetes – where the district is recognised nationally as an outlier and has been for decades.?

Our series of conversations turned ideas into a clear set of priorities, actions, specific populations to focus upon first and ultimately a strategy, with a senior level steering group to oversee the delivery.”

Matt’s story fills me with massive admiration for the army of people around the world who are supporting wellness in our communities, be they teachers, sports clubs, gymnasiums, scientists working on health diagnostics or simply enthusiastic people organising park-runs or a walk in the countryside with friends.?

The infrastructure for vitality is complex and further reaching than it may at first seem.? For every person who describes themselves as a health and care worker, including doctors, nurses, carers, anaesthetists, physiotherapists etc etc etc, there are a hundred others who make similar impact but wouldn’t usually receive their deserved credit from society – or even (or especially) from themselves.

Matt's poetry

On 13 September 2023, I caught up with Dr Matt Walsh – remember him from one of my personal encounters in our Chapter 3 on Vitality? (in this article it's just above). He dropped me a line with a beautiful poem on Abundance (the fourth aspiration) which he wrote on a trip he had just had to France to meet with friends and where the guests had given the host a pear tree.

I thought you'd like to read the message he sent to me - with his poem.

Dear Clive, Here’s the poem that I read to you – it is entitled “Pear Tree”, and it is about abundance – the pear tree being an ancient symbol of abundance, sustenance and longevity. Matt.

Pear Tree by Matt Walsh

May your roots grow deep

And find deep springs of sustenance

To keep you healthy and strong

May your leaves be broad and plentiful

Providing generous shade and safe shelter

To all who visit here.

May your timber be fine and your branches tall,

So that you become a landmark for all who are seeking kindness.

May the winters be gentle with you.

May sweet scented blossom

Glow bright on this tree each spring

To remind the world about the beauty of friendship.

And in the autumn, may your abundant seeds scatter far and wide

To make this world a better place

And in the years ahead

May this tree come to represent

Companionship, love, healing and the wonder of the kindred spirit.

Matt and I would be delighted to share more

See link below for information on how to be part of the book launch.

References:

[i] Dr Matt Walsh: https://www.dhirubhai.net/in/matt-walsh-9a803927/

[ii] A summary of Leading Beyond Sustainaility for Linked In readers: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/leading-beyond-sustainability-vision-world-we-all-love-clive-wilson/

[iii] Details of how to host a book launch on your premises and celebrate the work of your organisation: https://www.dhirubhai.net/pulse/celebrate-impact-youre-making-help-launch-new-book-clive-wilson-t8rke/?trackingId=UIkeh6rTQpW35AXZGYiYyQ%3D%3D