Senior leader reflections: Mo Hussain

University Hospitals Birmingham NHS Foundation Trust runs Good Hope, Heartlands, Queen Elizabeth and Solihull hospitals, Birmingham Chest Clinic, and Solihull community services.

I'm coming up to 20 years in the NHS now, so it's a bit of a milestone. I started my career in the NHS in September 2004, through the NHS Graduate Management Training Scheme. I was part of that for two years and I did a range of operational, strategic, and commissioning roles through placements across the Black Country. My first ‘proper’ job in the NHS was at Heartlands Hospital. I was working on service improvement based out of Devon House, working on outpatient and day case efficiency. One innovation that we were looking at back then was using text messages to remind patients to attend their outpatient appointments and how we could centralise printing of patient letters by bringing in a relatively new company called Synertec to embed that. So, coming back full circle, I’m now looking at how I can disrupt that legacy by putting in new technology that puts that information and control into the hands of patients directly. After I left Heartlands, I worked at Birmingham Children’s Hospital as a service manager, looking after theatres, anaesthetics, and liver services, which was a great role.

From there, I worked at the Black Country Partnership NHS Foundation Trust in mental health, starting off in a performance and planning role and, over the course of four years, I got to lead functions around commercial development and contracting, communications and on the equality, diversity, inclusion agenda which I loved. Then an opportunity came up at what is now called University Hospitals of Derby and Burton. I went there heading up the Strategy and Transformation functions. That was my director job and whilst I was there was an opportunity to merge Derby Hospitals with Burton Hospitals came up, which I led on as Director of Integration. The reason why we merged the two trusts was not just about bringing two organisations under one roof, but changing how we work for the better. That was the whole point about the clinical change model – often asking ourselves how does this change improve patient care? How does it improve staff experience?

Prior to coming here to University Hospitals Birmingham (UHB), I moved to University Hospitals Coventry and Warwickshire in my first board appointment as Chief Quality Officer. I was responsible for all things quality, corporate governance and digital. The reason why I held the digital portfolio was to ensure the connection between good quality improvement that could be enabled through technology and digital advancements. All my career has been pretty much based in Birmingham, the Black Country and the East Midlands. I was born at Sandwell Hospital, and I grew up in Wednesbury, in the Black Country. I moved away to Staffordshire for University and then came back, now living in Lichfield, so Good Hope Hospital is my local hospital.

I think when you're a kid, you go from wanting to be an astronaut or a fireman and all those kinds of things. When I was properly looking at what I wanted to be in secondary school, I wanted to be a lawyer, so I went on to do a law degree. I think that was all born from wanting to improve social justice. I got my law degree and then actually, things changed in my life, and I wanted to do something related to healthcare leadership. I think the reason why people work in the NHS is very values-based and that’s not surprising now when we look at the big focus on tackling health inequalities, which is a huge issue. Within this, there's a huge undertone of fixing social injustice there. So, whilst I probably did displease my parents a little in changing career choices, I am very grateful that I am doing the job that I do now.

Six months into my current role as Chief Strategy and Digital Officer, the best thing for me is the diversity of UHB as an organisation and I’ve been fortunate to have met so many people. But what we can't take for granted is that our role is to enable people to be the best version of themselves at work and how we can do that is through making sure we've got the best resources for those individuals so that they can apply the best evidence and practice to patients in the way patients wish. To do that, we need to make sure that our teams get trained in the right way and make sure they get the best development opportunities. It’s about getting to know people, getting to know what they enjoy and getting to know what real issues they have. My job as an executive is to therefore unblock those things in a pragmatic way, not trying to reach perfection, but makes things better for tomorrow than they are today.

I think the most difficult thing is finding good quality time for people, because we've got close to 24,000 people in our organisation. A key thing for me is how do we make sure we've got good clarity of purpose and then we can properly prioritise things and that includes time. That’s true for me, but it's true for everybody. I remember hearing some advice once, that managers make things happen, but leaders make it real; I think anyone can be a leader. I think it's important to know that the best thing you can do as a leader is to listen to people. We tend to promote people who talk. What we sometimes don't promote is people who listen, think, and then act. I think as I've grown and developed as a leader, I spend more time listening to people and representing that voice, because that's what you should be doing as a leader. I think if we tie it back to the values of UHB, the real things that we want to promote and encourage amongst our leaders is kindness. We want people connected. They're connected with everyone and part of their teams. And being bold for me is about making progress. You've got to act. You can't always sit back and listen, there ultimately needs to be action. That's where the value of connection comes into its own, because without trust, you can’t make things happen because you never brought anyone along with you.

I once heard something along the lines of, “too busy is a myth, people make time for the things that are important to them.” The principles behind this are really important for me because how often do we slot somebody in because that's the free time we have, versus how often we carve time out of our diary because that time is important to them? Time is the most precious currency we have – my advice to any future leader therefore is give your time to people who really need it, the value it holds will pay back more than you spent.

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