Social mobilising and organising – the right prescription for leadership in the NHS?

Arrival from 12 noon. Seminar starts at 12.15pm and ends at 1.15pm.

Tea, coffee and sandwiches provided

Alan Boyd, Elaine Clark and Adrian Nelson, Health Management Group, Manchester Business School.

Social mobilising and organising (SMO) is an approach to large scale organisational change based on studying successful social movements. Leaders of such movements, despite few economic resources and little position-based power, have been able to deliver profound change that has improved the lives of thousands of people. Could the SMO approach be useful to leaders in large healthcare systems such as the NHS to facilitate more successful system-wide change than has been achieved through hierarchical management structures?

In this seminar Adrian, Alan and Elaine will:

• Describe key concepts, principles and models of SMO, focusing particularly on the approach developed by Marshall Ganz of Harvard Business School

• Outline their research, which investigated an attempt to use SMO to bring about large scale change with regard to the prescription of anti-psychotic drugs for people with dementia.

• Suggest what this indicates about the usefulness of SMO as an approach to facilitating the implementation of evidence-based practice in healthcare.

• Give examples of how aspects of SMO have been used subsequently in the NHS, including how ideas of public narrative have support management development in the national Elizabeth Garrett Anderson programme.