One chance to get it right, the much-anticipated pronouncement from the Leadership Alliance for the Care of Dying People, gives everyone involved in end of life care a chance to take stock and focus on what really matters when supporting people in their last days.

In a changing environment, our choices are create the future, adapt or perish. If creating the future is the one that that we wish to follow, we are entering risky territory. But then, when things are changing, innovation might be the least risky option.

The skills we need to help cope with this risk are: experimenting, a focus on genuine human needs, and amplifying weak signals. These are all things that make it a little bit easier to find a way through – they are part of entrepreneurial judgment. They are part of inventing the future.

Post that identifies the need to get better at scanning and connecting ideas. It’s not enough just to look at what our direct competitors are doing – in fact, it might be counterproductive. Instead, we need to look into areas that face similar problems. For example, the NHS and then other health services started to learn how to work more effectively and more safely by adopting some of the methods used by Formula 1 pit crews. As Nilofer Merchant says, the social era is about connecting things, people and ideas. So you need to travel, meet people, and read. By doing these things purposefully, we can improve our scanning and connecting skills. Even if we’re introverts, we can look for experiences and ideas outside of our comfort zones.

The article discusses the accuracy of psychometric testing in predicting the performance of an employee. It discusses the case of Paul Flowers, former chairman of the Co-operative Bank, criticisms on the use of psychometric testing by hiring managers and a way to translate a test score into a meaningful outcome for a company.

In a comparative study of health system performance by The Commonwealth Fund, the UK ranks first across a range of measures covering quality, access and efficiency of care, while the US comes in last place.

Monitor is supporting the Sign up to Safety campaign, launched by the Secretary of State for Health Jeremy Hunt, which aims to reduce avoidable harm by 50% and save 6,000 lives over the next 3 years.

Report from the Think Tank Reform that identifies in response to an affordability gap of £30 billion by the end of the decade and variability in quality the NHS will need to change an learn lessons from outside markets e.g. the retail sector. Key lessons are:

1. The “hub and spoke” model of the grocery industry with larger superstores and smaller local outlets is a powerful example for the configuration of specialist and community hospitals.
2. Like supermarket chains, the NHS can learn to harness the contribution of the consumer through membership cards and online access
3. If medicine took a “zero error” approach and learnt the lessons of advanced car manufacturing there would be a dramatic improvement in quality

To implement the change necessary this report suggests that the following three models are likely to provide a backdrop:

1. the existing model of fragmented care,
2. a new business model of integrated care
3. a technology-enabled business model that has yet to be developed.

King’s Fund report that reviews the impact of three approaches to NHS reform in England since the late 1990s: targets and performance management, inspection and regulation, and competition and choice. It argues for a fundamental shift in how the NHS is reformed, learning from what has worked (and what has not) in England and elsewhere.  Key findings are:

• Transforming the NHS depends on engaging doctors, nurses and other staff in improvement programmes.
• A new settlement is needed in which the strategic role of politicians is clearly demarcated to avoid frequent shifts of direction that create barriers to transformational change.
• Improvement in NHS organisations needs to be based on commitment rather than compliance, supported by investment in staff to enable them to achieve continuous quality improvement in the long as well as the short term.
• The experience of high-performing health care organisations shows the value of leadership continuity, organisational stability, a clear vision and goals for improvement, and the use of an explicit improvement methodology.
• Leadership in NHS organisations needs to be collective and distributed, with skilled clinical leaders working alongside experienced managers.
• NHS organisations should prioritise leadership development and training (preferably in-house) in quality improvement methods.

What more is possible when leadership is shared with patients and service users? This was the question we posed at a roundtable event last month.

Our intention was to host the diversity of perspectives on this question, and see what emerged. We invited people we knew had an interest – patient leaders, organisational and clinical leaders – and also put an open invitation on our website and Twitter. We were curious about who might value a conversation about shared leadership.

This business plan for 2014 and 2015 sets out the PHE’s core functions, outlines the key steps and actions it will be the taking over the next year to protect and improve the public’s health and reduce inequalities, and highlights some of its achievements in its first year. The accompanying letter from Jane Ellison MP confirms the role the government expects PHE to play in the health and care system in 2014 to 2015.