BAE Systems is the UK's largest defence and security company with approximately 34,300 employees based at around 50 sites in the UK. They deliver a full range of products and services for air, land and naval forces, as well as advanced electronics, security, information technology solutions and support services. They are the leading supplier to the UK Ministry of Defence (MoD) and have market leadership positions in air and maritime domains.

BAE Systems wanted us to support talented middle and senior leaders to free up their time to focus more on leadership and less on transactional management tasks in their business areas.

The aim was to provide participants with knowledge and transferable skills in order to develop and instil leadership in their teams and drive forward cultural change and innovation.

We designed an accredited Postgraduate Certificate programme called Leading Management Transformation, which is now run annually.

The programme is attended by participants across different divisions

It integrates workshops on topics of Leadership, Strategy and Innovation. There is a healthy balance between experiential practical learning and critical review of academic models and theories supporting the module topics. Two standout features of the programme are action learning and assessment through group work.

More than 50 people have graduated from the programme.

The programme culminates with participants applying their learning to deliver a work-based service improvement project. Over 50 such projects have now been delivered for BAE systems.

There have been some great individual case studies in terms of personal growth over the programme, particularly for participants who hadn’t been in formal education for some time.

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals is an NHS Foundation Trust which runs health and social care services in Blackpool, UK.

We designed an in-house Postgraduate Certificate in Medical Leadership programme for Foundation Year 2 doctors, which we’ve now delivered for over 10 years.

It is a practical programme, designed around the GMC Medical Leadership competency framework, not too dissimilar to what students experience on the open programme. The doctors are initially encouraged to think about their personal development and leadership competency development needs, alongside the learning they intend to take from the taught modules.

Many service improvement projects have been delivered for the Trust. During the year in which participants complete the programme, they work on a service improvement project, supported with action learning. This not only provides something back to their employer; it also is an opportunity to apply their leadership skills and embed their knowledge as they work collaboratively and cross-professionally in their healthcare system.

Blackpool Teaching Hospitals is an NHS Foundation Trust which runs health and social care services in Bolton, UK.

Following a review of its leadership development strategy, Bolton’s Organisation Development Team identified a skills and confidence gap with their junior clinical managers to enable them to lead change and inspire their teams within the pressures of healthcare service delivery.

We worked in partnership with the Bolton team to scope a skills-based 9 month development programme to engage participants with thinking about team leadership approaches, their own wellbeing and application of programme principles to apply to the ‘real world of work’. Topics included resilience, mindfulness, coaching, action learning and influencing skills, with respect to Trust values around care and compassion.

Formal and informal feedback was gathered throughout the programme to evaluate the learning experience for participants, around transferability of learning, impact on personal and professional practice and organisational impact.

Participants developed and delivered a work-based project during the programme and presented their results to invited guests and senior managers at a World Café event in the Education Centre.

The Gauteng Healthcare Leadership Programme is a programme we scoped and developed with the Gauteng Government’s Minister of Healthcare for 22 senior healthcare leaders and chief executive officers. Gauteng is a province of South Africa containing the country’s largest city, Johannesburg,

Gauteng Government’s Minister of Healthcare wanted us to develop a programme with the following criteria:

• Postgraduate accreditation
• Work Based learning enables participants, not only to develop their leadership skills but to put these into practice and achieve significant change in their healthcare organisations and the healthcare system as a whole
• Individual and senior team development, creating a community of practice
• Context-specific learning, i.e. relevant for the healthcare system in South Africa but also learning from the NHS and other international healthcare systems.

We designed the Gauteng Healthcare Leadership Programme which featured one week’s face-to-face residential in South Africa. This was followed up with online leadership and organisational change modules, facilitated by Lancaster University Management School tutors, group webinars with guest speakers from the NHS, personal one-to-one coaching, and several self-facilitated activities, such as visits to participants’ organisations for knowledge exchange.

Key topics in the Master Classes in the Residential and within the online learning included:

• Strategic analysis
• Leading Others Through Change
• Investigative Practices and Leading service improvement projects
• An Understanding Organisational Culture
• Understanding motivation, behaviours, values and personality traits
• Developing Resilience
• Developing Emotional intelligence.

The participants were awarded a Postgraduate Certificate in Professional Practice (Healthcare Leadership) at the end of the programme.

The programme culminated in the presentation of participants’ service improvement projects, evidencing their application of learning on the programme to a measurable business outcome.

Our approach enabled busy senior leaders to learn online at their own pace, whilst building a learning community through video conferencing, learning sets and organisational visits. An approach of flipped learning was particularly successful, whereby the tutors prompted peer teaching within the group, developing the habit of knowledge creation and exchange to address shared organisational challenges.