Janette McCulloch
What’s your professional background?
I did a law degree and went straight into the NHS National Management Training Scheme, which was a fast-track graduate management scheme, intended to produce the next generation of Chief Executives. However I found that climbing up the rather traditional ladder in the health service didn’t appeal to me. So I left the NHS for a few years and ran a local group for Age Concern - and in the process learnt most of what I now know about steering and developing an organisation and managing people. In fact I think those early formative years in my 20’s with the not-for-profit sector also taught me a lot about taking responsibility for my own professional development and learning quickly from my own mistakes.
I went back into the NHS in 1990 as a Director of an FHSA - Family Health Services Authorities were very much the new kids on the block back then. We had a bit of money to invest in primary care back then and - where I was in North London - the privilege to work with some fantastic GPs, so it was a terrific experience.
I left in 1995 to set up my own freelance business.
So how come a freelance consultant was interested in becoming a Management Fellow?
Well for starters I was interested in the research question – organisational and personal development and how and why people learn is my passion. I had had a few really interesting freelance roles on the fringes of the research/academic community by then, and had worked very happily with one member of our academic team before, and I thought it would be interesting to be more embedded in a research project and see it all unfold. But to be honest, when I was asked if I would like to apply, it was one of those moments in life when I thought – I must say yes to this opportunity without analysing it that closely.
I was attracted by the brand new nature of the role – I was recruited in the first cohort of Management Fellows in 08/09 – and by the fact that we - the research team and particularly myself and the PI – had freedom to innovate and carve something out that would work. I also loved the idea of being the “outsider” on the team, as that gives you a very special and privileged view, and can be quite potent if properly used. It’s a position I am familiar with in my work as an organisational consultant of course. It can feel edgy and uncomfortable at times but always fascinating.
Has the experience lived up to your expectations?
Surpassed it by far! I could never have predicted the benefits of being a Management Fellow. For starters it’s provided me with a new peer group of very bright people – yet at the same time has been a great confidence-booster about my ability to hold my own in intellectual and theoretical discussions (well, usually!)
Secondly, getting engaged in research provides you with a means to step slightly outside your familiar work context and I have found that refreshing; calming even. That may seem an odd word to use, particularly given the turmoil and uncertainty in the NHS right now (about which I care passionately) but the combination of the helicopter view along with detailed insight into some managers’ working lives has given me a sense of thinking space and has felt like a real privilege. Thirdly, I am one of life’s natural generalists and it has been great to be valued as such on the team. It’s so easy to dismiss the generalist perspective – jack of all trades, master of none etc – and I now realise I have spent a lot of my working life apologising for it – but in fact there is a great “fit” for someone like me (who reads very widely and is interested in most things at an “intelligent person in the street” level) to work alongside academics who may be world authorities in their own specialist subject area. We can both bring something to a discussion and I have learnt that my perspective and ideas are, in the right circumstances, just as useful as theirs.
What do you think you have contributed?
Well that’s difficult to answer and I really need to ask my colleagues - but maybe I have contributed a few things about how we have approached the research; and also to team dynamics.
I hope I’ve been able to contribute to working out how each Phase of the research can be translated from an idea on paper into a health care setting. That has been increasingly true as the research went on I think. In Phase 3 (facilitating some Action Learning Sets and using them as a means to gather data) I have been one of those voices in the team saying “it’s OK to experiment a bit here – we know we have the germ of an interesting idea so let’s just see where it takes us”. This is partly due to my personal outlook on life; but I also wonder if there is something about the way managers operate and the nature of managerial wisdom, that is rather experiential, emergent and about trusting to your instinct.
I’ve learnt as a manager that a very useful approach is to say “well, let’s try this and if it doesn’t work, then we will have learnt something along the road” That probably sounds a bit lacking in rigour, sloppy even, to people from other disciplines, but I think it’s just a different way of knowing. There’s a wonderful saying in Buddhism “You find your path by walking it”. To me that means living a bit of a risk and not expecting to be able to pin things down too firmly.
Several of our team members have incredibly valuable real-life health care management/nursing experience themselves and I’d like to think that on occasions my presence has brought that to the fore and validated their voices.
Right now (August 2011) we are making sense of our data and I think I can see that my way of sense-making may be different from my academic colleagues – but I need to give that some more thought!
Would you recommend the role - or something like it - to others?
Yes, whole-heartedly. I think to work in a research team is enormously valuable for managers at all levels. I would suggest that anyone interested gets onto the website of their local University and finds out about the special interests of the people there and - (even if there only appears to be a vague connection with your own work) - invite yourself round for a coffee! You never know where that conversation might lead and it could be the start of building a really useful network.
And if at all possible, find a way to be involved from the very beginnings of a research project and see it through to the end as a full team member, rather than being wheeled in for special occasions.