OD in the NHS IX: Futures forward
Do OD is a partnership between NHS Employers and NHS England and Improvement.
OD in the NHS IX was our ninth annual conference - the first took place in Church House, Westminster in July 2013, where 180 people came together for the first time to begin building a community across the country of people doing OD. Nine years later, we have welcomed around 3,000 people to our conferences. In that time we have seen consistent and growing investment in OD year on year as organisations, systems and leaders recognise and acknowledge that OD is just as, if not more vital today than ever before. OD practice is at the heart of change.
Our annual Do OD Community Survey has, over the years, shown that our work is more central, more valued and more closely aligned with the visions of our senior leaders. There are still plenty of challenges for us to tackle - how do we show up in a hybrid workplace? How can we support our individual organisations to collaborate as systems? In what ways can we make our own profession, and the wider NHS more diverse, more inclusive?
About the event
For our conference this year, our focus was on community in conversation, and conversation changes culture. At one of our earlier conferences we noticed that there were three questions that kept coming up in our conversations about OD:
- What is OD?
- Where should OD sit?
- How do you measure return on investment?
We set out to not only answer those questions, but to reframe them and change the conversations. We began to ask:
- How do you know when something is OD, or when its not?
- Who’s doing OD in your organisation even if they don’t know it?
- How can we measure return on intention?
We want to add to the conversation and maybe shift it slightly. We’re posing three new questions for our community that we hope will begin some new conversations about OD as we create new futures for the NHS:
- How do we build OD capability into our systems at every level while also developing our own specialist expertise?
- What’s helping us do the OD we need to do, and what’s stopping us?
- How do we continue to raise the profile and voice of OD? Collectively and individually, and within and across systems?
Certification of attendance
Whether you came to the main conference, joined the Conversations in the Time of COVID-19 session on 22 February, contributed to the discussions on purpose, practice and presence in between, or were there for the whole month, we are incredibly grateful that you were part of our month-long event. Download and keep this certificate of attendance as a reminder of the day and as a thank you from us for your participation.
