In 2021, Venbridge worked with their client to secure start-up funding from the Welsh Government to create an innovative training academy to transform leadership in the health and care sector.
The programme needed to be disruptive – challenging conventional leadership styles in order to achieve ambitious goals. The course was built to inspire and energise participants by demonstrating what is possible across the world, connecting with other global leaders and encouraging a process of system intervention. Above all, it had to be commercially viable.
Working alongside our client, Cardiff and Vale University Health Board, we had just 8 weeks to articulate, define, create and deliver this ground-breaking academy.
Beginning by creating an evidence-based methodology, we built the programme to incorporate the voice of the customer, putting horizon scanning and market assessment research front and centre. It was important to recognise that it takes multilateral innovation to solve wicked problems and that our academy had to be distinctive and ambitious enough to make a marked difference.
Our mantra was to challenge our own thinking at each step. This way we held firm to our determination to set high the bar of aspiration and to provoke unique and innovative thinking and achievement.
The Climb programme launched in Wales in the summer of 2021 and welcomed its first cohort of candidates the following month.
Harnessing Innovation to Solve Real-World Problems
Tracheostomy training had been hit hard by Covid-19. This life saving procedure occurs in high intensity scenarios with many variable factors at play. Even before the pandemic, training was undertaken 1:1 with low fidelity mannequins in a scenario that bore little resemblance to the clinical reality.