It’s hard to pick a favourite but up there has to be General George Patton’s view that “a good plan executed violently now is better than a perfect plan executed next week…”. I think it’s the juxtaposition of the words “violent” and “executed” that give it such piquancy.

Leadership itself is never very far away from the headlines. Prime Minister Cameron’s leadership is threatened by the ill-disciplined spouting from two senior party members about the UK’s position on Europe and now gay marriage. David, I cannot be the first to pass on Churchill’s advice that “The nation will find it very hard to look up to the leaders who are keeping their ears to the ground…”

Milliband’s leadership is under threat because nobody can quite understand what he says and fewer care. So, Ed, some wise words from the nineteenth century journalist, Herbert Swope, for you to consider, namely “I cannot give you the formula for success, but I can give you the formula for failure, which is: Try to please everybody.”

Two words that are curiously thin on the ground in the Forbes list of leadership quotations are “luck” and “education”. I think the closest someone comes to admitting that being a good leader does rely on a bit more than sheer personality is when Napoleon, that employer of lucky generals, defined a leader as a “dealer in hope”. Wendell Wilkie suggests “Education is the mother of leadership” and Academic, Warren Bennis says, “The most dangerous leadership myth is that leaders are born – that there is a genetic factor to leadership. That’s nonsense; in fact, the opposite is true. Leaders are made rather than born.”

Up to a point Warren. Personally, I think it helps be a leader if you are blessed with a good mind from the outset – and that’s just luck of the draw. It’s what you do with your mind that counts – and that’s why education is so important. Not everyone is blessed with a good, supportive home that will supplement a formal education. A formal education should be available to everyone at school irrespective of their own home situation. Teaching should broaden all minds irrespective of intellectual ability and make us, if not leaders, then good citizens. As Abraham Lincoln urged, “whatever you are, be a good one”.

Why then, are we so quick to damn the very best education as elitist, discriminatory or, most inaccurately of all, posh? Surely it’s no genetic accident that an extraordinary percentage of the current Cabinet is made up of Etonians. An even higher proportion went to Oxford or Cambridge. Whether it was Eton or another good school, our country’s leaders can mostly all claim to have had a good education – an education that has unlocked their potential, often as successful business people or academics before entering the bear pit of politics.

Why, among our leaders, is there this over-representation of alumni from Oxbridge and a school near Slough?

It has to be about more than the tired arguments of money, class and privilege. Eton isn’t appealing or accessible to everyone any more than a Rolls Royce, both of which are beyond most ordinary people’s means.  But Eton is well endowed by (and like?) the people it has educated and the website states that “No parents with a talented boy should feel that Eton is necessarily beyond their means.” Readers with young sons, please note.

The thing is, Eton does offer a fantastic education (and so it should for those paying the full £30,000 a year whack) and, it does seem to have a good record of incubating people who can lead others. So why the urge to keep knocking the institution? Wouldn’t it be better to incorporate some of the things Eton clearly does well into the wider education system? Isn’t a good, rounded education that doesn’t simply focus on getting kids to pass exams, something to which we should aspire?

Likewise, what is it about Oxford or Cambridge that seems to produce so many of country’s leaders? The answer, surely, is that all these institutions embrace and encourage excellence.

Encouragement of excellence does not seem to chime with the current mood of the nation. It wouldn’t appear to in the health service. Excellence frequently seems to be misinterpreted as elitism and is not openly championed enough throughout the system.

The result is that we get a Curate’s Egg of a health service – in which only parts of it are excellent. Most is mediocre.

I fear the only solution is to expedite the revolution and elect me as your Supreme Leader. I’ll abolish private education but identify the people, processes and values that seem to produce good leaders and allocate them into all our schools and universities. In a similar vein, there may even be some things that the NHS could learn and implement from the private health sector without the usual anguished shrieks of “over my dead body!”

Think about it. When you visit your doctor or dentist or when you’re voting for someone to lead the country, wouldn’t you feel happier knowing that they are in their position because they are excellent at what they do – and not because they’ve been shooed into a post as part of some social engineering to avoid elitism?

Of course my new Utopia would produce the usual cadre of mendacious, self-seeking and power-hungry individuals. That’s life, but the rest of us, having been differently educated, might be better equipped to recognise true excellence and demand it from our leaders and our public services. We might even come to expect it.

The last words go to an American politician, Marco Rubio. “We live in a society obsessed with public opinion. But leadership has never been about popularity.” Something which Messrs Cameron, Milliband, Nicholson et al will no doubt be aware.

We started working with Salix as our communication partners just a few months ago and they have fundamentally altered the way we work.  We are much clearer about who we are and what we are trying to do.  They now feel like part of our team – central players in clarifying our message and ensuring that we then get this out rapidly and effectively to our members and a wider national audience.  Their level of commitment and their expertise is deeply impressive.  Working together has taken our work to another level while also being a lot of fun.

Rick Stern, chief executive, NHS Alliance

www.nhsalliance.org

Our favourite event was the NHS Alliance conference in a wild and windy Bournemouth in November where new Secretary of State for Health, Jeremy Hunt, made his first address to clinicians. We have known and respected Dr Michael Dixon for many years and were delighted the Alliance became a client this year . We worked with them closely to launch their new vision at the conference – share an inspirational time here

Wishing you a peaceful and fulfilling 2013.

Earlier this week, a talk with a journalist set me thinking about this scene.

Working on a local West Midlands paper during the early part of the decade,  he relayed how he had first become aware of the tremors emanating from the epicentre at Stafford Hospital, which then built to become the Mid-Staffs earthquake.

Combining elements of Woodward and Bernstein, Erin Brokovitch and other seekers of truth and justice, he told us about his initial struggle to get any news coverage about the hospital’s shortcomings at all. Stories, however moving, about a lapse in quality of care at a local hospital is hardly front page stuff – which in retrospect, is quite shocking. But, not as shocking as the facts that gradually emerged about the lack of basic care that was institutionalised among nursing staff and the culture of cover ups from management. Ambulance drivers bypassed A&E at Stafford in favour of safer hospitals and staff routinely said they wouldn’t want their friends and family to end up there. Stafford hospital was, literally, a death trap. The point is, the signs had been there for ages. And had been routinely ignored.

The standard of communications management appears to have matched that of the care quality. The basic rules about finding yourself in a hole should have been applied – ie, stop digging. But the lies and obfuscation went on from management long after it was obvious that nobody was going to come out of the situation well. Things began to change when the new chief executive, Antony Sumara, began to tackle some of the worst ingrained practices and at the same time, made himself accessible to journalists and the public. He didn’t mince his words and appeared to take heed of basic crisis management techniques.

There are two bits of this whole debacle that I find fascinating. The first is that the journo was, and still is, villified by a significant number of local people as the subversive who opened a can of worms rather than being held up as a diligent local writer who exposed the most appalling goings on.

The second is that the local people of Stafford are currently vigorously fighting the prospect of closing the A&E department. That’s right. The A&E department that was declared dangerous. The same A&E Department where a hugely complex system of shift patterns existed to accommodate the ridiculously powerful cabal of uncaring, self-serving nurses. The A&E department where junior doctors, hopelessly under trained for the task, were required to work.

“Save our A&E” seems to be a knee-jerk reaction from communities the length and breadth of the country, which should dismay anyone who has the faintest understanding of health economics. The King’s Fund’s, Professor Chris Ham, writing in the Times’ “Thunderer” column this week says that politicians have got to be braver about facing up to the reality of closing entire local hospitals in favour of developing specialist centres. He cites the case of Fabrice Muamba, the footballer who collapsed during a game with heart failure. He was driven past two local hospitals so that he could get to a specialist cardiac unit – a decision that saved his life.

So, with people actively campaigning to save a dangerous hospital in Stafford and lots of other pressure groups fighting to save maternity units and the like, it’s going to be a tough communications challenge to cut through the ill-informed sentimentality people feel about having all health services, however shoddy, being provided locally.

If we don’t tackle this fundamental issue, we risk looking like the forlorn Dr Michael Hfuhruhurr, standing in front of his dead wife’s image and choosing to ignore all the warning signs.

If the prospect was a bit daunting, the reality was something rather different and I can thoroughly recommend a visit to Cornwall and its biggest pull, the Eden Project. Even to this jaded author, who would rather stick needles in his hand than share precious down time and personal space with hordes of sugared-up children, the experience was a truly uplifting one.

For the uninitiated, the Eden Project was set up in 2000 as a Millennium project. Like me, you are probably familiar with the Teletubby-style “biomes” that now grace a former china clay pit – but you may not be entirely sure what the whole thing was about. You can visit the website to find out more but during our tour, a few ideas began to form about how some of Eden’s better points could be adopted by the NHS.

For example, I was rather dreading the thing being a bit preachy and achingly patronising in a Change4Life sort of a way. Not a bit of it. The information and exhibits, while clearly aimed at youngsters, were, like good panto, engaging at all levels. The biomes housing the tropical  and Mediterranean areas were imaginatively constructed and combined facts and fun comfortably. The dining areas were open plan and were turning out locally-sourced, attractive and tasty food. Pretty much the antithesis of the tawdry rubbish that passes for catering at the vast majority of UK visitor attractions, schools and, yes, places of care.

So far, so Waitrose. But here’s the thing. We were struck by how the younger visitors, generally used to more instant gratification, appeared to be engaging with the necessarily static displays of plants, trees and cacti. How many had seen where the most basic, everyday cereals, fruit and veg in the raw – let alone the exotic things like rubber, cocoa and bananas? And, had any of them ever made the connection between the corn some of them were grinding into flour and the bread they ate at lunch?

Follow this process through, then. Get kids interested in where their food comes from and they might, within reason, make aninformed decision about what they choose to eat. What they eat will have a profound effect on their long-term health. (And the environment and other things, but let’s stick to the health benefits.) The point here is that, the message here was communicated subtly and not rammed down their throats.

There was also something about the ethos of the place that seemed to encourage learning and awareness. The Project talks about being a work in progress, trying out new ideas. It’s a meeting place for conversations that might just go somewhere and be a catalyst for change. The ambition is to share ideas with organisations worldwide and to invest in programmes and projects that make a difference and to explore sustainability…

There’s a considerable amount of likeminded stuff coming out of the NHS and government but so often, you just don’t see the fine words and admirable intentions turned into action. So for all the mission statements, NHS Constitutions and the promises to get nurses to care, you end up with Mid Staffs and others. The Eden Project, on the other hand, is a living embodiment of its stated ambitions.

NHS take note.

So whilst I would ‘very’ much like to witter on about the twitter / Mensch marital faux pas or grumble about how Hallowe’en is now so commercialised, it seems to be ignoring the BIG ISSUE  splashed across the press and debated in every home.

So to the sad Savile saga and if you are anything like me, you have been in turns shocked and horrified as the details of systemic failings emerge.

As painful as this process has been, it has challenged in my mind the presumption I had about the direction of journalism today. For the drive and determination of a number of journalists have overcome decades of secrecy to bring to light the truth and in the process, perhaps illustrated why the liberty of the press to pursue and publish the findings of investigations should never be challenged.

Press regulation was a subject I felt pretty certain about. It struck me – mid Levenson – as self-evident that the press were simply unable to regulate themselves and yet the drawbacks never crossed my mind.

And curled up on my sofa one Sunday morning, I couldn’t fail to be influenced by the honeyed tones of Hugh Grant advocating independent press regulation as part of his Hacked Off campaign group. Sounds sensible to me, I thought.  Chain up the rotters.

However, what’s worrying from the Savile case is that the legal authorities – Met, Surrey police et al – clearly failed to pursue allegations. Would an independent body have prevented the ITV expose due to lack of evidence?

The Savile story in my mind reverses my growing distaste for the future of journalism. It heartens me that the journalistic rigour to unearth the details of an issue, and strength to find a platform to air that issue, hasn’t left our UK media. Yes, self regulation clearly failed in the case of the BBC but it shone through in the case of ITV. This factionalisation of power helps ensure that if a story should be aired, it will be, through some means.

And as for the long-term reputation of ‘Auntie’, well the jury’s still out. They are up against the ropes but not yet on the boxing ring floor. It all depends on how they support the investigations going forward and of course, the integrity of their own ‘self regulating’ investigations.

As the daily reports mount up, we also see some examples of influential figures desperately trying to exonerate themselves. Again, the might of the media doesn’t just shine a torch on the issue, it also flies the flag for responsibility too.

Children in Need’s former chairman found this at the start of the week when despite attempting to show his charity’s rigour in avoiding relations with Savile, media comment focused more on the individual’s failings to pursue his concern further.

In the flurry of debate around the Levenson enquiry, some people questioned whether there should be a journalist oath, similar to the Hippocratic oath in the medical profession. I don’t think we need one. It’s always been there and it never went away.

South Hams district council had approved plans for the new shop but the locals got together and formed the No to Costa pressure group which collected 5,000 signatures and got the approval overturned.

This raises a number of questions, foremost being, are there really 5,000 people living in Totnes? Apparently so – and most able to scrawl a signature it seems.

I’m no great fan of the tedious homogenisation that has largely taken place in most of our towns and cities so hurrah for Totnes for holding out. The town claims to have over 40 independent coffee houses and a bit of a reputation as a destination for caffeine connoisseurs, attracting over 100,000 of them every year. Presumably these tourists are all there on a short coffee break? It’s said they happily blend in, look a bit skinny and despite being full of beans, generally don’t cause a stir…(OK, as an Asian Palm Civet might to say, I’ve got that out of the system now.) Anyway, all that caffeine in a small town might explain why the locals are all jumping for joy.

Yes, this is a real victory for localism, but why should the owners of the fiercely independent Coffee Republic (sic) of Totnes care about the arrival of yet another coffee shop? Their vehement opposition shows very little confidence in their own ability to attract a more discerning customer. If their own places were a cut above the competition, then people would vote with their feet and boycott the big, bad chain invader. Of course, Costa could afford to trade at a loss for a while to see off the competition – standard big boy tactics. But that still leaves 40 independent, quirky, distinct outlets to do a better job of keeping the Totnes caffeine levels up.

Rather than be nimbyish about Costa, it would have been an altogether more interesting scrap to have let them build the site at considerable cost and then arrange a campaign to stop people going there. That would really have been an interesting social marketing strategy.

Costa might have made more of the benefits it would bring locally – but a brief search reveals precious little about its corporate and social responsibility policy other than most of the beneficiaries are from coffee growing countries.

So, where do you draw the line at petitioning against a member of the chain gang moving in? The big supermarkets attract opprobrium every time they open their local versions in what are usually already moribund high streets. But what about the high street chains we like? Like WH Smith? Or Pret a Manger? Should being part of a chain preclude you from trading in certain towns? Well, if the chain is Starbucks, then obviously it should be sent packing but that’s for selling filthy coffee.

The point is, reliable, adaptable, well run and imaginative places deserve to survive. Love ‘em or loathe ‘em, you can’t deny McDonalds, KFC and dare I say, Costa, are all of these things. They could however, do more to make themselves more attractive to an understandably suspicious local community by being a bit more open and generous about their CSR policies. And, the tough news is that the local competition just has to be better.

Sorry – it’s just that I’m feeling a bit, you know, queasy at the moment. I’m sure it’s nothing too serious, but I have been a bit off colour lately.

I’m not normally such a hypochondriac but I’m pointing an arthritic finger at Channel 4 for the sudden, late onset of my condition.

Well, what do they expect with their latest celeb-fawning, audience participating, brand-promoting event that is their Stand up 2 Cancer initiative? It’s enough to make anyone feel a bit clammy.

SU2C is Channel 4’s response to the BBC’s hard fought-for reputation as the home of the charidee telethon. Strictly speaking, it isn’t actually C4’s own, home grown idea at all. It’s an imported, off the shelf franchise from the USA.

There, celebs have been corralled by the fragrant ABC Special News Correspondent, Katie Couric, to deliver high end, maximum publicity fundraising.

After so many years of Wogan, Pudsey, Lenny, Dawn and the gang all doing their bit, I suppose it was only a matter of time – and goodness, haven’t they taken their time about it – before commercial stations homed in on the opportunities afforded by such a telecast.

Channel 4 has just emerged with justifiable pride from what was arguably their finest hour since their inception – that being the initial gamble and subsequent triumph of the Paralympics coverage. The station’s also got something of a reputation for edgy programmes that push the boundaries of taste to the limit. Think, Embarrassing Bodies, Peep Show, Shameless, Frankie Boyle, Come Dine with Me. So the Stand Up 2 Cancer format probably fitted well with their remit. (They couldn’t really have Stand Up 4 Cancer could they?)

Anyway, thanks to the astonishingly lengthy warm up ads, I learn that I’ve got a two in three chance of not getting cancer – that’s the good news. The real horror is the prospect of Alan Carr, Davina, Dr Jessen et al hosting a long evening consisting largely of C4’s finest tapping our funny bones and draining our pockets. And talking cancer.

Look, what’s not to admire about a programme that raises awareness of, and considerable amounts of money for, cancer research? Not a lot on the face of it. But am I alone in feeling a bit uncomfortable about the juxtaposing of gut busting humour and a gut busting tumour. Oh, blimey, there I go.

Truthfully, I really don’t see anything remotely funny about cancer. Or malnourished or abused children for that matter. So, are we really only capable of dipping into our pockets if we have been made to laugh? For my money, the BBC, after many years of practice, has got the timing and the tone bang on for Comic Relief – it sort of does what it says on the tin.

The problem I have with the new upstart’s bid for chari-TV is the whiff of sanctimony surrounding cancer. Cancer seems to have parked its tanks on the AIDS lawn. I suppose it’s got to be healthier than “the disease(s) we dare not mention by name”. I just don’t feel easy about the way a killer disease seems to be being used as an excuse for a tele-cast knees up.

Cancer will kill many of us and as society grows older, ironically because of better health, so the incidence of cancer increases. Cancer will kill more of us because more of us are living longer. So, what about the less sexy but equally hideous degenerative, neurological diseases that strike people relatively early in life? Huntingdon’s? MS? MND?  I only hope charities representing these life-changing conditions don’t miss out as people choose to fall about laughing as they stand up to cancer.

I was highly amused by what was reported as Waitrose’s “disastrous” recent Twitter campaign in which customers were invited to submit answers to, “I shop at Waitrose because….”. This elicited responses such as “because Tesco doesn’t stock unicorn food” and, “because it makes me feel important and I absolutely detest being surrounded by poor people.” My favourite being, “I shop at Waitrose because nothing can match the sheer joy of hearing a father say, “put the papaya down, Orlando!”

Actually, I don’t think it was a disaster – most of the responses were in good humour and Waitrose was exemplary in its light touch response. And we’re talking about it, aren’t we?

I was reminded of all this when, out of the blue, Dr Michael Dixon, speaking at the Healthcare through Efficiency Expo said he was sending some of his patients to Waitrose. I did hear him correctly. In his typically forward thinking way, Dr Dixon has got an arrangement with his local Waitrose to help guide some of his practice’s more overweight patients to fresh food and healthy eating ideas in the store.  “I like to shop at Waitrose because my doctor told me to…”. Now, there’s a campaign.

So much then for the millions spent on Change4Life! You want change of behaviour? Get the one professional who is still trusted above all others to A) deliver the wakeup call about your weight/health/diet and then B) point you in the direction of the vegetable counter, preferably at an independent greengrocer selling local produce. Or Asda or Lidl if you must. Oh, and it would be better if you could actually walk there, too.

Dr Dixon was speaking on the same stage as Professor Paul Corrigan, always a most compelling public speaker, who entirely lived up to expectation on this occasion. The expo itself was a showcase for dozens of (mostly) technology-led providers who could all, singlehandedly, save the country countless billions if only the NHS saw fit to use their products or services. Prof Corrigan referred to his time as advisor on health matters to Number 10, when he would be bombarded on a daily basis with just such propositions. None of the endless techie gizmos really passed scrutiny and consequently, the NHS is still heading for financial meltdown. The issue, he said, was that much of the technological “solutions” were just that – technological – and actually ended up creating more work for expensive-to-run clinicians. The health service needs to harness technology in the same way as other businesses and even the banking sector (and I didn’t ever think I’d be writing that sentence!). Because now, around 20 million people do their banking transactions online, thus saving the banks the expense of having to employ tellers. Taking expensive human elements out of any system can realise actual savings. So, the challenge then, says Prof Corrrigan, is for technology to help reduce the number of face-to-face patient consultations. Whoa, there, steady on! Isn’t the patient consultation at the heart of what GPs go into medicine for?

GPs are going to have to face up to something of a new world was the response from Dr Dixon. And, clearly some, like Dr Anne Hayden, a Dorset GP, already are. She claims to have saved the local NHS a staggering £80,000 on just six patients over the course of 18 months by engaging the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service (WRVS). The six patients were so typical of our new world – elderly, vulnerable and prone to loneliness and depression that caused them to use the NHS a great deal. Answer? Send a lovely local volunteer around to their house, offer tea, sympathy and most importantly, companionship – and deliver a sense of well-being to a lonely person and a genuine early warning system should anything really warrant a GP’s intervention.

Of course we need world class technology to join up the system and make sense of the vast quantity of data the health service produces. But let’s combine it with a little lateral thinking about the people who are at the centre of  the health service and let’s see a few more supermarket referral schemes or intelligent use of local volunteers.

So, when Fiona Bruce and uber-urbane art historian, Philip Mould, appeared on our screens in Fake or Fortune trying to prove that a picture had been wrongly attributed, I was all ears. Amid the was-it-or-wasn’t-it-original shtick, I learned that the 17^th century’s answer to Mario Testino, Anthony Van Dyck, ran a canny delegation process to ensure his studio kept rolling out the goods in sufficient volume to meet the demands of high paying punters. It was a highly pragmatic business operation. The Master did all the tricky bits such as the client’s face and hands, leaving the boring elements like clothing and backgrounds to low paid trainees. More commissions. Higher margins. Bigger house.

It is common practice in many professions today. The more famous he has become, so less of Damian Hirst’s work is actually by his own hand. Surgeons will do their magic and leave the closing up to an underling. Actors have body doubles for the bits they can’t – or their insurance companies won’t let them – do.  Anyway, the point is, if a picture is deemed an “autograph”, that is, one done entirely by the named artist or whether it’s a “studio” work will determine its worth. It might even be termed “after” the artist, in other words it’s a copy.

So, with my new found terminology, I’ve invented a way of making the interminable party conference speeches a bit more entertaining. You have to imagine the speaker as a painted canvas. Let’s call this one, Portrait of Clegg. The artist is, say, Ashdown. Is Clegg an autograph, a genuine, real thing, lovingly and skilfully crafted by a Master? Or is it a Studio Ashdown, a melange of some real Ashdown but fundamentally the output of a lot of other less talented people – and not worth much?  Or, should Clegg be classified as After Ashdown, a rather poor representation with nothing whatsoever original about it?

Try it with A Portrait of Miliband. Artist: Keir Hardie. Autograph? Studio Hardie? After Hardie? You get (ahem) the picture?

We haven’t even had the Conservative conference yet, but when we do…well, it won’t be the same will it?

There is a serious point here and it’s about personal credibility, or, to push the analogy, provenance. I was astounded when the TV art historian knew in an instant that the picture in the catalogue wasn’t the real thing. His trained eye spotted something about it just wasn’t right.

You don’t have to be an expert on human behaviour to know when someone doesn’t appear to be what they say they are – so I’m simply astounded that so many of the people telling us they’ll get us out of the double-dip recession or bash the rich all seem to be such obvious fakes.

There are good, credible communicators out there and, boy, aren’t they refreshing to hear? I shall spare their blushes, but it’s come to something when it’s actually noteworthy to see someone in the public eye who appears to be the genuine article. Professional communicators and trainers know all this – but perhaps it’s time for certain clients to take note – and restore some credibility in this cynical world. And, I mean that sincerely.