In this video, you'll learn how you can become a more effective service design professional by leaning into your design leadership qualities. Here's the guest for this episode. Let the show begin. Hi, I'm Sarah. This is the service design show. Welcome to episode 175. Hi, my name is Mark van Tijn and welcome back to the service design show. On this show, we explore what's beneath the surface of service design, what are the things that make the difference between success and failure, all to help you design great services that have a positive impact on people, business, and of course, our planet. Our guest in this episode is Sarah Clearwater, a service design professional from New Zealand. Sarah recently published a report based on the research she conducted around the intersection of design and leadership. Being a service design professional requires a lot of patience and perseverance. Yes, it's easy to get frustrated when you're the last one to be invited in the room again, when you fail to secure the funds that you've been advocating for or when progress slows down because people fail to align priorities. According to Sarah, these are all symptoms of a bigger underlying program. You won't solve these challenges by becoming better at the craft of service design. We have to take a step back and zoom out to see what's really happening here. Through her research, Sarah has found that these challenges can often be tied back to a lack of leadership. We often confuse management for leadership, but it might sound obvious these two things couldn't be more far apart. It might sound a bit harsh that we lack leadership, but the good news is that leadership is up for grabs for anyone who wants to. You don't have to wait till your official job title permits you to lead. So in this episode, we explore what leadership looks like in the context of service design, how you can grow your leadership qualities, even when you don't see yourself as a leader right now and how you can overcome the biggest roadblock to being an effective leader. If you stick around for the entire conversation, you'll hopefully walk away with a renewed insight that you have the power, the opportunity, the responsibility to lead, to keep raising the bar and pushing the boundaries of our practice. Don't wait for others to show the way. Your time is truly now. So I hope you're ready and excited because we're going to jump straight into the conversation with Sarah Clearwater. Welcome to the show, Sarah. Hi Mark, nice to be here. Yeah, awesome to have you on all the way on the other side of the world compared to me, right? Where are you right now? Yeah, I think we might be at polar opposites. I'm in Auckland in New Zealand. Yeah, I think we're really the opposite. If we drill a hole from the Netherlands, we'll probably end up somewhere around Auckland. Thank you for making the time and jumping on this conversation on the Serbs Design Show with me. I'm really excited to talk about the topic. Before we do that, we obviously want to know a bit more about you and who you are, what you do. So tell us a bit more about Sarah. Sure. So I guess my little 30 second spiel is that I was born in West Berlin to East German and Egyptian parents. And just before the end of the Cold War, I moved to the Netherlands to get a humanities degree because your education system is quite spectacular. And then I started my career in the United Kingdom, I guess in public policy and public advocacy. And in 2011, I moved to New Zealand, which is where I called myself a designer for the very first time. And now 12 years later, I divide my time through three different activity areas. I'm a strategic design consultant for organisations who are looking to start or scale their design functions. I also mentor and coach design teams who want to take more of a leadership role inside their organisation. And then I also convene the Custom Experience Collective, which is one of New Zealand's largest design communities. Awesome. Sounds like you're busy. Cool. Sarah, next to this brief introduction, we always do our lightning round. Five questions to get to know you even better as a person next to a professional. You haven't prepared for these questions because that makes it way more fun. Just answer the first thing that comes to your mind and we won't dive any deeper into these answers. But are you ready? Yeah, let's go. Well, let's go. If you could be an animal, which animal would you like to be? Great question. I think I would love to be a panther. Nice. What is your favourite holiday destination? You know, the things I love to do is actually spend a lot of time in libraries. So my dream holiday would be a world library tour. I think that would be wicked. Sounds awesome. Next question is if you could have a dinner with one person and you won a live dad, who would you pick? Who would you like to have dinner with? Oh, I'd love to have dinner with Brony Brown. Yes, noted. We'll send the invitation. If you could recommend one book to all of us to read, which book would you recommend? A book I keep coming back to as Mike Montero's Run by Design, which I think gives a really nice perspective on design ethics and I guess responsibility and ownership of what it means to design. Final question tradition is when did you first learn or hear about service design? I first heard about the term service design probably in 2014 or 15 and it was a distant thing that came, I think, out of North America or Europe. But I would say my first introduction to design was actually more around design thinking and human-centered design. I think service design was a much later evolution of, I guess, a much more mature and refined practice. Hmm. Thank you. Those were good. That was a good lightning round. Let's jump into today's topic and you framed it. At least that's my interpretation as design leadership beyond the status quo. Did I get that right? Yeah. Yeah, that's absolutely spot on. Let's start by setting the stage and the context. I want to learn from you about two elements of this design leadership beyond the status quo. Let's dive into design leadership and status quo. What is your definition? Your definition of design leadership if you could give a 30-second pitch. The way that I would, I guess, define design leadership is to say that actually different ways to lead in design there is leading our practice which is around our ability, I guess, to be self-aware and context responsive with the work that we do and leading in that means showing up intentionally and purposefully wanting to go into a different, in a certain direction. If I think about functional leadership which is another element of design or how design leadership can show up, it's to say these are people in functions such as head-off or manager or director and which lead design teams inside organizations. From my perspective, they're two different ways to talk about design leadership. Okay, and I'm sure we'll explore both of them a bit later. The second part of our title is status quo. What is the status quo? Great question. I actually did a bit of research around that last year where I interviewed about 28 so-called design leaders here in New Zealand to better understand what design leadership might be. The strong perception that I guess came through the research was that when we talk about design leadership, we talk about in fact functional leaders. We talk about designers who've moved into a managerial position and now lead other designers and practice within an organization. And I guess the status quo element around that is that design leadership as we tie it to a function becomes limited to someone who does design, moves in the leadership into a leadership function and then manages designers. Yeah, so the status quo is leadership has turned into management or leadership equals management. Is that the status quo? That is the status quo. Leadership equals managing a practice or a group of other designers. Yes. And you feel that there's an opportunity to do better. I think there's an opportunity to go wider. Yes. Okay. Now, thank you for this. This is already very helpful. You mentioned something about a research that you did. Can you explain a bit more? Sure. So the research I guess was grounded in an understanding or curiosity around some of the conversations that keep happening in the design community here in New Zealand, but also things that I observe, I guess online through social media. And a lot of the conversation was around should we do human-centered design or planet-centered design? Should we do co-design? You know, we all have to move to participatory design. Like there was all this bickering almost among the design community around what is good design, what is better design, and felt really competitive. And it didn't feel very nurturing or very informing of our practice. And so that was the motivation behind, I guess, better understanding what good design or mature design looks like. And the assumption that I've made in the research is that leadership is a proxy for maturity. And so that's where, I guess, conversations or interests around leadership came into play. And what that ended up being was sort of 28 qualitative conversations with people in or near formal design leadership functions who helped me better understand what their world really looks like. And out of that came a definition of design practice, a definition of design leadership, and an understanding of how else we might grow our practice for it to be more mature, but also more impactful and more relevant to the times and places that we practice. And if anyone is curious, the report is publicly available, right? The report is publicly available. Anybody can download that from my website, which is seraclaywater.com. We'll make sure to add the link. Okay, so you have spoken to quite a few people. You have done a lot of thinking and reflection about this, which puts you in a very good position to have this conversation and maybe provoke some ideas here. Now, the perspective on leadership as a role where we envision a future and work towards the future versus leadership as in managing. I'm sort of curious, what have you learned about the sort of symptoms or how do we notice the lack of the lack of the other type of leadership? Maybe I don't know if we have two words for these two different types of leadership, but sort of the future envisioning leadership? How do we feel, see, experience the lack of it? That's a really good question. I think that I can see two answers to your question, so I might offer both of these. So if I think of the lack of, so the two leaderships I talked about was practice leadership and functional leadership. And what we observe is that functional leadership often takes place, but practice leadership is lacking. Well, how that shows up is that we put a lot of responsibility on the design leader to advocate at executive level, to drive change, to envision the design future, to bring customer into the executive. But the design team is almost stuck in its inability to translate that vision into their own work, right? So it's one thing to go, you know, be part of an organization and be part of a squad or a tribe and go, oh, I'm the designer here, I can help you do research. It's a very different thing to understand the value connection between design activity and organizational strategy. And practice leadership, no matter where you are in the organizational hierarchy, shows up in your ability to drive change through your practice in an agreed direction that your leader and your team are set. That's one way of looking at that. Where I see leadership being absent in like a functional context, for example, is when the head of the organization, sorry, the head of the function isn't able to bridge, I guess, humanity-centered ways of thinking and working with commercial realities. And ultimately, it's up to the function head to create the structures and the conditions for the design team to succeed. And so when we see what we see here, or have seen quite frequently, it might seem more of, is continued restructures, you know, teams being resized, being renamed, being reallocated, needing to do a lot with very little, they are often symptoms of teams' inability to communicate their value and to find a way to negotiate and navigate the obvious tension between being human-centered and being profit-focused. And it's not just that we have to navigate this tension, we also have to find a way to obviously start realizing a more human-centered way of doing business, which is what our mandate ultimately is. So, yeah, the struggle we have is to connect the human-centered way of working with doing business. Is that the bigger problem? Like, if the other things are the symptoms, is that sort of the key that you have found, the key struggle, the key challenge? In simple terms, I think you're right, because we have to be part of the system in order to change the system. And as designers, our mandate is for change. I'm very curious. How did we get here? Is it by chance that we didn't take up this leadership role? Is it a lack of training? Is it that we want to avoid this responsibility? Maybe, I don't know. What have you heard and seen? How did we get here as a community? So, I think one thing that is both design's greatest asset and its greatest fallacy is our idealism and our desire to do good in the world, right? And that's, in a way, makes us resilient and strong in the face of adversity, but also can bring us down because we're constantly being told, no, you know, you need to be more realistic or how this is going to make me money or we're constantly running into doors. And if we don't have support from a community or wider team or strong leader to sustain, I guess, our vision, our hope, our intent while navigating the current reality, I think it's just simply, it wears down. It's really, really hard work. So, we're looking for practical idealism or pragmatism and idealism. Is that? I think we're looking for reassurance that the belief that there's a better or different way to do business is not just necessary, but also valid. And then we're needing the tools and the mindsets to start acting on that belief, even if we get not back. So, I think as a discipline, what we're looking for is resilience. How, in which sense, resilience? How are we looking for that? I think, or that is something that we, that would really support us and make us stronger because of the tension and the challenge we bring to the status quo of business. If we can find a way to build our resilience in our beliefs and our practices and tools while working on changing the businesses that we are part of, they can set us up for better success. What happens if we don't build that resilience? I think we burn out. Which is already happening. I don't know if it's on a large scale, but from the conversations I've been having with the service design community, there are already many people who sort of get fed up and start questioning and doubting if they want to put in the effort to fight for the quote-unquote right cause. The typical quote here is that an organization doesn't even let you do the job that they hired you for. I don't know. Do you recognize something like that? I see that a lot. I see that a lot and it goes as far as like some designers have basically said I'm no longer going to be a designer. I'm going to go into product or I'm going to become a business analyst or I'm going to, I need to step into a function where the values are understood that I continuously battle just to do my job. So yeah, if we maybe can transition into some stories and examples to make this a bit more tangible, maybe tapping into your own experience and focusing on that practice leadership area, have you encountered situations in your own practice where sort of this the lack of it or maybe a scenario where this manifested very clearly that can help us make this a bit more tangible? Sure. So I guess a bit of context as part of the report findings, a lot of the sources of leadership where our practice matures sits in our ability to be self-aware and context-aware and that's something that's continuously evolving. And so if I think about a time where my leadership was lacking, it was in a project I was running with a not-for-profit, with an international not-for-profit a few years ago and most of my work sits in the commercial or large government organization space and so not-for-profit international development was a really new field. They're really keen on co-design and it was during COVID and I was up for the challenge.  And something that I became evident really, really quickly is that I didn't fully understand how my existing mental models around you know business commercials, around power structures, around privilege were showing up not necessarily in the way I was thinking or trying to work but in the tools and the processes I was applying. So to give you a really tangible example, Miro is not a tool that works well with I guess groups of people who don't use it as their everyday platform but as designers through COVID we became literate in them and most businesses use Miro as a as a foundational tool in their creative and collaborative practice right and I just took that and dumped that into a community in South Asia and then and so what happened there's a result and they were very kind and very generous with their feedback and their space to let me learn. But what happened was that I effectively alienated part of the project team. I like reduced the speed of the project like I slowed everything down. I created frictions and silos among the different groups who were trying to collaborate together because the tool I was applying was not fit for purpose. Very fascinating story and can you maybe zoom into the moment where you realize that this was happening and sort of that this was the root cause? Like when did you have an epiphany or like how did this go? The epiphany of course happens in the middle of the half-day workshop that you've been preparing for for four weeks and then you know the Miro board was set up it was beautiful. I thought I'd briefed my collaborators here in New Zealand really well for part of the client organization and yeah the sort of I started the workshop we did introductions and I was like right let's you know let's get to work and we broke into groups and we only had three facilitators for three groups so I couldn't hear what the others were doing but I was taking my groups through my part of the workshop and the responses only came from one or two people which I thought was odd because we've done so much in you know building connections and relationships and safety and then looked across the Miro board and those spaces were also empty and so what I did was to cut the workshop short well to stop the activity and to bring everybody together and basically have a reflective conversation around what just happened and so that was the first conversation that happened with everybody in the room where people just said oh this is a bit hard to use we really love the idea but we just can't execute on this really well and then the second conversation happened with the in a project team my client team and they sort of said oh you know we really struggled to use it we didn't really know how to navigate the space and I then approached key stakeholders stakeholders individually and had one-on-one conversation and that's when the inside around sort of power and privilege really emerged and when I had to go or shoot I think I just you know stepped into it so which question did you ask yourself that made you reflect that this wasn't a matter of I need to educate these people about how to use this tool I need to better structure this workshop because I can imagine a lot of people like that's the initial response okay so we need to use a different tool or we need to have a different agenda again which would what caused you to take a step back and reflect a reflection is a key leadership practice and a reflection is an intentional part of my practice and so I encourage that to be part of I guess others too but to come back to a very good question around what is the question that I asked that led me not to believe that it was someone else's fault or that I just had to be a better designer was the I guess the the understanding that whatever I bring to a conversation comes with a set of my own biases and beliefs and mindsets so I know that whatever I bring to this conversation to every workshop I bring with me a set of unsurface beliefs and so what I started to do was to I guess interrogate the tool that I was using and to go why is this not working for me why is it not working for other people where did we get hung up and why did this conversation become a two-way conversation between me and the project lead not everybody in the room so I just started drilling down into why things were happening and then I'm trying to go what would happen so I already have a mental model around whatever I bring to a project is around philosophies principles and processes and I go which of my processes here show up how do they show up which of my principles show up how which of my philosophies show up and why do they show up and in going through these almost three I guess levels of resolution of inquiry that's what brought out the power and privilege because it was one of my philosophies that showed up in the tool of mural you know and what was the philosophy to be specific so the philosophy you know I was like oh collaboration is really important in this you know distributed world mural is the way to collaborate but collaboration wasn't the important philosophy it was participation right and it was enabling of voices to be heard and surfaced the philosophy that I needed to bring was not about design thinking or human-centered design the philosophy was about how can I help those who are least often heard and least often acted upon how can I bring them to the surface and so the reframe that happened was around saying okay I think I've stipulated too much of how we will work and what we will use and so I went back to the team and said this is what I think we have to achieve next how might we get there and that is when they came up with their own way of working and approaching which was totally different very interesting there is a lot of personal self-reflection self-reflection is always personal I guess and understanding your biases like you said the mental models that you bring and being aware of that and conscious of that do you also make those things explicit do you communicate those things with the people around you or is it something that you try to incorporate in just in your work it's a really really good question and I'd say that I haven't been consistent my aspiration is to be more explicit but I find that I I tend to limit that to my immediate collaborators and that isn't always helpful I would not always sufficient I suppose I think it's I think it's a really good starting point so people who you work closely with who support you for them to understand your defaults it's life-changing but in this scenario yeah maybe I think I'm probably just now reflecting on this with you live on the show I think I actually haven't been explicit about that particular mental model and that do you think that would be helpful I think so so to give you another example if you want to yeah sure so one one bias I have is around finding commonality and patterns because of my upbringing and the way I guess I was raised I was always I grew up at intersections so my desire is always to build bridges and bring things together but what can happen is if I overuse that lens I tend to I can bring things together that shouldn't be going together it's easy for me to go oh it's all the same oh these are the things that go together they are the things that you have in common okay this is easy next right sometimes more delineation is required and so with my closest collaborators I purposefully seek people who are less inclined to find commonalities for example so when I assemble project teams around certain challenges I try to do so in ways where we all bring a complementary not just skills but most importantly mindsets and experiences yeah and we're focusing right now on maybe personal leadership and understanding who you are to a certain extent what are you bringing what are you lacking what are your strengths and weaknesses how does this connect to the practice lead that we talked about yes so the practice design practice as I define it is the interplay of my craft and my context yeah so my practice emerges when what I know shows up in the real world and the leadership element around that is to to constantly navigate that there is an exchange so for example if I have a set of corporate tools around human-centered design and service design and I bring that into a not-for-profit context my craft my tools have to change but as a result this new context has altered my craft right so my practice constantly does this if you will constantly I'm going through an infinity loop the leadership is to be aware of that and drive the evolution of my practice intentionally as to achieve a certain outcome for example could be something as simple as you know I want a certain organization to progress the development of of an app or a website yeah my goal as a designer is to ensure that there are certain needs of the user that have been met in order to achieve that I can't just focus on the app or the website I have to think about the wider context that this interaction takes place in and influence and drive change around all the conditions that that are responsible for bringing that app or that website to life so my leadership sits in seeing what needs to be done and like driving into that direction but also allowing others to come on that journey with me yeah and I made the false it's not an assumption but I focused on on just a tiny bit because I said it's a it's a self-reflection of personal but of course you're reflecting on your actions in the bigger context you're seeing how you how you show up in culturally different contexts what happens so you need to be aware of those all those other things and how they influence your response your the tools that you use the processes that you apply so that's that's the interplay right that's that's correct that's 100 right yeah and you know that this interplay is not working when certain things happen right so a lot of the teams that I I work with tend to say things like we we're stuck in research I can't get to deliver anything because all I get asked for is customer research teams might say well I'm always the last one to be invited as the designer when all the important decisions have already been made yeah or they go we like everybody says customer is important but I can't get budget for more research or another designer or I can't get onto this big project I can't unlock attention or funds or resources for my work and all of these are symptoms in our unawareness of the context conditions that we have to lead into with our practice it's a it's a big question but how do we then lead into into death I don't know have you found a few key characteristics that allow us to go beyond just being very good at our craft to being good very good at our craft and making it fit better fit and align to the context that we're operating in yeah it's it's a huge question and I think that is you've nailed you know that you've nailed it this is the big question and I guess a couple of things I can share that I know have worked for me or that I've seen work fathers sit around being able to read your context so they're always and so this is borrowed from a navigational leadership or sorry wayfinding leadership which is an indigenous concept here out of New Zealand that is a great book by the way wayfinding leadership I recommend it and there is a there is a notion of what they call signs and so wayfinding I guess as I understand it is the practice of of crossing the oceans using you know the stars and the sea and the land around you and if we translate that metaphor to our context what this suggests is that every journey we go on to into every journey that we lead that we participate in is surrounded by signs that allow us to make the decision of where to go next so one thing that is fundamentally helpful in showing up in a literally way and also I guess driving change within our organizations is to be cognizant of those signs perfect as what examples of these signs would be strategy documents all hands CEO presentations things you uncover in conversation with your colleagues you know I think one thing that we sometimes forget as designers is to eat our own dog food when it comes to who's our user yes they are customers but everybody we're working with are also our users how do we empathize with them you know what are the key themes and insights that are emerging from your conversations with your colleagues and how might you use them to better direct your design activity to bring them on the journey because I think the key fallacy I want to point out that this is not about becoming a business-centered designer this is not about giving up your values or your beliefs around what's right for the customer this is about working with the conditions that you've been given and finding a way to to still embed the customer into the business environment I know you said there are a few things but I I love this one and I would love to zoom into it way finding leadership I'm definitely going to add that book to my reading list I love that and I love analogies and metaphors so navigating through just using stars and I don't know wind and landmarks makes a lot of sense and usets using signs I added the word clues here and there are tons of them is when you're inside an organization or working with an external client there are tons of signs there are tons of clues that show you what's happening it's just a matter of developing and awareness and and being able to notice them and and taking the time and having the patience and and being open to these clues and signs which are already out there you you you don't even have to do any additional effort they are already there and like it's bringing those clues signs into your practice and how you show up on a day-to-day basis that doesn't make any sense 100 percent that is spot on exactly was there anything else because you mentioned way finding leadership I felt that you had a few more things you wanted to share so I think the other thing that pops into mind and someone else said this and they said you know got I go where the energy is and I think it relates to the previous point but we shouldn't forget the power of our intuition in our gut when it comes to doing our work and every environment every room you step into there is energy right are you riding the wave or are you trying to fight against it and I think it's it's important for us to be deliberate really deliberate in our ability to choose our battles and find the waves you want to ride and then ride them and then again the balance is always how do I work with what's in front of me and how do I bring to it what I know to be true and important and how might we together work towards an outcome that ultimately achieves what I want to achieve without neglecting or alienating those who might think or work differently from me so if we try to bring this into a difficult service design project or design project how would this manifest feeling where the energy is and riding the way yeah really good question so I think sometimes we can get really frustrated or almost offended when someone goes when someone doesn't want to start at the beginning of the project right when some of the process when someone goes oh we don't need research I just wanted to do a journey map with fictional personas and go with it or I just want to do some customer testing right we've got the prototype it's going to be released next week and all we need is to take the box for the buttons and you know that sort of stuff and as designers we can go oh I don't want to be involved in that because we haven't done it right you know but what if instead we go hey you've done all of this without involving the customer or you're currently not ready to involve the customer I want to flag that this is a risk and this is what could happen for you but here's how I can help you so design I think is also a learning practice more so in some instances than a makership practice and so how might we learn with our collaborators and our colleagues in ways that help us evolve our understanding and connection with customers and each other so this is adopting a yes and mentality I can imagine that there will be friction where you feel okay this is not living up to my personal and professional standards like is that is that a matter of experience and sort of personal boundaries or are there any guides I guess again I'd say there are two answers to that so we all have boundaries we all must have boundaries and there are points at which we should not we should not cross our boundaries these boundaries relate to ethics to values and beliefs they relate around how we might cause harm you know they relate around how we believe or to interact or not interact with other humans like they are baseline boundaries that we do not cross these boundaries relate to things like you know I was working with a to give you an example I was working with a company several several years ago on a technology transformation project and they were developing a mobile phone application to try and automate some of their customer acquisition and they had a really high I guess risk profile and that the appetite for risk was very low the algorithm that underpin customer acquisition was fundamentally discriminatory against minorities and I don't mind just testing a thing if that's important to you I don't mind building a journey for you if that is your starting point but what I won't do as a designer is support a piece of work that I know will harm others that's a boundary I have and that is a boundary I will not cross so I will not continue to work on this project right that's a hard boundary but to go I'd love to do some research but you won't let me it's more of a that's what a toddler does so there yeah the boundary is between or the distinction is between intent like what's the intent what is the goal that we're striving towards and that's almost non-negotiable versus your craft and how do you bend and tweak and modify and contextualize your process your tools to achieve that goal like how fluid or flexible are you with that yes and I think the question is also we might not be able to get a perfect project going here but what we might do is move an increments towards a better way of doing things so if I can build excitement around a customer journey or if I know that the organization has an appetite for journey frameworks why not go with it even if there is very limited research or all of it is is just quant research or you know even if it's just a little bit it's it's about perspective how much time have we got here to drive change can I can is it palatable for me yes based on my values very very important can my tools make it a little bit better you know can I modify something that I know to help someone else understand the customer this is the navigation activity this is the leadership this is the moments of tension I think the trap or pitfall is that as service designers we already see what's possible we envision the future we know like if we all do it in the ideal or perfect way what's what's possible like and and we want to get there and when we need to take smaller steps it almost feels like we're compromising like this is not good enough we like if we just change these five things we can deliver so much more value I have some thoughts about about this but how do you marry these two things like knowing what's in store and and challenging your clients maybe to come on let's change a few things and then this will be so much better versus okay let's take some baby steps so I think it depends also on our positioning right so if we're external contractors or consultants there's a massive expectation around short-term deliverables right if I'm hired for 12 weeks to deliver a thing my ability to drive long-term change is small if I'm in the house I have the ability to pursue long-term changes while delivering short-term wins it's understanding our position in that system well enough to make a judgment call around what's possible for us not just what's possible for the system we're trying to change but what is possible realistically for me as a service designer at this moment in time under these conditions and that I think is what the what the leadership vision has to be and it's not to say that that vision can't change in three weeks or three months or three years but I think we're setting ourselves up for failure when we think we can turn around an organization to become a design-led or custom-led organization in 12 weeks or even 12 months yeah that's one of those perspective of or accesses of leadership that you understand your limitations and your abilities and being able to align those things with what you could potentially achieve that's the at least that's how I'm hearing and reading your story that that's where leadership sort of shows up that you're able to connect what's possible with what what might be uh I hope I'm making sense here yes you are see I think the other thing to remember is that our ability to drive change is only ever as um as great as the quality of our stories that that tell people what that future is going to be like right so if if I have a vision in my mind around what an organization could be but I can't tell a story around that vision in a way that is compelling for others there is no way that I'm ever going to get there or the organization so I think when we think about leadership we often think it's just about the actions that we take but the second part of that is our ability to bring others on a journey and that requires two things an explicit invitation to go on that journey and then at least an initial framework for participating in that journey and if we can't communicate that through our stories we can't we're not going to get wherever we want to go I don't know the exact quote so I'm not going to use it here but there is a beautiful quote by a philosopher uh about that if you want to inspire people to travel and explore foreign lands you don't tell them about the features of your boat you tell them about the future that awaits right and I think that's something similar here like we shouldn't yeah we shouldn't be telling about how how great our process is or how beautiful the tools are that we use we should be telling a compelling story about the future that we want to create and give people the confidence to take that first step with us a hundred percent and that future has to be painted in words and in language and in concepts that the audience understand right so if I talk about custom-made organizations to an organization that hasn't bought into the value of customer I'm telling an irrelevant story yeah so I might start my story of a bright future around an organization that can make evidence-based decisions that can respond to market needs and trends quickly and informed in an informed way in 12 months time that story might change to something you know an organization that you know is seen in the market as being relevant and meaningful and collaborative and then in 24 months time I might talk about their customer vision so the same story the same vision that I have today has to sound different today than tomorrow and then the day after we don't evolve our stories as well as we like to but just as our practice has to evolve with the ever-changing conditions that we find ourselves in so have our stories what what would you say to someone who isn't in a functional leadership position right now and feels that the practice leadership role or responsibility lies in that functional leadership position not within them within themselves I would ask them if that where that question comes from in that is that a question born from fear that you are unable to lead or is that question born from fear that you were being rejected if you do show up to lead is that where does that position come from and so it's an important question I guess and I'm not sure how I hope many people who are listening right now are actively thinking about how they are leading the practice and if there are not I think this is a very good invitation to to start doing some reflection around this sort of heading towards the end of our conversation I'm always curious like which advice you wish you would have gotten five years ago which advice would you give yourself to a five-year younger Sarah I think something that I would have loved to have known five years ago is that we all have the potential to lead and that we can shape our own leadership experience like this I guess the thing about functional leadership is that we see leadership in a particular way and assume that leadership must be this way and so when people go I don't want to lead it might just be I don't want to lead that way and that's totally fine right and so for me knowing five years ago that I have the potential to lead if I so choose would have been really liberating for me I think that's one thing I think the other thing that is really interesting for me or that would have been really helpful is to know that good design is context dependent there is no design best practice at this moment in time there is only responsive design that is respectful and I guess responsive to the people we work with the people we work for and our own values believes needs and boundaries and so when we talk about good design to one another I think would be more helpful for us to go under which conditions have you found this to work rather than this is the best way to do a journey map or this is the best that human-centered design or earth-centered design or co-design or under which conditions is the practice that you advocate for relevant and useful to bring the testament to the conversation yeah and understanding those nuances it requires stories is very hard to do a course around this or to read this in a book because like we it's it's it's alluring and tempting to get recipes and focus on recipes but it's really the context and the nuances that matter I do I want to I want to focus on one more thing because it makes me curious whether you were sharing this and the advice you would get you would given yourself is there such a thing as no leadership because let me explain because I think the the story here might be like you're always leading by example your actions or the lack of your actions is setting an example and if we say you're leading by example then you're always leading in a certain way consciously unconsciously so is there a thing as no leadership I guess the absence of leadership is the absence of direction and the absence of pathways towards a different future I think that another interesting way to look at leadership is to understand that leadership cannot be continuous so when we look at leaders we think that they're a leader at all times but what the research suggests well beyond my research paper is that leadership shows up in the spaces in between people leadership shows up in between through relationships leaderships are moment or events in time so what that means is that I can choose to be a leader at work and not at home I can choose to be a leader in this workshop and not in that one I can choose to be a leader in this team but not in that I can choose to lead in particular scenarios but not in others right and so sometimes the absence of leadership is actually a blessing because it allows for someone else to step into their leadership and sometimes leadership is stepping away for someone else to lead that's better that's I love that one and it makes absolute sense that like the lack of the you have to have if you want to lead you have to have a north star and even if that north star tells you to step to take a step back but without a north star you can't lead you're just you're just busy you're just rowing without having a direction or a goal or a destination maybe in I love metaphor so you can't lead if you don't have a destination yes I but I think I would be I would say that the destination hasn't it doesn't have to be a destination I think it has to be a direction and for me the distinction is important because the destination presumes in a way that we have answers when very often we don't a direction can simply be different to where we are today so we're going north we're heading towards a more human-centered future rather than we're going towards a very specific crystallized we're going to the we're going to Manhattan or we're going to Broadway that's not that's not the destination that we're discussing or referring to we're going north or we're going to a better future right that that's that's the that's the north star 100 that's exactly it if someone has listened to our conversation so far what is the one thing you hope that they will remember I hope that the one thing that they will remember is that they have the ability to lead um and all they need to do is find out what they can bring to their context to show up in a literally way and I hope that they decide that they are ready to give it a try the other thing I would say around this is that you don't have to get it right first time around but without trying you're never going to get there leadership is also a learning journey and so why not start today and find a moment in your work life that you want to start leading and just do it and on that note I want to thank you Sarah for sharing this important topic encouraging topic inspiring topic let's hope people will dig into this do some reflection and read some books read the report uh really thankful that you came on and shared this thank you so much Max for the joy talking to you today what's the single most important quality of an effective leader according to you we'd love to know so please leave a comment down below I want to thank Sarah once again for coming on the show and addressing this important topic with us if you want to learn more check out Sarah's report using the link that's in the show notes of this episode finally if you enjoyed this conversation and you haven't done so already please click that like button this lets me know if we're on the right track addressing topics like this my name is Mark from Tyne and I want to thank you for spending a small part of your day with me please keep making a positive impact and I look forward to see you very soon in the next video


The next item of business is a statement by Jeane Freeman on health and care update. The cabinet secretary will take questions at the end of her statement so there should be no interventions or interruptions. I call on Jeane Freeman, 10 minutes please, cabinet secretary. Thank you, Presiding Officer. This year we are rightly celebrating 70 years of our national health service. Across this chamber we have expressed our pride in our health and social care services and the remarkable commitment of our staff across the country. Although there is indeed much to celebrate, it is also our responsibility to look ahead to see what must be done to make sure that the whole system is equipped for the future. Over the coming weeks I will set out what I believe to be important milestones in the journey that we need to take. Today I am publishing our understanding of the overall financial climate in which we will be working, our expectation of future demand and the demand that places on future resourcing. Over the coming weeks I will also provide an update on our NHS estate, setting the scene for a more detailed capital investment strategy I intend to bring to Parliament before the end of this financial year. As I have set out to the health committee, I will in the coming weeks bring our plan to substantially and sustainably improve waiting times to this chamber. These important strategic developments underline our commitment to transparency and accountability and are supported by the regular reporting of the financial position for our NHS boards and integration authorities. All of those elements combined will provide the clarity necessary for the important discussion that we need to have about the future shape of our NHS and social care services. The Scottish Government's health and social care delivery plan highlights the necessity of achieving long-term financial stability of our health and care system. The financial framework directly supports the delivery plan and sets out in more detail the potential approach and the types of initiatives required to deliver a financially balanced and sustainable health and social care system. It is important to view the health and social care system within the context of the overall Scottish Government budget, the greater fiscal responsibility for the Government and this Parliament and the continued pressure of UK Government austerity. The financial framework is therefore firmly set within the context of the Scottish Government's first medium-term financial strategy that was published in May this year. Today's publication of the medium-term financial framework has required close and effective working with our partners across the whole sector. I am grateful in particular for the support from colleagues in NHS boards, integration authorities and COSLA who have supported this publication. I am grateful, too, for the support of the Chartered Institute of Public Finance and Accountancy, who have welcomed the financial framework and encouraged other areas of the UK to consider the principles underpinning the work. The financial framework sets out the financial environment for the period to 2023-24. It follows the principles that are set out in the Scottish Government's medium-term financial strategy and reflects our current understanding of the UK Government's funding and announcement in June for the NHS in England. Let me say at this point that the implications of the UK Government's announcement are still far from clear. The Cabinet Secretary for Finance, Economy and Fair Work sought immediate clarification on the true level of Barnett consequentials that would come to Scotland as a result of the plans in England. Derek Mackay sought confirmation that the claimed levels of consequentials would be a true net benefit to our budget. He also sought clarification on the implied income tax changes that had been suggested as a result of the UK Government's announcement. It is deeply disappointing that we still do not have the clarity sought from the UK Government on those issues, but the limited information that is available indicates that we will receive consequentials that amount to £3.3 billion between now and 2023-24. In finalising the financial framework, I have made the perhaps bold assumption that the UK Government will honour its commitment, deliver the consequentials as a true net benefit and not reduce the Scottish Government's funding by cuts applied elsewhere or by other measures. I very much hope that this is an area on which we can all be agreed. I can confirm that the Scottish Government remains committed to passing on health consequentials in full. This is reflected in this financial framework. Our commitments on health and care funding have already delivered over £13 billion in health funding this year, including over £550 million in investment in social care and integration. Other key investments that we are committed to delivering include £500 million for primary care by the end of this Parliament and £250 million additional investment in mental health services over the coming years. However, increased funding alone will not be sufficient to meet the challenges that lie ahead. Our health and social care services are faced with clear challenges, not least demographic change, price pressures on areas such as medicines, rising demand and expectations, and we require to address all of that against a backdrop of uncertainty caused by Brexit, the impact of Brexit on our existing and potential workforce and the estimated overall economic damage to Scotland's GDP of £12.7 billion by 2030. If we followed the status quo, running costs would increase by £5.9 billion in 2023-24 compared to 2016-17. To meet this challenge, a responsible Government such as us, it is critical that our significant planned investment must be twinned with reform to drive further improvements in our services to achieve better outcomes for patients. Those reforms include the development of regional working and better collaboration between the national health boards to improve services, including improved regional approaches to the planning and delivery of services. That will help to drive change in how clinical networks are formed and help to reduce duplication in services and functions. I recognise that NHS boards being able to deliver the necessary reforms to achieve what has been outlined in the financial framework will take considerable effort. That is why today I am offering NHS boards a new deal. In return for their efforts to deliver the reforms for the future, I am facilitating a new three-year financial planning and performance framework for our NHS territorial boards. That change will require boards to deliver a break-even position over a three-year period, rather than annually, as is the case currently. In each year, boards will have a 1 per cent flexibility on their annual resource budget to allow them scope to marginally under or overspend in that year. For this new deal to be successful, I believe that it needs a new start. To give all our territorial boards clear ground to move forward on that three-year planning cycle, I will not seek to recover NHS territorial boards outstanding brokerage, the expenditure that is incurred by territorial boards over the past five years, which has been above their budget. I want all boards to be able to focus their attention on delivering the measures that are set out in the health and social care delivery plan and this financial framework and to do that in a safe and appropriate way, making sure that they maintain a strong focus on patient care and the delivery of services that are safe, effective, person-centred and timely. In publishing the financial framework, I want to inform the mature, responsible discussion about the future of our health and social care services that I have referred to before in this chamber. I have been clear on my expectations of the UK Government's funding announcement and how we intend to design, deliver and manage the right health and social care within our available resources. It is essential that we see the UK Government's commitment delivered in full. Failure to do so will have a direct detrimental consequence on the financial position outlined in the financial framework. I believe that we can work together to take the steps that are required to equip our health and social care services with the resources and support that are required for the years and the generations ahead. The cabinet secretary will now take questions on the issues raised in her statement. I would ask all those who wish to raise questions to press the request-to-speak buttons. I will allow you around 20 minutes, which should be adequate if everybody bears the limitations in mind. I call Miles Briggs. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. The first statement of this Parliament is health secretary on 12 September, said that she had approached her job with mature reflection and, 22 days later, I am sorry to say that this statement does not feel like that. HM treasury figures show health spending in England has increased by 20 per cent since 2011-16, but only by 14 per cent in Scotland over the same time period. If that had increased at the same rate, NHS Scotland would have £676 million more to spend today. Can the cabinet secretary outline why SNP ministers have shortchanged our Scottish NHS at a time of record UK Government health funding? The cabinet secretary in her statement also mentions that she intends to provide an update on the NHS estate. Communities across Scotland that have seen services cut and centralised will be concerned that this statement is the start of yet more SNP cuts and centralisation of our health services. I also ask the cabinet secretary what are the parameters for this NHS estate review, and will Parliament have a chance to see it before it is announced? Thank you very much. I am grateful to Mr Briggs for his questions. I have to start, though, by disagreeing with him. Health spending in Scotland is 7.1 per cent higher than in the UK as a whole. Let's be clear about the facts here. Let's be clear that this Government is not shortchanging anyone. In terms of the estate, Mr Briggs, the only reason people will be concerned is if, once more, the Conservatives in this chamber put out false accusations and claims that are then rebutted by us, but serve to do nothing more than add to concern and upset among the constituents that you claim to represent. I am looking for a mature, reflective discussion, and I really do hope that the Conservative benches show themselves able to rise to that challenge and get involved with us in planning our health service for the future. I thank the cabinet secretary for her earlier statement and for the way that she has so far engaged this chamber as she settles into her new role. We welcome the financial framework and the extra time that helps to give boards to plan their future services. From previous FOI responses, health boards have told us that they are expecting to make over £1 billion of savings over the course of this Parliament. Can the cabinet secretary set out how this medium-term financial framework impacts on those figures and what levels of cuts will health boards be expecting to make over the next three years? The cabinet secretary will also recognise that local government budgets impact on social care services, so can she also set out again what that means for IGB budgets and any savings that they have to make? The statement also confirms that all brokerage over the past five years is to be written off. We have to recognise that the financial mismanagement that has happened in these boards has happened under this Government. Can the cabinet secretary say how much this is going to cost and whether she has confidence in the financial management of health boards going forward? Finally, we welcome at last some honesty from the Government on its plans for service reform, so can the cabinet secretary commit to setting out her plans to this chamber at a future date and also ensuring full public consultation? Jeane Freeman, thank you very much. I am grateful to Mr Sarwar for his questions. Can I be clear on the savings that boards are required to make? This is the case and indeed always has been the case, that the money that boards save is retained by boards for allocation to other areas of spend, so those are not cuts. Those are savings that we ask boards to make in order that they can use that resource in other areas of their spend. The money does not come back to me or to the Scottish Government. It comes and stays with those boards for them to use to improve on the services that they have. In terms of IGB budgets, the financial framework clearly is for the service as a whole. We have, in terms of the money from local government, but most importantly, in terms of the money from this Government and from health spend, contributed significantly to the IGBs and to the work that they are doing. They already have a degree of flexibility because they are part of the local government accounting system. What I am looking to do is to provide the same degree of three-year planning cycle. I am grateful to Mr Sarwar for welcoming that, as we already have with those IGBs. Mr Sarwar raises an important point about financial management. All of our boards are required to ensure and to report and to demonstrate not just in the reporting that they do that is publicly available, but in the regular contact between my officials and their finance officers, that they are prudently managing the budgets that they have and that they are seeking value for money. There are pressures that come on boards, as indeed on the health budget overall, that we have little control over—inflation in terms of drug prices and so on. We have made positive decisions in terms of pay awards, which will be another pressure. Nonetheless, boards have to financially manage their resources with some care. Where boards have in the past not shown themselves able to do that or shown themselves needing some additional skills or improvement, I want to assure Mr Sarwar that my finance officials are actively engaged with them now, will continue to be engaged with them and report and monitor the work that is going on in those boards on a regular basis in order to ensure that all of our boards meet the standards of our best boards and the standards that we expect our boards to deliver in terms of using public funds to deliver quality health and social care. The financial framework is clearly predicated on the UK Government actually delivering the Barnett consequentials that it boasted about earlier this year. Can I ask the cabinet secretary what the consequences for the framework will be if the UK Government does not deliver on its promises in the budget later this month? I am grateful to Ms Maguire for that question. In terms of answering her question, the financial framework, as I said, assumes the full net benefit of those consequentials. In other words, there is no detrimental effect on the Scottish budget in other areas, including on any tax changes that the UK Government might want to introduce. I advise members to look to what is almost the last page of the financial framework to see what our anticipation is of demand and expenditure in terms of health and social care, what we will do in terms of what we expect to achieve by way of reforms and then imagine that if you take out £3.3 billion, that is the impact of any detriment in terms of those full consequentials not coming to us in either full or in part. It will destabilise that financial framework and we would have to look again at that. However, it would be more than that, it would be in effect a broken promise. That is significant in terms of how we work together with the UK Government as it tells us repeatedly that it wants us to do. I take the opportunity to apologise. I did not pick up Mr Salwa's question in terms of service reform. There are two things that I want to say on that. One is that our health and social care delivery plan outlines what we need to do in service reform. I am happy to speak to individual members or to party spokespeople about individual reforms board by board as they might come forward, but also on the wider reforms that we have already set out in terms of our primary care, GP working, our increase in the workforce and any other matters that may be of interest to members. Brian Whittle, followed by David Stewart. Thank you, Deputy Presiding Officer. I have to say that I was hoping for a change of Cabinet Secretary. We might get a change of approach, but it reminds me of the words of Don Roger Daltreys, meet the new boss, same as the old boss. I try to ask the Cabinet Secretary to give the report the struggles of your constituency health board, Ayrshire Narm, to meet its financial obligations, both existing and future. How does she anticipate those new proposals will impact on the delivery of a number of procedures, including cancer treatment and cataract surgery, which are already areas of concern in our area? We might not all be agreed, but many of us agreed that that was not Roger Daltreys. That aside, this is the Cabinet Secretary for Health and Sport, and I am sure that Mr Whittle will work very well in the weeks ahead. In terms of your question on waiting times, what we need to understand is the setting out of the medium-term financial framework. Our understanding of the financial pressures that are set against the demands that are set against what we know we need to do, assuming full net consequentials from the UK Government, and therefore what the position looks like as we go forward. Members who have had the opportunity will see that, even with those reforms, there is still a financial challenge there, and we need to work together to address that future financial challenge. We need to do some of that now, and that is the mature conversation that I live in hope for. In terms of waiting times, as Mr Whittle heard me say, I will come to this Parliament with a plan for improved and sustainable improvement in our waiting times, including those times that he mentioned. The resourcing that I will then outline, I commit to that, is indeed taking account of in this framework. David Stewart, followed by Alison Johnstone. Thank you, Presiding Officer. I welcome many of the initiatives in the statements, such as waving brokerage. Can I ask the cabinet secretary about the key underlying trends that have caused financial instability in many boards such as NHS Highland? The cabinet secretary will know that the auditor general made clear that brokerage for Highland was likely to be needed over the next three years. The areas of financial concern are well known to the cabinet secretary, their adult social care, their drug overspend and the cost of hiring medical locums. What comfort can the cabinet secretary give to patients and staff in Highland that the next three years will not just be more of the same, or is she saying, as Bob Dylan said, that the times they are changing? I am not going to get into a competition quoting songs, although I am pleased that both members have gone for songs in my era. That is a comfort to me. Mr Stewart makes an important point, and it partly links to what Mr Sarwar was asking me, which is fine. I appreciate the fact that they welcome that we are in effect clearing the slate, introducing that three-year planning cycle, giving that degree of flexibility year on year within those three years. However, the end position for each of our territorial boards at the end of three years is that they have to break even. Therefore, we cannot continue with a situation in which boards have significant overspends on their budgets, albeit that those spends have been on patient care. In looking at how we deploy our resources to boards and how we expect them to deploy their resources, part of the reforms are looking at how we can ensure that the resources that we have within all the caveats that I outlined are adequately targeted towards patient care meeting those waiting times and so on, with some of the additional resources that we will come forward with. We also value our workforce, we increase our recruitment and we meet those pay pressures that I talked about. I am convinced that where we have boards that are managing to do that now, not every board is looking for brokerage. Indeed, in some where they set out at the beginning of this year, looking for that, that figure is coming down. If we look at previous years, we see that that is what happens. We have a small number of boards where brokerages is definitely expected as they were described at the end of this year. That is what I am saying. I will not seek repayment of that, if you like. However, in those other boards where financial management and quality of patient care is being finely balanced but is being managed, I want those other boards and the lessons that they give to their colleagues to be transferred and my officials to help them to do that. That is what is actively happening right now. In some boards, such as Highland, I completely accept that there are additional pressures in terms of the geography and the demands that are there. However, some of the initiatives that we have introduced in terms of rural working and GP recruitment in rural areas and so on will, I am sure, help to address some of those new or different challenges between our territorial boards. Alison Johnstone, followed by Alex Cole-Hamilton. I welcome the move to a three-year financial planning cycle and the fact that the Government is not seeking to recover outstanding brokerage. The ability of NHS boards to forecast demand and to plan effectively to meet it and to deploy the resources most effectively hinges on them having access to the best data, to the highest quality information. I would like to understand what the cabinet secretary tells us and what the Scottish Government is doing to offer board support in that regard. Thank you very much and I am grateful to Ms Johnson for what is, I believe, an important question. She is absolutely right that part of the key to this is being able to forecast demand. One of the areas where we have some of the highest quality information that is drilled down to quite a significant level is from our integration authorities and our integration joint boards. What we have not been doing to the degree that I require us to do that is triangulating all the information in the data that we have so that we can adequately forecast demand from one area to another. We are now beginning work on that to ensure that the data that comes into us, the data that those integration authorities currently hold, is not only shared as widely as appropriate and should be, but is also triangulated so that we get more than a one-dimensional picture if you like about what demand looks like coming towards us for our health and social care services in the decades ahead. I thank the cabinet secretary for advance sight of her statement. Three years ago, the Scottish Government said that it would eradicate delayed discharge. It is one of the biggest financial drains on the resources of our health service and this week delayed discharge got worse. Will the proposals outlined in the statement end delayed discharge? Jane Freeman. That is the financial framework. That is our current estimate of the financial position that our health service faces in the years ahead and of the demand that is placed on that health service. It is not a framework that has specific initiatives within it, nor should it have. The waiting times plan that I will bring forward, which is looking at improved unsustainability in our waiting times work, which links to delayed discharge, as Mr Cole-Hamilton well knows, will come forward to this Parliament in the coming weeks. It is there that we will look to see how much further we can make an improvement in delayed discharge. I draw his attention to the successful work of the Aberdeen integration authority, which successfully, by some significant percentage points, not only brought down delayed discharge, but also brought down unscheduled bed days, if you like, in hospital. It is learning from those areas that I intend that we will scale up and transfer across all our integration authorities when I talk about increasing the pace and the effectiveness of their work. Can I say at this point that I do not think that I am going to be able to get everyone in? The health secretary made the welcome announcement of a new deal for health boards, to give them greater flexibility between annual budgets. Can the cabinet secretary outline what flexibility integration authorities have to plan beyond annual budgets? Jeane Freeman. I am grateful to Mr Allen for that question. Integration authorities are, in accounting terms, part of local government, and so they have that degree of flexibility and they also have the capacity to hold reserves. So what I am trying to do is ensure that that degree of flexibility and capacity to plan within a reasonable time-flame is also something that our NHS boards can benefit from. Annie Wells, followed by John Mason. Thank you, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary has stated that the brokerage to those health boards that have it will be written off. Can I ask the cabinet secretary when that will be, and will we see in this year's Scottish Government budget, and also an estimate of how much debt will be written off? Jeane Freeman. I will start with the last part of that question first. Our current estimate of what brokerage would be for the last five years—so it is not about this current year alone—is around £150 million. All territorial boards will start with a clean slate from 2019-20. That is when we will begin that three-year planning cycle with all that work that I described earlier. In the meantime, boards will continue to work to reduce what they anticipate will be their level of brokerage, and in many of our boards we are seeing that coming down significantly as they finalise and refine their plans in terms of reform and service delivery. However, everyone will start, as I said, with that new deal from the financial year of 2019-20. John Mason, followed by Jenny Marra, who will be the last question. The cabinet secretary mentioned Brexit in her statement. Presumably, that could have an impact both on the economy and less taxes, which would put pressure on the NHS, as well as a potential shortage of staff, both skilled and unskilled. Does she think that the UK Government understands those extra pressures on our NHS? I am grateful to Mr Mason for his question. I do not have insight into the minds of UK Government ministers, but by their actions it appears to me that they do not understand, or if they do, they are not taking sufficiently seriously the impact of Brexit on our health service, not just in Scotland, but the health service in England, Wales and, indeed, in Northern Ireland. All of us benefit significantly from EU nationals being valued, skilled and experienced members of our workforce. We also all benefit from our own workforce being able to work in EU countries. We benefit from the mutual recognition of qualifications. We benefit from being part of, and in Scotland's case, leading members of international research collaboratives, which produce significant input to our economy. There is a great deal here that is at risk and that is troublesome and worrying, and I hope that the more we repeat it and I look to colleagues across the chamber to assist us in that, not least those colleagues on my left-hand side, we begin to get the clarity that we need from the UK Government, and they begin to demonstrate that, if they do understand this, they are going to act to do something about it. Jenny Marra Can I welcome and congratulate the cabinet secretary on the financial framework today? It's been recommended for some time now, it's been long awaited, and I do feel that the Conservative front bench has really misjudged the advance that has been made today, because it allows us to make the shift to the care that we need. A point of clarification, if I may, Presiding Officer. The cabinet secretary said that she will write off all outstanding brokerage. She knows that NHS Tayside has a projected deficit of £18.7 million for this financial year. Will she write that off as well, so that we can really start with a clean sheet to make that shift of care that we need? I'm grateful to Ms Marra for that question, and for her recognition, as I believe colleagues on the Labour benches have done, of the importance of this financial framework and what it actually is, as opposed to what it's not. That's an important question that she asked, and by my answer earlier, that all health boards will start with a clean slate from the financial year 2019 to 2020, then I believe that I'm answering and saying that yes, that will be the case. There will be no brokerage to be recovered where that additional spend has been on patient care from the end of this year. We move forward from 2020 to that three-year cycle and that clean slate. That concludes questioning on the cabinet secretary's statement. My apologies to Rona Mackay, who wished to ask a question. I say to members that we have eaten into time for the next debate, but we still didn't manage to get through all the questions. We have a couple of moments for folk to get organised.


Welcome to you from our G.I.S. studios, I am Mincia Antwan and this is your midday news brief. On Thursday, October 3rd, the year-long celebration of the Ireland's 40th anniversary of independence takes on new meaning with the unveiling of the oil in sculpture at the Castry's Waterfront roundabout. International renowned sculptor Xiaolim Yudovic was commissioned to artistically capture the essence of Xing Lusha. Xiaolim Yudovic's sculptures have been displayed at museums worldwide. In recent years, he has worked extensively in China. He says being asked to produce a sculpture for the Ireland's 40th independent celebration was an honour. The unveiling takes place today at 3.30 pm. The event will be broadcast live on the national television network NTN and Streamed. The Xing Lusha Bureau of Standards SLBS is paired in a series of activities in commemoration of World Standards Day, which is observed annually on October 14th. World Standards Day this year is being observed under the theme, video standards create a global stage, a reference to how standards have been critical to developments in video technology that have expanded opportunities for advances in medicine, entertainment and social interactions between people wherever they are in the world. In Xing Lusha, the observants will focus on the importance of standards in various sectors of the economy, including beauty and wellness, construction, agriculture and the environment. The Xing Lusha Bureau of Standards launched its activities on Thursday, October 3rd at 10 am at its headquarters in BJ. Bank of Xing Lusha recently partnered with a local author to host its 11th annual back-to-school student success workshop for scholarship recipients. The workshop which forms part of the bank's overall scholarship programme was held at the financial centre in Cass Trees. For many years, Bank of Xing Lusha has been hosting a full-1 day workshop to better prepare its scholarship recipients for school, success and for life. This year's 11th annual student success workshop was based on the theme, achieving success through positive relationships and covered several topics including self-esteem, conflict resolution and the importance of listening and body language among others. This has been Emily Neuse Brief. Thank you for watching.


Hey there friends, thanks for checking in. Here's my Glock 21 Gen 4 in Excellent condition. I've had it for about three years now I put a good amount of rounds through it throughout that time and I never recall any failures ever So it's definitely a reliable gun full-size 45 ACP with mags that hold 13 rounds 4.6 inch barrel does have the big dot night sights on there standard Glock trigger and And it's been great many people call this one of the best 45 ACP Striker fire handguns that you can get out there and I've certainly enjoyed it But I'm going to go ahead and let it go in a trade Because there's an offer out there that I am very much interested in it's in 45 ACP and The gentleman I'm trading with really wants a Glock 21 So it's a good deal all around and I'm happy about that That's how I prefer to trade handguns where both parties leave very satisfied So I'm gonna go ahead and hit the range and I will show you what I traded this Glock 21 for and you can let me know What you think First shots. Let's see how it goes All right Not too bad. I shot a little bit low, but what I traded for is an HK 45 full-size handgun that is Very well respected a lot of people love the HK 45 HK themselves said that this was an improved or this was made to be an improved Model over the USP that was produced in the mid 90s. It's a variant one Which is different because it's double action single action That's different than the P 30 the P 2,000 models in which a variant one would be an LEM Pretty much a single action kind of feels like a striker fire handgun in a way, but the HK 45 This is the full size. It also comes in a compact model. This has a 4.5 inch barrel It does have the trigger guard release magazine release that is ambidextrous and Abidextrous slide stop on both sides. It has the de-cocker thumb safety right here Just de-cock that or you can carry it cocked and locked that will lock up the trigger and Not the slide the slide will still Charge with that, but it does have front serrations three dot luminance luminescent sights a very nice grip HK does a very nice job with the ergos and two ten round Magazines and then very consistent with HK the extractor sticks out a little bit as a loaded chamber indicator And it is red full pick rail right there the HK 45 very nice handgun. I need to Raise my front sight just a hair to get a little bit a more precise shot But I'm happy to have this trade and the gentleman I traded with was pretty happy too now a full disclosure It wasn't an even trade for the Glock 21 for this. This has an MSRP of 8 49 It's currently selling closer to a thousand eleven hundred at least that's what I'm seeing in today's market I also threw in a Remington RM 380 executive model and and that worked out for me because I have two of them and He said he wanted a pocket 380 anyways So I gave up the Glock 21 and a Remington RM 380 for the HK 45 and I'm pretty happy and the gentleman I traded with he seems pretty happy with it So I think it's a fair deal all around and that really is how I prefer to Make my trades now. I will mention I have never purchased an HK. I Have this is the fifth HK that I have owned throughout the years and I Acquired each and every one of them through a trade because HK's are outrageously expensive They really are and so every single HK I've ever gotten was from a trade and You know, that's just how I'm gonna get them until they drop their price a little bit But here it is let me go ahead and load it up again I'll turn the camera around and then eventually I plan to do a table review on this handgun and We'll see. I think it gets high marks in the gun world I'll go ahead and load it up when we can check out the recoil because HK says they have a Reducing recoil system and I found that to be true with many of the other HK handguns that I've owned I've got 10 rounds loaded up.   All right, sometimes that's Anticipating the shot and bracing your hands and all that but HK 45 full size. I'm gonna do a table review It's certainly a nice handgun One of the things that makes it a little bit different. They have the P 30 models is that the side panels are Fixed although it comes with two back straps the side panels are fixed You can't interchange the grip panels, which is fine by me. This feels really nice full-size handgun that is considered a quality handgun, I know it is and Pretty happy to have it and I'm glad that both parties are happy with this trade deal And if you like videos like this, please subscribe and share. I always appreciate thumbs up button Thanks for watching and you guys be safe


that are really, really helpful, right? There's that first one that I can't ever pronounce. I know it's cute to mix auto and optimize, but try and say that out loud. And don't say auto-optimize, because that would require two O's. Yeah, that thing. I can't say it, okay? I can rub my belly and my head at the same time, but I can't say that word. So, you should be able to spell it, look it up, try it. It has a whole bunch of features. And as we started playing with it and tuning it, we discovered this really does change performance on most of the stores that we have. Right? So, you go, okay, that could be very, very helpful. Async JavaScript.  It takes a while to do all that, and you're like, well, do I want to do that? It's all asynchronous, but do I want to do it up front? Do I want to do it at the end? How do I want to play this out? I can't test it out, but that plugin is also really helpful. And then, one of my favorites and go-tos is a plugin called WP Disabled, which does a lot of work to making performance better by simply going in and saying, yes, please, take off all the appended strings to the URLs for the resources I'm pulling down. Or, yes, let's turn off some of the dashboard widgets or, yes, let's change the way we call Google Fonts. There's a whole litany of things that they do that help your store perform better. And you go, okay, just these three can end up... I've seen, personally, going from one store in one dynamic to another store, just these three plugins tweaking it can drop two to 10 seconds of performance depending on how bad the site started with. And you go, wow, okay, that's serious. So these are three that I say, just put on your list. It's in the part that's good because it's worth doing, but it's also not in the cheaper fast because for you to evaluate it means take a copy of your store, put it somewhere else, and then start testing out some of the different settings and run through performance tests. So it's going to take you a little bit of work. But once you get it locked in right, this can be very powerful for you in terms of performance. RAM is one of those confusing things when you start thinking about a store and performance because you're like, oh, I just need to give it a lot of RAM. The truth is, RAM is the first thing that will help your store get faster. Because remember we talked about all those calls to the database? The queries are back to a database, and those queries, if you're putting it all in RAM, it's like you're putting it all in localized, quick access location where I can get to the data faster. And so you're like, ooh, RAM is good. If I can have more RAM on my store than the size of my database, it means I can put that whole database in RAM and I can take everything faster. And that will help speed up your store. But I won't do all the work because at some point, that's going to have diminishing returns and now it's your CPUs. It's going to be how many CPUs are you able to process when you're talking about concurrent orders, concurrent traffic. A lot of people coming at the same time. So when you're talking about a high concurrency, high performance site, you're going to shift away from RAM eventually. You're going to move from RAM to CPUs and say, I really need to be thinking about CPUs. But initially, you're going to want to start with RAM. And so the quick rule of thumb is more RAM, rather than less, and more RAM than the size of your database. Are you good there? Make sense? Okay. Learn to leverage cache and bypass rules.  I'm going to use that cookie to bypass the cache and I'm going to make it so that the customer now is experiencing a slightly slower version of the store. But it's so that it's dynamic, that their cart shows the right amount in it and they can check out and all that. The bypass rules, the cookie drop, and the non-cache site for them is worth it because all the rest of the people are still running on cache. They're just what one developer calls window shopping. They're just browsing around, so just make it super fast for them. So there is a lot of different cache, right? You talk about Redis, you talk about memcache, you talk about object cache. There's a lot of different ways to talk about cache. Varnish, if I didn't mention that. Some of those things actually make your store slower, not faster. Sometimes because the people configuring it don't know what they're doing. So my general tip is learn where cache is and learn how it works. And there are two resources here, both from hosting companies and either from ours. One is easyengine.io, the other is servebolt.com. And again, if you go look at the slides, you can see those URLs, but both will walk you through exact details of how to think about some of this stuff. It'll take some work, but it can make your store much, much faster. Does that make sense? I know there are a lot of plugins that do the abandoned cart emails. I know there are plugins that do the follow-up emails. I know there are plugins that do the bring inactive customers back to your store emails. I know there's a whole bunch of plugins that try to interact with your customers from your database in different ways. And there are plugins that you install that will on your server start doing scans of your database to find these segments, and then they'll generate emails on your server, and then they will formulate it and put it into calls that will send out those emails. Your store is no longer functioning as a store. Your store is now an email server. That's not a good thing. And it's definitely not a high-performing thing because the people who wrote that plugin that will go find which customers of yours haven't been active in the last three months and put them on a specialist so you can send them a promotion, those people were trying to solve the problem. How do I find these people and mail them? They were not trying to solve the performance problem. And they may not know enough to figure out the performance problem. And when they tested it on their local computers, they tested it with 100 orders, no concurrent traffic to their store locally, and they just went through and did it and said it works. What they were evaluating was does the query work, does the function work, does the email get sent? What they were not evaluating was is this going to perform well in your store environment? Just don't do it. There are alternative ways to go after all these things, but don't do it from your store. Which also gets me into reporting. If you care about speed, you going into the report section of your store, going into reports and then hitting, ooh, let me look at the most popular reports and then you get fancy, you're like, let me look at it for the last week, let me look at it for the last two weeks, let me look at it for the last quarter, let me look at it for the last six months, this is amazing, I'm getting so much awesome data, and someone else goes, hey, I don't know what's going on on our server, but customers can't even check out, they're all leaving. All those queries that you're running against the database, all of them are having a performance impact on your store for your customers. Don't do this. Maybe the biggest tip I can give you in terms of performance is keep your store focused. Your store should be doing cartwork, transaction work for customers. That's what it should be. And like when we build our products, we use Glue.io. Glue.io is a very fancy, happy you don't need this, and that's okay, right? But for your real stores, they tap in through the API new commerce, and every hour they pull data out, and it goes into a data center, and we have our own cluster in the data center, and all it does is segment all the data, all the time. It's constantly processing, but all that processing is happening in another data center with other servers that are not related to your store. So your store works just fine, we use Jilt for abandoned cart, same thing, right? Comes into the API, pulls data out, and then the Jilt servers are processing abandoned cart and sending emails and all that, but your store's not doing it. And then Algolia, right? For search, every time you want to pre-index all the data, people are doing a search on your site, they do a search, it's sub-second, it's 400 milliseconds, and they get back presented the stuff they want, but you're not using your store to do it, you're not using your store to index it, you're not going to respond to it. The queries aren't happening there, they're happening on Algolia's servers, right? The more you get off your server, the faster your store performs. Does that make sense? My name is Chris Thoma, I do work at the web, I'm a VP of products. And on Twitter at atchristhoma, you can find me at christhoma.com, you can find me at leaders.blog. Thank you very much. So we have a couple minutes for questions. The question was where are the slides? Slideshare.net slash C-F-L-E-M-A C is in Chris, F is in Frank, L-E-M is in Mary, A. Slideshare.net I'm operating the VP7, not like, depending on the level of updates you've done on your plugins, VP7 to like, plugins now. Yes, that's a great word. Anytime you update anything on your website, even in a staging environment where you can test it, because whether it's PHP7, or an ODB, or another plugin that's getting an update, it could break. Plug-in developers, theme developers, they're not perfect, so do everything in staging. Yeah? Yeah. They seem to be extremely slow no matter what we try to do in the service. Yeah. Do you have any ideas on that? I do, I run a clarity service that... No, I'm just kidding. Yeah. So one of the first things I'd say is get someone who is a database expert to start looking at stuff, because variations... There's a couple of dynamics. One is how they get imported in, right? So did you manually have them in or did you import them in? And then the variation data, and where it's being stored, and how it's being indexed, could all have a performance problem, right? So you want to get someone looking into that. Is the matter of me putting these decks on? I'm not going to tell you to go in and put decks on your story, that's not good. So that's what I'm saying, get someone to look at it deeply. Inline JavaScript, so you avoid some of those external calls and how do you feel about putting it together if you have five policy, five different CSS scripts or JavaScript files putting them in one and minifying? So I mentioned the auto-optimized plugin in his name I can't pronounce. And they do that. So they will do that for you and they'll both minify both JavaScript and CSS. And again, you can turn it on and off each one. You can go into the advanced parts to control it and you can test it to make sure that it's actually not writing anything. Because one of the things that happens is you do something and you go, oh, this should work, but there is a chance, right, that you need a call to JavaScript in a certain order to be able to do some of the other stuff on your page. So you need to pay attention to some of that. Yeah, minify JavaScript for a long time. Were those tests for Will-Conference did it help somewhere? You said there was like 20-something tests, do you guys run? You want it all for free? I don't know, maybe. Yeah, we're making it available to everybody. Okay, cool. And then Astro is A-S-T-R-A. Yeah.


The Fauston volleyball team has been on the cusp of greatness the past few years, last season falling in the section semifinals against eventual winners, Ada Borup. This year the Greyhounds are right on track starting their season with wins over Crookston and Red Lake County. Fauston hosting Thief River Falls in tonight's matchup early in set one, the dig from Taylor Croning leads the kill from Jamie Carlin. Still in the first set, the slide to Carlin again, the setter going with the back set goes right through the blockers that ties it up at seven but the prowlers would start to pull away the block by Rebecca Lear on Taylor Croning would make it 24 to 16. TRF gets set one but after that it was all Fauston as they take the next three sets 25-12 11 and 23 to win in four sets. If you enjoyed this segment of Lakeland news please consider making a tax deductible contribution to Lakeland PBS.