I have always believed in the power of “yes” and I want to help as many people as I can realise how this amazing word can make the difference to their projects, their patients, and their goals.

It can open doors, break down barriers and help teams to work in new ways. However, I think there is a huge skill in both knowing when to say yes and training yourself to do so rather than putting up your own barriers. It is equally important to inspire that positivity in others, be able to help them say yes to your ideas, and bring them on a journey with you.

I’m a physiotherapist by background, originally based at the University Hospital of Wales, but I have consistently made a point of saying yes when given the chance to try something new. In fact, my whole career can be punctuated by a series of opportunities to which I said yes. There has of course been a lot of hard work, long hours and dedication but I do not think I would have got to my position today without taking those leaps of faith along the journey.

So naturally, when the opportunity arose to be involved in bringing the Billions Institute to Wales to establish the Spread and Scale Academy, I jumped at the chance. However, when I first met Becky Margiotta and Selena Lie Raphael I didn’t truly understand what it takes to spread and scale an idea or project and certainly didn’t know what the academy would entail at all!

It was quite daunting as I was organising the course without knowing what our delegates would be doing. As I was facilitating the course, I had a to-do list full of things like buying hundreds of rocks and tennis balls. It seemed totally crazy but I couldn’t say no! I knew I had to put my trust in the experts who were running the academy. What we ended up doing blew me away.

When I attended my first session with the Billions Institute as part of the South West England’s Academic Health Science Network’s (AHSN) event, which was just a week before we were due to run our own academy for the first time, everything clicked into place. I realised that I had in fact been spreading and scaling projects my entire career, I just hadn’t recognised it yet!

From my time in physio, to exploring innovative ways of managing chronic conditions, to leading the Improvement & Implementation team it had always been central to my work: taking great ideas and trying to replicate them across the system, while bringing people along with me on those journeys at the same time.

I came to realise, and I think many of my peers did around the same time, that across the NHS, despite being fortunate to have lots of brilliant people working on brilliant innovations and improvements, what we do not do well is take those good ideas and spread them to other parts of the system, adapting them and allowing them to flourish in different ways.

For teams attending the ac-ademy, all too often their experience of the system makes them settle for hearing “no”, or saying “no”, as a default response to change. Now, there is a myriad of reasons of why this might be; perhaps they are reluctant to put their ideas out there to be criticised, perhaps it is something more systemic.

Nevertheless, I am convinced, and always have been, that the power of “yes” can begin to unlock this challenge. I saw the work that the Billions Institute were doing and the potential of a Welsh Spread and Scale Academy as the key to empowering the health and care staff of Wales to really understand how and when to say yes, and how to encourage other people to choose to say yes to their ideas as well.

What is also vitally important, is that the academy teaches you how to let go of control. In fact, Becky refers to the concept of spread as an “orchestrated loss of control”. So often our projects stall because we ourselves get in the way of their success. You have to be able to take yourself and your ego out of the picture, learn to say yes to others who want to progress and adapt your ideas to suit their needs.

We ran our first academy in September 2019, just one week after I had my first experience of the concept at the AHSN session. It was fabulous, exhausting and so worthwhile; as it drew to a close on the end of the third day, I burst into tears.

No other programme I have ever been a part of delves into, with incredible detail, your personality traits as an individual delegate, truly knowing and appreciating your worth, and how you can influence the system in which you work, balanced with the technical aspects and the science behind improvement, innovation, adoption and spread.

This deft balance between the personal, the relational, and the technical is what makes the Spread and Scale Academy unique; I have attended many courses around similar themes but none address them simultaneously in the way which the academy does, and which leaves delegates feeling genuinely, truly empowered to lead meaningful change.

We are now really starting to see the success stories from the first two academies in earnest with the work around the CCR Tracheostomy Challenge Fund and Green Health Wales come to fruition, amongst a number of other great examples. I am always so excited to follow the teams’ journeys as their projects develop.

It may sound trite but I do believe that it is the best programme or course I have ever attended. I have been through it as a participant and then three times as a facilitator and each time I learn something new about myself, the way I work and the science of spreading good ideas. It really does challenge you to be a better person.

In my mind, everything is a spread and scale challenge: from COVID-19 recovery, redesigning our clinical services through to the sustainable healthcare agenda. In every aspect of our work, we can come up with good ideas and solutions to problems then spread them across the system. If we get good at this the opportunities are endless.

You can read more about the Spread and Scale Academy here.