7 FREE Tools to help your PCN partners to connect and trust each other.

The rapid introduction of PCNs has brought promise of joined up working and additional investment, to practices nationally.

It also brought the rapid shift in business practice and partnership working, that we would typically call a merger or a scale-up (in other sectors).

Typically, a predicted organisational shift in culture is accompanied by support for the board (partners in this case) and a plan or policy for wider team culture change and behaviours that bring the whole team together. This is made more complex for primary care by the PCN approach, which for some practices, means that PCN employed staff can feel external to the organisation, despite being led by the same partners.

It can feel like 2 (or more) organisations, striving to create a single culture.

7 Free ideas / tools for PCN leaders.

We regularly work with Partnership boards and managers to establish PCN cultures, through connected and trusting bonds at the partnership level and eventual culture spread to the wider team. Here are a few of the key ideas we have been repeatedly asked to provide or seen the need to draw on in our work.

They might surprise you, as there is often too much focus on processes rather than the relationships between people that underpin these.

1. Adding in Team Building Space to your Partners Board

Partners have to build meaningful relationships and it is imperative that they create space to do this. Think of a partnership as a polygamous marriage, as it is not far off a marriage in terms of contract law. All parties have to work at the relationship, including clear and shared values alongside relationship building.

Click here to read how get started on creating this type of space for your team.

2. Learn to notice success and strengths.

We hear all too often how PCN meetings are problem focused without the cultural habit of celebrating each other. Imagine never complimenting your spouse? This is a regular experience in primary care and once appreciation is communicated, the effect is immediate and the appetite for more arrives.