Unlocking the value in your customers - FIFA versus the NHS

I really, really try not to use football analogies in my work. I know that they are lost on many people and just annoy many of the others. Much better to use gardening, family or businesses for material.

But after a month of high profile football (you might have heard about it) perhaps you can forgive me one football-themed post?

I have just finished reading ‘One Night in Turin’ (formerly All Played Out) - Pete Smith’s excellent book about the 1990 World Cup and its role in changing English football. The central premise, alongside the drama on the pitch, is that pre-1990 English football was heading for a slow death, strangled by hooliganism, a terrible reputation for its fans and a dour outlook. In 1985 and 1989, English football suffered two of its saddest moments - 39 fans dying at Heysel and 96 fans dying in the Hillsborough disaster.

Something had to change.

The beginning of that change was the Taylor report. Amongst its recommendations was a quiet revolution that would unlock the potential of the sport and change it forever.

Pre-Taylor report, football fans were the main problem. The game itself was a bit messy, and of course the facilities were dire, but what kept coming up in the news was the behaviour of football fans. In most instances, large groups of football fans were reported as causing violent incidents in English towns, and (even more embarrassingly) were doing the same abroad.

As the reputation of the fans became worse, the police response became harder, treating fans more and more like criminals, and managing them as though they were an issue to be contained.

The Taylor Report accurately identified that it is England’s passion for football, indeed its fanaticism, that is one of its major strengths. And that, just because 50 people wanted to cause trouble at a football match doesn’t mean that the other 50,000 need to be handled with batons, horses and crowd control. That insight changed the game. Taylor’s report helped turn England into one of the most respected footballing nations, and unlocked the value in the 99.9% of respectful, passionate fans. It also allowed access to all of the other fans that had wanted to join in, but were scared off by the violence or the poor facilities. This in turn encouraged the teams to be more entertaining in their play to attract more and more mainstream fans.

Why do I mention this now? Because unlocking value is the very challenge faced by NHS organisations. The best NHS organisations see the potential in their patients - not just as metrics driving funding, but as a source of feedback and information. Conversely, when a patient is seen as a number, not a person, then trouble starts. When patients are generally viewed as problems to be overcome, obstacles to move through an organisation and out as quickly as possible (as football fans were once) then the real value – the sense of community, shared experience and knowledge is lost.

Fortunately for NHS organisations, patients are not hooligans (late night drunks in A&E notwithstanding). But I do believe that the approach taken by the Taylor report, of unlocking the power of the user of the service, is a revolution waiting to happen in UK healthcare. For far too long the message has been that the system will solve the problem, and excellent patient care will follow.

Today Andrew Lansley announced a radical shift in NHS thinking, allocating £80bn of NHS funds to GPs to buy services for their patients. From my experience at the NHS Confederation conference in June, this is seen by managers as a systematic re-organisation and will carry with it significant focus on process. My worry is that as the whole service attempts to move to re-organise, it forgets that creating value for its patients (and getting value back from them) is as important as who holds the funding.

It’s hard to deny the value that football has realised from embracing its fans: nearly half of the people on planet earth watched Sunday’s final. FIFA will make £3bn from a month-long event. In the long-term, unlocking the value of patients, as football has done with its fans, is where the efficiencies lie, not in cuts, re-organisation or processes.