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2016? So, how was it?

Communities both virtual and otherwise provide new opportunities and connections for people, and they are on the up! At least that’s what it feels like. Whether it’s sharing holiday homes or baby clothes, sharing something even small and tangible can become a gateway to deeper learning.

Q as many of us know is about connecting people skilled in improvement. It’s UK based and we are delighted to have secured commitment from colleagues in Scotland, Northern Ireland, and Wales to become system level partners for Q, alongside NHS Improvement.

In 2016 we continued to develop the design and test activities and offers with the Q community.  This included our first site visit in East London with a small group of members, design work for our Lab and three community events to enable members to share, connect and learn from one another.

Our events in Leeds and London in the Spring included those who were interested in joining Q. Our methods cards continued to be popular takeaways, and in October our organisational learning masterclass helped with my own learning beyond our own internal ‘post mortem’ of the event. Creating the right open environment here and asking the right questions when learning after doing is vital.

Looking forward, we have scoped and begun to commission a wider programme of face to face and online events, supported by an innovative approach to pooling what we learn as we go. More on that next year.

There is energy building in our self-organised specialist interest groups (SIGS). Most are at an early stage. They are providing a fertile ground for a growing amount of learning and collaborating which is great to see.

We piloted recruitment during the summer, with membership now approaching 500 we expect to be reaching up to 2,000 towards the end of 2017.

We will continue to roll out the opportunity to apply across the UK. Working together with our partners has been a learning process for us all and we’ll be sharing this with the next five organisations leading recruitment in early 2017. Understanding our hopes and fears and paying real attention to how we work together has been beneficial. We are currently assessing applications and will be welcoming new members in February 2017 from the current recruitment round.

Social media is dramatically changing the learning landscape. It’s not just about profile raising but enabling sharing. This new website and Twitter account have been doing just that and we are pleased with the impact this has had over a short period of time. We have over 1,300 followers on Twitter since launch in the autumn, almost 9,000 page views and 2,000 visits to the website.

2016 has been such a great year for us, we are looking forward to 2017 and hope that you are too.

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