At Q’s October 2022 community events in Bristol and Leeds, we focused on Open Space. We did this to allow members to make the best use of coming together in-person to hold ‘the most important conversations about collaborative improvement that will help you to progress your work’. You can read more about why we chose Open Space in Jen Morgan’s blog post.

In your feedback you told us that you were motivated to come to the event because you wanted to learn from other members and that you got a lot out of the exchanges you had in Open Space.

But what happened after the event and what does this mean for our future events? We wanted participants to have the kind of collaborative discussions that would stimulate deeper thinking and further action around the topics discussed. And, at Q, we have looked at how we can support the community on the subjects you raised.

In this blog post, I have identified two key and interconnected themes discussed in Open Space where I know related work is going on – whether Open Space triggered this work or simply furthered people’s thinking.

We’d love to hear how you have taken any of the Open Space ideas back into your work place.

Inclusion

Many of the Open Space conversations explored improving inclusion. From a conversation hosted by Richard Wylde about ‘How we relate across difference, both within QI and those we support’ and Liz Glidewell’s ‘Effective collaboration with people with different accessibility needs’, to Jacqui Lingard’s ‘How can different organisations work together to effect improvement?’.

Since the Open Space conversation about ‘Making collaboration fully inclusive’, member, Pete Donnelly has continued to build connections within the Q community. Introducing a Third Sector Special Interest Group (SIG), publishing an improvement journey blog post, and hosting a great welcome event.

Within Q, our Visits programme focuses on learning from and building links with other organisations and communities. The online Visit in March to Act Build Change was about harnessing the power of community organising. The next visit to Huddlecraft on 26 April is about building peer groups to help galvanize and sustain change. And we’re planning a Visit to one or more of the Health Foundation funded Common Ambition projects to explore how we can better involve patients and the wider public in improvement.

Improving quality improvement

The other common theme across Open Spaces often linked to inclusion, was about enhancing collaboration and buy in, and making sure that improved ways of working ‘stick’.

Sid Beech, who hosted an Open Space discussion on ‘How to meaningfully involve patients and populations in the “wider patch”?’, has successfully bid for Supporting Q Connections funding. This funding is for a convener role for the Coaching SIG that Sid established. The role will optimise the group’s support for members and organisations adopting and developing their quality improvement coaching skills.

The theme of our response to failure came through during the Bristol Open Space. I was part of important conversations about how we can support a response to failure that is honest, open and fundamentally safe. And, how can we intentionally learn where things go wrong, and improve future delivery and ways of working. We hope to explore this theme with the Q community in the year to come.

Q’s existing learning and development programmes are all designed to enhance collaboration and other improvement skills. For instance, you can join a workshop in May introducing Liberating Structures, an inclusive problem-solving approach. There’s a Liberating Structures in Healthcare SIG who are interested in this approach and are currently using it. We are also planning a series on building resilience in the workforce. Look out for more details in the Q-municate newsletter and on the events webpage.

Based on your feedback, we’ll be opening up your access and options, by running a mix of online and in-person events.

The Q team are planning our wider programme of events for the coming year and we will be sharing more details soon.

These are a handful of examples of developments since the community events and we know that you have made many other fruitful connections. Hesham Abdullah hosted an Open Space on ‘Cultivating kindness: a Hexithon’. The value of the collaboration fostered in Open Space is perfectly summed up by this post-event exchange on Twitter between Hesham and Gill Phillips. In response to Gill’s brilliant cross-fertilisation of contacts and ideas after the Q community event, Hesham declares ‘What a wonderful chain of improvement people!’

It’s good to see how ideas and collaboration have spun out from last year’s community events. If you were there, do let us know what you took away from Open Space and look out for updates about our plans for events in the coming year.