A supplement in Guardian Public (July 2008) makes a distinction between service innovation (which is ‘sluggish’) and clinical and technical innovation which is not. It seems this is from a seminar of managers and people from business schools telling themselves that these professionals just don’t get what they’re trying to do.

In another article, the BMA is said to believe that the government’s central control is the problem: ‘Let the professions lead, hand in hand with the public, and you’ll see the progress our patients want.’ (Clarke-Jone, J. (2009) At the sharp end of change. Guardian Public July 2008: Supplement: How to embed innovation in healthcare. 6-7. Probably the BMA means the medical profession, possibly with a curtsey to nurses; I wonder how they’d feel about some social aims to remove health inequalities in there.

The problem is that good management is needed, but it needs to be done well, and what professionals fear is that constant change is destabilising and prevents them from getting on with the day to day job. Any organisation has this discontinuity between the managers who need to keep the show on the road and the managers who need to look to the long-term. Even doctors are managers, most of them are much more conscientious managers that people who are managers that only manage are, because they have to do a meticulous job and carry the can if they don’t. But doing a meticulous job for the people who are here now requires a different mind set than people who are pushing for the next concept. They ought to have a different mind set, we should accept it and build a management system that respects both.