Rebecca Graham, human resources and organizational-development director of UCLPartners, in London, writes about how UCL, one of the world’s largest academic health science partnerships, helps develop leaders.

Among her remarks, in a NEJM Catalyst essay:

“In a system that traditionally puts institutions in competition with one another, UCLPartners created a new model for cooperation. Established as a nonprofit social enterprise, UCLPartners’ vision was aligned with similar global initiatives to close the gaps in translational medicine and deliver evidence more rapidly into practice at a population level.

“Effective leaders for UCLPartners must have, in addition to the usual suite of leadership skills, an ability to foster cooperation among our member organizations. We must select clinicians to lead system-wide transformation and improvement, and to do so, we introduced a competency-based approach that evaluates candidates for a wide spectrum of personal characteristics and capabilities, rather than relying on the more traditional criteria of seniority, length of experience, and reputation.”

“At both the system level and the organization level, we need leaders who can make decisions based on what is best for the population, which is not always the same as what is best for their organization. ”

“(Our reconfiguration of stroke care in north central London is a good illustration of how the clinical evidence and patient benefit started to drive a new type of behavior in the system — looking at what can be achieved as a system rather than individual clinicians or organizations.)”

To read her entire essay, please hit this link.