Wild Card - Whose Shoes?

47. The power of storytelling - it's liberating!

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People ask me about the Whose Shoes story?

🍋 How did I come to produce a board game?

 🍋 What inspired it?

🍋 Has it changed much over the years?

Well, on 2 Feb,  Kristin Johnstad from Minneapolis, invited me to tell my story at a Liberating Structures Q Community group, using 'Shift and Share' - hopping between breakout rooms, telling the same story to different groups.
It was fun getting the reaction and questions from an international audience.

It led to a whole month of storytelling adventures.
I thought I'd share the highlights and key learning here on the podcast.

Lemon lightbulbs 🍋💡🍋

  •  Adapt your story to your audience - what will THEY will take from it?
  •  It is a privilege to share your story. Be curious about others too
  •  Liberating Structures bring out creativity!
  •  The Whose Shoes story ... What inspired me? What does it achieve?
  •  Beyond the buzzwords – let’s get real
  •  Are you ready to LISTEN to people? As equals. #NoHierarchyJustPeople
  •  Value people - every step of the way. No tick boxes
  •  Integrated care … the holy grail
  • Trust takes a LONG time to build - and an instant to destroy
  •  Whose Shoes does not paper over the cracks – be authentic
  •  Engage hearts and minds!
  •  Have fun. Be human
  •  You can't control the oucomes; you shouldn't control the outcomes
  •  Connect and share stories. Use networks, Fab NHS Stuff
  •  Find the magic people, not the 'meetings people'!
  •  Use storytelling tools like SWAY
  •  If you want to engage people, don’t just tell them a story; show them!
  • SHOW and TELL!

Most relevant previous episodes
All of them - my podcast is all about sharing stories! 
But specifically:
22.  'Symphony of Us' - please disturb
24. Tribute to Mum, @Gills_Mum - 100th birthday!
26. My acceptance speech for CBE, Lemon Class 2020, award
28. Janina Vigurs - Storyteller - *Embrace the Ridiculous*
 36. Keep calm and carry on (personal reflections on the death of the Queen)

Other links and resources:
The Obs Pod - Magic Mates
How to meet your child's difficult behavior with compassion - Yvonne Newbold's TEDxNHS talk
Birth should be special - Florence Wilcock's TEDxNHS talk

 My top tips and lemon lightbulbs, with help from Miles Sibley, Patient Experience Library!

We LOVE it when you leave a review!
If you enjoy my podcast and find these conversations useful
please share your thoughts by leaving a review (Spotify or Apple are easiest to leave a review - navigate via 3 dots) and comment on your favourite episodes.

I tweet as @WhoseShoes and @WildCardWS and am on Instagram as @WildCardWS.

Please recommend 'Wild Card - Whose Shoes' to others who enjoy hearing passionate people talk about their experiences of improving health care.

I’ve been thinking over the past few weeks about storytelling. 
How exciting, and what a privilege it is, to get the chance to tell your story. 

How you have to adapt a story for different audiences.

What will inspire this group of people? What will they take away? 

And how to structure the story accordingly.

And definitely we need to adapt the story for the amount of time available. Sometimes longer sessions are much easier.

One of my favourite quotes is from Mark Twain: 

“I didn't have time to write a short letter, so I wrote a long one instead.”

It reminds me of when I first set up Whose Shoes and a group of us were introduced to the concept of an elevator pitch … we all had to get our stories down to about 45 seconds. 

And honestly, I think some of us would have needed a breakdown in the lift in the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, to get our stories told in time. 

I think it’s vital to be interested in other people’s stories too, be curious – and of course, then you start to create stories together, which is where  the real fun starts. You might like to listen to the ‘Magic Mates’ episode I recorded with my pal #FabObs Flo, Florence Wilcock on the Obs Pod. I expect I’ll share it here too one day.

Anyway, I’ve had a couple of storytelling opportunities recently. 

I really enjoy the Q community, Liberating Structures sessions. They are very informal. 

So what are Liberating Structures?

Liberating Structures are creative ways of bringing events and meetings alive and helping get the best out of everyone; everyone contributing … rather than a few dominant voices and everyone else feeling frustrated or falling asleep ... 

So Liberating Structures are very much in the spirit of Whose Shoes and pretty much a perfect partner for my work.

The Liberating Structures group meets once a month and each session is run by different people who have got no more clue really than anybody else, but who are happy to step outside their comfort zone and explore a new liberating structure - I think there are about 34 in total - so that we can all experiment and learn together. And some of them are really simple.

So I was delighted when Kristin Johnstad from Minneapolis - yes, it is a very international group! -  asked me if I would like to be part of a session where I would tell my story … not once, but four times! 

It is a liberating structure called Shift and Share.

I’d never heard of this before, I don’t know if you have?

They are a great group – really friendly and encouraging. I’ve taken part in quite a few sessions but never previously been one of the presenters. I was keen to get more involved, as that is the only way that any of these things work– if people step up now and then! 

I’m learning a lot about Liberating Structures from Lyse Edwards – Lyse is my partner in crime in our current project with Midlands Partnership Foundation Trust around integrated care for children and families, and is coming soon as a guest on the podcast series.  

Lyse tweeted that storytelling is central to lots of Liberating Structures. She tells me good stuff like apparently ‘Heard, Seen and Respected’ and also ‘Appreciative Interviews’ are two top examples, so I’ll check these out - stories are just so powerful as vehicles for change.

Anyway, Shift and Share is described as “a way to spread good ideas and make informal connections with innovators”. So I would be billed as the innovator, and four different groups would come and hear my story and ask questions.

So, FOUR chances to tell the #WhoseShoes story, chatting and sharing with lovely engaged people from many countries!💜 What’s not to like?

It was an online session and for me as a presenter, ‘Shift and Share’ was a bit of a whirlwind, hopping about between breakout rooms and after each 10 minutes, being teleported to a brand new group … with everyone else staying put and still discussing the previous presentation – it felt a bit like the Two Ronnies … ‘answer the question before last’ … if any of you are old enough to remember that! 

So, picture the scene. You are in a little breakout room and have just been listening to someone talking about a completely different topic … and you suddenly notice that their little Zoom thumbnail has disappeared … and I am there instead!

 Hello, my name is Gill Phillips, I'm the creator of Whose Shoes. 

So I'm delighted to be invited tell you a bit about it today.

 Whose Shoes, as you may imagine, is about looking at things from different perspectives. So, listening to people and coming up with solutions together.

And basically the idea is that the answers are in the room; no hierarchy, just people.

So what was the original idea? And why did I set it up? And why specifically did I jump ship from my day job, back in 2008? 15 years ago now.

So I was working in social care. And I became really passionate about personalisation, personalised care. Having the person in the centre and getting services to fit around them seemed a really good idea, rather than traditional models.

 But the more I became interested, and the more I researched, the more I got the idea that nobody really had a clue what personalisation was, although they might pretend to know, or even think that they did. 

 So it became a buzzword … and I don't like buzz words.

 “We must have personalisation!”

So I started to explore … well, what does that mean? 

 For example. If you're working in a care home, you'd have lots of different people (stakeholders is another buzzword)

… you'd have residents, you'd have their families, you'd have the care home manager, you'd have the catering staff, you'd have the care staff, you'd have the people who design the building in the first place; the people or company that own the premises …  it just goes on and on.

What have they all got to bring to the party? What are their needs?

I could see tensions with this ‘personalisation’ buzzword. Deep, unreconciled tensions that no one was talking about.

It’s great for people to have choice. But how does that work in a totally risk-averse society? What does ‘choice’ actually mean?

Or, we talked a lot about prevention. Fantastic! But I could see that the eligibility criteria for social care, to get any help at all, were just going through the roof.

So I started to see a bit of hypocrisy, lip service. Or at the very least glossing over some really tricky issues. So I wanted to explore what it all meant from these different perspectives. I wanted to explore this new emerging agenda and see how much ‘personalisation’ was really possible.

How does it work in practice?

So for example, in the care home, if you want to give people choice … how good is that! Surely, we all agree with that. 

But the guy who's been a farmer all his life, does that mean he can get up and have his breakfast at 5 in the morning? That’s his choice.

And perhaps the person with dementia, if they'd like to stroll into the kitchen and peel carrots … shock, horror probe, what about health and safety??

What about choosing your meals?

 I mean, at home, and this is these people’s home, I can decide I don't want anything …  and then get something an hour later or change my mind at the last minute. 

 But someone's got to order the food in advance, someone's got to keep within the budget. 

 What is realistic?

So many different tensions. And the deeper I delved, the more challenges I found.

I wanted to find a solution.

So this in a nutshell IS Whose Shoes … and the Whose Shoes concept was born. 

The central idea is simple, and it works for any service. 

So basically, the more different people are involved, the bigger the tensions or difference in viewpoints, the closer it comes to really ‘wicked’ problems where everything needs to fit together and work in a holistic way, with people working together to find solutions, then the more vibrant a Whose Shoes event will be. 

So the key idea is you get the real people in the room as equals, and you sit round and you listen to each other, like really listen.

And, obviously over the years, the formula has grown a bit, it's got a bit bolder, especially through a noisy use of social media, connecting people with shared passions. 

And I've come to realise that, particularly in an organisation like the NHS, our strapline #NoHierarchyJustPeople is really radical.

Everybody together in the room.  Listening to everybody. As equals. Really?? 

And you have to value people … and people can tell whether that is authentic, rather than feeling that you are just trying to tick your own  ‘engagement’ boxes.

So valuing people starts long before they come into the room - how did you invite them, help them overcome any practical problems to get there, greet them as they arrived … to make everything about the experience human, welcoming and fun?

People need to feel that what they say is going to be listened to and they are part of finding solutions that work.

So you get the real people in the room, sitting around the table together, talking to each other as equals and listening. People with lived experience, healthcare professionals, community groups, partner organisations - anyone who is interested – or should be interested - in the particular topic. 

It doesn't all have to be solved by the NHS or any other single organisation - wicked problems never will be.

And you can see that with the new integrated care models, this is the holy grail that everybody is seeking, but it needs a bit of creativity and shared humanity to get people to come out of their silos, and talk to each other!

And yes. Everybody's equal, including, oh my god, the patients and the families … listening to staff, regardless of the level they're employed at, because very often it's the porters and the cleaners and perhaps the volunteers, the people who might not be included in the traditional ‘team’,  who actually see the the real things going on, and we need to create an environment where they feel able to contribute and speak out. 

We need to recognise that some individuals and minority groups might have deep distrust of the NHS, or other organisations that represent authority, and we need to reach out to people and seek to understand. Trust and relationships take years to build and can be destroyed in an instant.

And when we have workshops, we have a visual artist recording the conversations, and those visual records can become an action plan. 

And it's fun. And we add love and lemons and cake and human factors. You know, just things that make people feel comfortable. And then they have the open and honest conversations rather than being told, “you must come along to OUR event and tell us what you think  which quite honestly can make them run a mile!!

So, as it's evolved over the years, there are different sort of iterations if you like, and across many different topics. 

As well as the original board game which we use for lively face-to face workshops, there are virtual workshops. These started during the pandemic but are still sometimes also used for big events where it’s just easier to bring everyone together quickly across a large area, such as a recent virtual event we held looking at triage services in maternity, across London.

And now I've got a podcast – this podcast! - where I'm inviting all sorts of guests who are courageous and generous enough to talk about their experiences -  and typically, people who haven't got positional power or formal power, often people with ‘lived experience’ of health conditions, or of being a family carer. They're just doing amazing work and sharing insights that others can learn from. I am delighted to be able to give them a platform to tell their stories and to be heard.

And then the challenge is to get people like NHS England listening to the podcasts and sharing them, - which is ironic, when they always say, they want to listen to lived experience stories!! 

Alongside this, we're just beginning a ‘digital mini experiences’ version of Whose Shoes, through our Family Integrated Care project, with the Q Community and the Health Foundation. using audios and all sorts, building on the work we did during the pandemic.

But that’s another big story really!

But through all these different media, it is always the same aim, the same concept.

To amplify people’s voices, help us all see things from different perspectives and bring about positive change.

It’s been a fascinating journey. I think Whose Shoes is seen as… it's a bit risky.

It's so simple, it’s a  fun board game, full of real scenarios and poems, crowdsourced by real people. They get people sitting around and talking to each other and coming up with solutions together.

But the risk averse organisations might see it as opening a can of worms…

We all know how organisations can sometimes try to paper over the cracks when the formal inspectors are coming in.

Well, they can’t do that here – and the organisations that invite us to work with them, don’t want to. They want to hear what people using their services are saying, good and bad.

And in my experience, people find that refreshing. They just want to be heard. And they want to help improve things. So we have a lot of fun, it's very engaging. It can unlock all sorts of things. And it can really lead to some big outcomes. 

So the one that I'm particularly proud of, is … there's a new neonatal surgical unit being built in Liverpool at Alder Hey Children’s Hospital that came from true coproduction , through a series of Whose Shoes events, working also with Liverpool Women’s Hospital, masterminded bye, a wonderful consultant paediatrician called Joanne Minford.

And Jo and the team were able to make a business case saying, well, actually, the physical location of the two hospitals, and having to transport vulnerable babies between them, just doesn't work without this new unit … and they got it approved, because they were able to say … “this is what our people said”. 

But they didn't set out to do that at the beginning, I think it's having the confidence to know that you don't know what the answers are. But you'll find them by listening to people. 

You can’t control the outcomes. You shouldn’t control the outcomes. Because the nature of coproduction is that you don’t know what people are going to say until you give them a chance to say it!

People sometimes can’t cope, I think,  with the simplicity, so want to overcomplicate it. I spent years being told, “You can't call this a board game, it has to be a management facilitation, learning and development tool, or whatever”

But it is a board game and people like that. It’s fun watching really senior managers start to relax and argue that they should get an extra turn if they throw a six!

And it's very action focused. 

We encourage people to think about what they are personally passionate about.

And if they can think of something, from the heart that they want to do, they make a pledge. Whether it is something small or something big.

And they don't need to ask for permission. #JFDI. Just Do It.

And instead of us wanting to record the pledges on a spreadsheet and tick them off, we nurture people … how are you getting on … what can people do to help? Who can we connect you with?

We have an incredible network of contacts and through social media we can normally link them with someone who is available to help, perhaps who has already done this particular thing in another area and can share the learning. And then it all becomes a bit more doable, and a bit less lonely.

And that’s where our connections with people like Fab NHS stuff, who have created their own Whose Shoes collection page, are brilliantly helpful in sharing the best stuff. Typically, the easily transferable outcomes that another team can just pick up and use or adapt as they want to.

 And it might take months or even years. But it's empowering people to think, “yeah, I can make a difference”. 

So, in a nutshell, that is the Whose Shoes story.  It has all evolved very organically. For me, it's about finding the magic people that I want to work with. And that nearly always comes from doing slightly wacky things like joining the liberating structures group rather than relying on formal channels. Because that’s where I meet creative people who think a bit differently and are prepared to try something new.

And with Lyse Edwards we have used two more liberating structures as part of the Whose Shoes workshops: ‘impromptu networking’ to get some energy in the room and mix things up a bit at the beginning of a workshop and another one called ‘15% solutions’ to support our pledges at the end. Some of these tools just bring it all alive a bit more and help people along with it. 

I found it interesting – telling the #WhoseShoes story in 7 or 8minutes (it focused the mind!) and then a brief Q &A.

And, across the four different breakout room sessions, some great questions were asked and as you can imagine were different in each group!

 So, here are a couple that I remember:

Someone said that she had attended a Whose Shoes event and could testify as to just how lively those events can be and how you really have no hierarchies in the room. 

So what she asked me was:

“Just how much of this is tied to the fact that you're such a warm and fabulous person?” 

Well, what a lovely question! But people are right to ask how much something like Whose Shoes, which is built around passion and energy,  is tied up with the founder.

Paraphrasing the question: Whose Shoes has a spark - if I snuff it, will Whose Shoes snuff it too?

Well, I was able to tell them … the previous week, I had been unwell and there had been a BIG Whose Shoes event in Nottingham, using the Whose Shoes board game to explore home birth. As I lay on my sick bed, it was wonderful to watch the tweets and see about 70 people in a room, working across Nottingham and Nottinghamshire, exploring this fascinating topic, bringing in some performative arts too. I’m so sorry I missed this, it sounds brilliant. Little cameos of people from different perspectives popping up with placards – the midwife, the obstetrician, the dad, the grandma and more – talking to the woman who was trying to make an informed decision about home birth and getting into her head with positive and negative messages. Showing us the story, rather than just telling us. I’ll come back to that later!

I love it when other people bring their own creative ideas, as happened here in Nottingham, and think this is something we can use elsewhere.. Indeed this is very similar to an approach that the maternity team in Limerick in Ireland used at a Whose Shoes perinatal mental health event, so someof these ideas move round and get picked up and get changed a bit between the various workshops – and it’s exciting.event

And now this workshop has been written up in detail by Dr Lisa Common, from Nottingham University, with lots of exciting action points to improve care. 

So, no. It is not all about me. 

It always feels good to give a topical answer to a question, if possible. I think it adds credibility and is more fun than just having a set collection of stories to draw on. New stories are happening all the time. Let’s use them.

In another breakout room, the standout observation for me was someone saying how some senior NHS England people really WANT to do exciting, non-hierarchical, coproduction things but quickly find it daunting … and then freeze! 

Now obviously this isn’t true of everyone, but this is what this person said.

It is easier to read all the books about coproduction and quote research and engagement ladders … than actually do it.

And it made me think about how different it is being at the centre of NHS England and thinking, “how can I make a big transformation?” … and being me and my gang just chip-chip-chipping away, waiting to see what emerges from the conversations and inspiring people to make small changes – that, as we have seen,  can add up to big changes.

So yeah, an interesting relationship with formal power. I think sometimes they love Whose Shoes … until they don’t like it so much. Because you can't control the outcomes and it takes courage to embrace true coproduction and LISTEN to what people have to say – warts and all.

Someone commented that their trust needed more listening exercises, more face to face events. And to find imaginative ways to ensure all voices are represented.

So I could feel that just telling my story, rather than actually playing the Whose Shoes board game in a workshop, was itself sparking some lemon lightbulbs.

So I enjoyed ‘Shift and Share’, which was on the 2nd February.

You know how things happen and serendipity, and all the rest of it -  the whole of February seemed to be all about stories.

We used storytelling in our virtual report to the Q Community and the Health Foundation about progress with our ‘Family Integrated Care project. Instead of a formal report, we just showed a poem that they had to click on to see the SWAY story sitting behind the poem.

So, what’s SWAY?

It’s a storytelling product. I love it.

It’s my latest toy.

 Now, sadly you can’t see the lemon emojis – but you can imagine them.

I’ll put a link in the show notes!

And  then – finally!

Now, you may remember me saying that I had the wonderful opportunity last summer to go and see two great friends of mine delivering their TedxNHS talks in London.: Yvonne Newbold and Florence Wilcock - #FabObs Flo, as I call her.

Well they have BOTH had their talks selected and published on the MAIN Tedx channel and BOTH have taken off and been included in the top 10 Ted talks for February!

They are both previous guests in this podcast series, if you want to hear a longer version, or perhaps a different version, of their amazing stories!

And also I took a bit of time out to get involved in Richard McCann’s 5-day storytelling challenge. 

Richard is the son of Wilma McCann – Wilma was sadly the first victim of a monster who went on to become the infamous serial killer in Yorkshire. I won’t do him the honour of mentioning his name here.

It was amazing to hear some of Richard’s story – moving on from such unthinkable tragedy in his childhood to become a much-in-demand motivational speaker. Awesome.

Richard shared storytelling tips such as ‘Show and Tell’ – sadly much harder on a podcast where people can’t even see your facial expression, far less body language and gestures.

But it struck me   …

What was it that made Yvonne and Flo’s Ted talk stories stand out so much?

Show and tell

Yvonne was talking about trying to encourage her son, who has profound learning disabilities, through singing little songs to him – and she started singing - provoking spontaneous applause from  the audience, which is the ultimate Ted talk accolade.

Florence started her talk about the use of lithotomy position in maternity care … in lithotomy position! The audience laughed – once again, instantly engaged!

Perfect examples of ‘Show and Tell’.

You can watch all the TedxNHS talks on Youtube … and add to the packed Wembley Stadium-style 100,000 views that Flo and Yvonne have amassed between them since their talks were released. Spreading their important messages across the world.

The power of storytelling!