Five Minutes With.. Simon Bricknell

Could you tell us a little bit about yourself?
I’ve been working with Develop Consulting since it launched, and have been a consultant for almost 16 years. Prior to that, I worked at Toyota for 13 years both in the UK and Japan.

All my time in management consultancy has been supporting the healthcare sector. I started working in Primary Care in 2013 where I developed national improvement programmes with NHS England and its predecessors.

What is your speciality in consulting?
I specialise in healthcare improvement, with my USP being focused on a cultural and people aspect, mostly as a result of working for Toyota.

There was a continuous improvement culture working for them which is a unique system both in the UK and Japan, and I’ve been able to harness these skills into supporting healthcare.

How has your work and advice to clients changed since the start of the Covid-19 pandemic?
Obviously, we are now having to work remotely, which has had some positives. There is now the ability to have a multi-organisational meeting which we wouldn’t previously have had face-to-face. It’s been good for us to be able to improve the way we, and clients, use technology and reduce the amount of travel we do.

However there is a downside that when you have a face to face meeting you get more of a personal feel, and you can read body language and assess situations. Despite this, we have been able to develop close working relationships with clients since the pandemic as we have all been pushing in the same direction for change.

How do you see your sector changing over the next few months as we emerge from this?
For the healthcare sector, I think our focus is going to be pushed more towards helping and supporting the backlog of patients that need to be seen as a result of their appointments being cancelled because of Covid. It’s going to be assisting the NHS on working with the vaccine and getting back to ‘business as usual’ as much as we can.

Lots of changes have been made very quickly and practices, along with all healthcare organisations, need to make sure the change is right for their practice and their patients.

And finally, what do you find the most satisfying part of your role?
Undoubtedly, the most important part of my role is seeing the positive impact that our work has. We can see the improved quality with the changes we have put forward towards the healthcare sector and will be continuing to do over the next few years as we come out of the pandemic.

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