A survey has indicated that NHS spend very little time on succession planning - because they have too much paperwork to do.

The Health Service Journal article indicates:

'Of those spending less than a fifth of their time on leadership, 40 per cent said this was due to conflicting priorities, 38 per cent cited lack of time, 14 per cent delegated it to others, 11 per cent said they lacked the money and 3 per cent needed more guidance on how to do it.'

...this suggests to me that many of them perhaps need further guidance on prioritising and time management (although I know it is more complicated than that - many are probably over-burdened with priorities imposed from on high...)

However I noted that one of the suggestions for improving things was to record podcasts and write blogs for staff - I suspect most of them have even less time to do that than to actually speak to people - and I would also argue that these things cannot replace speaking to people!

Read more about it on:

http://www.hsj.co.uk/news/2009/01/survey_reveals_senior_execs_neglect_of_future_nhs_ leaders.html;jsessionid=542AB70CE32EEDA1260B38D15F 4EC459?tmcsTrackingInfo=$nE6YtSDl6xCvkp3VGfmqKE8ML t9MUQl6yObI_dtvnJwvU-Gn3X_F_xGyMDw51Ejr-V6DErC5Vl4$