Doctor, Innovator, Strategist, Leader
James Mountford is Health Strategy Officer for Galileo Global Education and Editor-in-Chief of BMJLeader.
James’s career has spanned medicine, healthcare management, policy and education. After an early stint as an NHS doctor, James turned to management consulting – sparking an ongoing fascination with how to organise for learning across large systems, and best motivate people. As a Commonwealth Fund/Health Foundation Harkness Fellow, James studied the operations and organisation of American group practices, which provided excellent experience for subsequent Quality Director roles at UCLPartners and the Royal Free London, and as Director of National Improvement Strategy at NHS England.
James is now Health Strategy Officer for Galileo Global Education and Editor-in-Chief of BMJLeader.
BMJ Leader: I often say that each letter is wrong. ‘B’, we don’t want just to be British and ‘M’, we don’t just want to be medical and ‘J’, we are more than a journal. We have lots of blogs and events and things.
Watch the video, listen to the podcast, or link to the transcript in BMJ Leader
Read the full conversation on BMJLeader. Here are some key quotations from the interview:
“That led me into consulting with a very simple logic which was, that being a doctor is about helping and fixing issues with patients and their families, and being a consultant is doing that with organizations”.
“….it was really only on leaving the UK, and seeing a system that thinks about health and organizes around health very differently, that I truly appreciated some of the things that we might take for granted about the NHS. Obviously, there are lots of different options in how to organize a health system beyond the UK and the US model, but no one here worries about losing their coverage, for example, or paying their medical bills. You take that for granted because it’s so deeply embedded in our system”.
“What IHI does and believes are that the principles of management, of variation and process in a way that understands reliability, can be applied to the delivery of health care, and lead to better results just as they do in the production of cars or in the industrial base where these theories were born”.
“The first thing to say is that I couldn’t have predicted it (my career). And I don’t offer this as advice, I offer it as a reflection on what I’ve done. But, I would say that being really clear about some things and sticking to them and being very flexible about others has led to the path that I’ve followed. The things that I’ve been clear about are that I’ve wanted to work with people who inspire me, who I find to be extraordinary human beings for their values and their energy. ”
“Your career seems really long when you’re starting on it. As you get through life, it starts to be shorter and you start to think: “let’s not waste time in places that I’m not adding as much as I can, and I’m not working with people who inspire me on things that I find inspiring. And new challenges represent important steep learning curves”.
“ … think about the causes that really matter to you, find great people to work with and then, be flexible about the sort of organization that you’re working in, or even the specific work that you’re doing. Keep your head down doing a good job at what you’re doing but also looking to the horizon and where it might take you. Looking back, that’s something that I’ve followed and it has been it is endlessly fascinating”.
“I would like BMJ Leader to be a place not just where academic experts or senior leaders go, but anyone who is curious about how they could play a bigger part in turning lots of resource into good results for patients, which is what managing and leading is about.”
