Steve Churton appears to be a people person. His immediate priority,
he says, is “to understand the people issues”.
With fewer
than 400 working days until the doors of the new professional body are
due to open, this will be no mean feat for the newly elected President
of the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, who states his top three targets
as strong leadership, inclusiveness and efficiency.
Mr Churton has a background in change management, and he believes that
recognition of this by Council members contributed to his election. “The
skills I learnt in a large corporate environment are needed to get the
best out of people,” he says.
“I won’t shy away from decisions that need to be made, but
would prefer that they are done by consensus. That way you are more likely
to get buy-in and be valued and respected.”
Mr Churton says he also intends to get close to the membership. “Before
we start designing a new organisation it is really important for us to
understand, listen to and involve our members in defining what it is
they want from that organisation.” This will need to be done in
parallel with the work of the Transitional Committee, and he emphasises
the need to act quickly enough to keep things on track, but to make a
judgement of when to seek views from the members. “We need parallel
working, not sequential decisions,” he says.
And it is through feedback from members that Mr Churton intends to judge
the success of his presidency.
“We can make changes that are invisible to the members but we need
to make changes that members can see,” he explains. “The
best evidence I can provide of my ability to deliver will be tangible
outputs.”
Mr Churton said that his predecessor Hemant Patel made a great contribution,
and served at a time when tough decisions needed to be made, but says
that his own leadership style differs from Mr Patel’s. “My
style is more engaging. It is a style which hopefully brings out the
best in people’s willingness to contribute.”
Mr Churton adds that he likes to understand people and their motivation. “A
good leader is somebody who will inspire others to have confidence in
them,” he says. “A great leader will inspire others to have
confidence in themselves.” It is this confidence that he intends
to instil into the Council. He says that the Council has a wide range
of skills but he does not think the best use is made of them. “We
need to unify Council and make sound decisions with sound pace,” he
says.
A culture change is needed and the Society needs to get closer to its
membership to demonstrate its worth. “Nobody loves a regulator,” he
says, “And I’m not sure the membership sees the good work
the Society does.” He explains that this is not the fault of the
members, but that it is up to the Society to market itself to the profession.
It may be this outlook that leads Mr Churton to praise the work of Jeremy
Holmes, the Society’s Chief Executive and Registrar. He concedes
that part of the efficiency of the decision-making process depends on
the relationship between the President and the Chief Executive. “The
chemistry feels right and he is somebody I can and will work with,” Mr
Churton says.
He believes that the Society needs to focus on its intellectual assets
rather than its material assets. “We need to preserve the expertise
that we have to form the core of the organisation that we will need in
the new professional body,” he says. Staff members at Lambeth need
to be confident that their work is appreciated.
“My vision is for this organisation to [become] a new professional
leadership body which will truly serve the membership in a way the Society,
on occasions,
hasn’t,” he said.
Mr Churton is head of professional practice at Boots UK and, consequently,
some members may be suspicious of an underlying agenda from Boots The
Chemists. He describes this as “a short-term reaction” and
says that he intends to acknowledge it, manage it and move on. Indeed,
he points out that it is healthy for members to raise such concerns,
and demonstrates that they genuinely care about the future of the profession.
But he says they will soon see that these concerns are unfounded. “People
who don’t know me presume what my intentions are,” he reflects, “but
I stood for election because I am passionate about making a difference,
not because my employer told me to.”
He adds: “People should
measure me on output. I intend to lead impartially. I have an obligation
to listen to and respond to all pharmacists, irrespective of what sector
they are in and what career stage they are at.”
However, he believes that his background of 28 years working for Boots
will be invaluable. “What is needed right now is strong, strategic
leadership and change management skills. The best breeding ground for
these is a commercial organisation.”
Does Mr Churton’s appointment provide assurance that Boots will
be backing the new professional body? Of course, it is too early to say. “Boots
will always back something that is right for pharmacy,” says Mr
Churton. “If the new professional body is right then Boots will
support it.”
However, despite the pressure of the new professional body having to
be established in less than 18 months, Mr Churton has not forgotten that
there is a profession to support in the meantime.
“We need to deliver on the day job as well as the future,” he
says. |
The
Pharmaceutical Journal