When everyone is working towards the same goal, it’s easy to assume everyone can see the same picture.
Carla Smith, Innovation, Strategy and Planning Programme Manager at the Midlands Cancer Alliances Life Science Hub, reflects on what it took to bring more structure and visibility to a complex mix of stakeholders, priorities and communication styles across NHS and industry partners, and what she learned about data, ownership, and different ways of working along the way.
00:00 Introduction and the challenge of visibility across complex teams
02:01 Why shared goals don’t guarantee a shared view of progress
06:13 Bridging different ways of working across stakeholders
07:16 Building alignment at pace through sprints
09:20 The uncomfortable discovery: the solution already existed
11:31 Making work visible through data and challenging perception
13:53 When too much openness slows progress and the need for clear scope
20:11 Advice for first-time improvers: start with scope, then get the data
21:13 Outro
Carla Smith is an Innovation, Strategy and Planning Programme Manager with experience across the NHS, working to improve how teams collaborate, share information, and deliver change in complex environments. Her work focuses on bringing structure and visibility to programmes involving multiple stakeholders, often spanning NHS, industry, and academic partners.
She has been involved in improvement initiatives across cancer pathways and service delivery, where the challenge is not just designing solutions, but ensuring they are understood, adopted, and used consistently across different teams and ways of working.
With a background in PRINCE2, Lean Six Sigma, and coaching disciplines such as NLP, Carla takes a practical, people-focused approach to improvement. She is particularly interested in how data, communication, and behavioural change come together to support more effective decision-making, and how organisations can create environments where both people and performance can thrive.
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