Debbie Simpson is the founder and acting CEO of ICiPS, prior to which she worked as a senior civil servant at Defra. Debbie has worked in the public and private sectors, holding a number of senior positions including Head of Department at Harrogate College, Group Head of Transformation at Arvato Government Services and MD of her own businesses.

A Fellow of the Chartered Institute of Personnel Development, Debbie specialises in transformation, utilising her experience to build solid businesses and develop strategic relationships that deliver the highest standards of customer satisfaction.


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Lord Michael Bichard was the Founding Director of the Institute for Government in 2008, and held the post until 2010, when he became a Senior Fellow of the institute. He was previously Chief Executive of Brent and Gloucestershire Local Authorities and in 1990 became Chief Executive of the Benefits Agency. In 1995, he was appointed Permanent Secretary of the Employment Department and, subsequently, the Department for Education and Employment.

Michael received a Knighthood in the 1999 Queen's Birthday Honours. In May 2001, he left the civil service, and in September 2001 was appointed Rector of The London Institute, the largest art and design institute in Europe, which became the University of the Arts, London in May 2004. In January 2004, he was appointed by the Home Office to chair the Soham/Bichard Inquiry. From 2005 to 2008, Michael was Chair of the Legal Services Commission.

He is currently a board member of Shakespeare's Globe Trust, the River and Rowing Museum Foundation and Henley Business School Strategy Board. He is Chairman of Film Club Limited, Chairman of CreateKX, Chair and a Trustee of the CNAA Art Collection Trust. He has been a Chairman of the Design Council, Governor of Henley Management College, Chair of the Board of Companions of the Chartered Management Institute, a Member of the Guild of Educators, Chairman of Rathbone Training Limited and a Governor of Langley Academy.

Michael was elevated to the House of Lords in 2010. He has honorary degrees from Leeds Metropolitan, Birmingham, Middlesex, and Bradford universities and the Southampton Institute.

Presentation: Embedding the culture of continuous improvement as 'business as usual'

Why it is imperative that CI be established as a default in business management to ensure that best value outcomes are achieved and services are efficiently delivered.

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Greg has experience of change management in both the public and private sectors. Having spent time in large organisations such as RBS and the MoD during his career, Greg brings with him in-depth experience from a diverse background. More recently, Greg led on the continuous improvement policy for HMRC as part of their PaceSetter (continuous improvement) programme where he also redesigned and re-launched HMRC's ideas sharing platform as a complement to continuous improvement.

Presentation: Integration: the power of continuous improvement throughout government

The most effectual, sustainable, power of continuous improvement comes through the realisation of a joined up system. Integration provides the single greatest opportunity for a shift in culture towards 'better every day'.

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Rhian Hamer is a change management expert, specialising in complex initiatives in large organisations. She is a highly experienced Continuous Improvement expert, with a background in lean, six sigma and systems thinking.

Rhian joined the public sector six years ago, to follow an interest in tackling improvement challenges in high volume transactional environments like shared services. More recently she has been charged with embedding lean thinking and practice throughout the MoJ.

Rhian brings a wealth of private sector manufacturing experience to the role. Her varied background in operations, supply chain management and customer service has given her an all round understanding of the pressure and demands of leading in companies striving for world class.

Rhian holds a first class degree in engineering and an MBA specialising in change management, with particular emphasis on sustainable change within the public sector. Her main interest is taking a whole systems approach.

Presentation: Instigating, developing and supporting continuous improvement

The role and work of ICiPS and how it can support successful CI programmes across the public sector.

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Graham Hasting-Evans has many years of senior management experience in a number of economic sectors both in the UK and internationally. He has led several organisations through periods of major change and challenge.

He joined NOCN as MD at the beginning of 2011, having worked on employment and skills development in industry, government and also on the London Olympics. His work on developing the skills of adults and young people includes time in Southern Africa and Thailand as well as parts of northern Europe.


Presentation: Continuously improving skills

If public services are to continuously improve their delivery standards and efficiency then they can only achieve this by improving and developing the skills of the people that work in public services. The presentation will open up the discussion on how to do this.

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Elena P Antonacopoulou is Professor of Organisational Behavior at the University of Liverpool Management School where she leads GNOSIS - a research initiative advancing impactful collaborative research in management and organisation studies. Her principal research interests include change, learning and knowledge practices in organisations and the development of new methodologies for studying social complexity. She has successfully secured government and corporate funding that supported a series of international research projects on organisational learning, social practice and dynamic capabilities working collaboratively with leading researchers internationally and with practitioners and policymakers in co-creating knowledge for action. She writes on all the above areas and her work is published in related top international journals and books.

Elena's expertise has been put to good use in a range of leadership roles (at board, council and executive level leading special committees such as ethics, management practice) in her professional community internationally including: the Academy of Management (USA), the European Group for Organizational Studies, the British Academy of Management and the Society for the Advancement of Management Studies.

Presentation: The risks of not practising - rethinking 'leadership'

This presentation will engage the audience in an interactive conversation about the role of leaders and leadership in fostering continuous improvement. Examples will be presented from ongoing research that examines the personal and collective impact of leadership in fostering renewal, innovation and growth through practising. The analysis will place at the core of rethinking leadership (redefined as leadership - Antonacopoulou, 2012), the role of practising as a key capability. Failure to engage in a practising mode had been found to lead to major failures due to the risks of repeating mistakes. Examples of such failures are evident in the implementation of public policies that will be outlined as illustrative examples. Key lessons will be distilled about the ways in which leadership itself needs to be engaged within a practising mode.

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Joy Furnival is a Chartered Engineer, starting her career with ICI and later ABB, she worked with external clients throughout the chemicals and petrochemicals sector across the globe delivering operational excellence and improvement services.

Joy joined the NHS in 2006, moving to the Royal Bolton Hospital in September 2008 to lead the innovative Bolton Improving Care System (BICS) based on the creative application of lean thinking within in healthcare to deliver transformation. In April 2013, Joy joined NHS Blood and Transplant, a national organisation across England and North Wales as Head of Service Improvement to support their continuous improvement activity based on lean principles.

Joy is also a Health Foundation Fellow.

Presentation: Case studies of continuous quality improvement in the NHS

Joy will introduce two case studies of improvement work in the NHS including the stroke pathway redesign in Bolton that has significantly improved patient outcomes and productivity improvement activity in NHS Blood and Transplant that has transformed blood supply across England and North Wales. She will reflect on the similarities and learning from these two significant case studies both using lean principles to solve very different problems in different contexts.

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Derek Drysdale is a Chartered Civil Engineer, with a career that spans almost 35 years, a large portion of which has been at senior executive level within large client organisations that include highways, railways and nuclear.

Throughout his career, Derek has held a passion for continuous improvement, having implemented value management programmes in both nuclear and railway organisations and is a lean-sigma practitioner. In April 2009 he was appointed as Divisional Director of Lean Improvement, focusing on achieving lean benefits across the Highways Agency's £2.5bn supply chain.


Presentation: Introducing lean into the Highways Agency's supply chain

The Highways Agency's lean deployment strategy was introduced in 2009 with the establishment of an in-house lean division. This talk describes the way in which the Highways Agency has engaged with its supply chain, helping to build capability so that suppliers can undertake lean projects and champion them within their own organisations. This is followed by a discussion of the methods used to assess the supply chain's progress in lean, measure benefits and transfer knowledge gained from individual lean projects so that those benefits can be multiplied across the highways sector. Four projects are then discussed, both within the supply chain and within the agency, which show a range of lean methods being used to support delivery of major projects and maintenance works.

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After a rewarding 22 year career in the British Army, Richie Maddock joined Lincolnshire County Council where his role has been to deliver or support delivery of major improvement and transformational change initiatives. As Senior Organisational Development Officer, Richie's improvement 'antenna' is tuned into the whole organisation approach to change and the need for solutions-focused thinking – dealing with such things as leadership, change management, understanding customer experience, learning and development and, most importantly, the cultural development of an organisation required to bring about significant change.

Outside the council, Richie is a Director of Lynchpin and Associates – the only UK-based consultancy that is qualified and licensed to deliver the globally acclaimed 'Unwritten Ground Rules' (UGRs©) concept for cultural change. He works with a range of organisations across the country from all sectors to help them achieve the cultural aspirations they have to achieve business success.

Presentation: 'This is the way we do things around here' - it's the key determinant to your success yet rarely understood and managed

Lincolnshire County Council, like all public sector organisations, is having to change in order to function in the new world of public service. A key building block for its successful future is its culture. No amount of policy or process changes will achieve success on their own. It's the culture that will determine the outcome and ultimately its people will make it happen. Richie's presentation will describe how a fully integrated transformation initiative has been built around the councils core values and in understanding the key cultural attributes to make a large authority fit for the future.

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Ian Mills is a founding Director and Chief Executive of Transform
People International – a multimillion dollar global consultancy and training company. For the past decade Ian and his colleagues have established an award winning business that has delivered global solutions for a host of famous companies including HP, Lloyds TSB, Morgan Stanley, Maersk, Dow Chemical and American Express.

Transform People International is now a globally recognised leader
at delivering improved business performance through the
transformation of people's skills and attitudes, mindsets and behaviours.

Presentation: It's all in the mind-set: reframing identity and beliefs in a global bank

Before "the Crisis" they felt invincible. And then their world was turned upside down. How do you restore self-esteem and a culture of 'can-do' and continuous improvement? This presentation describes how establishing new belief systems enabled individuals to reassess their personal and collective contribution to the organisation and to make choices about new behaviours that delivered tangible business results.

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Claire Eldred is SCY's Innovation Project Manager and works as part of the SCY Innovation team to develop, deliver and grow SCY's 'Innovation Management' services, ensuring the maximum gains and full potential of opportunities are realised.

As an architect and Prince2 practitioner, Claire is an experienced project manager, and has expertise in partnership working, stakeholder management and service development, as well as a track record of successful project delivery. She has a career spanning the civil service, local authority and the private sector and is currently working in partnership with the City of York Council to deliver the Innovate York programme.


Presentation: Disruptive and sustained innovation

In today's ever changing marketplace, efficiency is constantly being sought within the public sector and innovation is often stated as the key to achieving it. But do you know what disruptive and sustained innovation are? This presentation looks at these two types of innovation, the pitfalls, the gains and how to embrace them for maximum benefit to you and your organisation.

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