ALUMNI SPOTLIGHT: IKRAMA HASSAN
I learnt about the IPPHL program through Abdulkarim, a Cohort 1 participant. I was one of his raters in the 360 By Design feedback tool. With encouragement from him, I read up on the program and became captivated.
At the time of my application I was the Director of Health Planning, Research and Statistics at the Nasarawa State Ministry of Health, North Central Nigeria. My department had just started some preliminary work on the conceptual framework for a social health insurance scheme for the state; but, no one was clear on how to go about it. I therefore decided to work on that for my Policy Paper.
I had never written a policy paper nor had any leadership training prior to IPPHL. The program therefore could not have come at a better time for me. I learnt the rudiments of policy paper drafting and already had a good draft before the Seattle Residency. By the end of the Residency, my mentor was happy with the work and declared it ready for implementation. I went through the processes back home, and two months later, the bill for setting up a social health insurance scheme for Nasarawa state, Nigeria, was passed by the State House of Assembly!
Midway through the IPPHL program, I was made the Chief Medical Director of the State Specialist Hospital. This is a 200 -bed tertiary hospital with a staff strength of 1400. It is the biggest state-owned hospital in Nasarawa. After the pre-residency lectures and engagements on Zoom and Canvas and Slack and passing through the furnace in Seattle, I felt ready for such a huge responsibility. IPPHL became my compass. I studied all the reading materials several times over. I contacted some of the faculty individually for clarification of some concepts. I was constantly looking forward to my executive coaching session as the coach was interested and following every single step I was taking.
So far there is hardly anything I learnt from IPPHL that I have not had a cause to practice in my current role. I will illustrate a few.
My first assignment on resumption of duty was a review of the hospital’s ‘strategic triangle framework’! The Mission, the Capacity and the Support. This really gave me nearly all I needed to begin the work with high degree of focus.
The next challenge was selecting the core team with which to work. My first choice as my deputy was a hot-headed gentlemen who like me, was an ‘originator’ in change style leadership. I would never have had a second thought in picking him if I had not gone to Seattle. The person I ended up choosing instead was a ‘conserver’ and, therefore, on the opposite end of the change style spectrum. I had to run most of my decisions by him, and it has saved me a lot of trouble!
However, IPPHL did not emphasize the importance of stakeholder analysis enough! The higher you climb on the leadership ladder, the more important this tool becomes. You will spend more time and energy planning and engaging with stakeholders of all hues and colors than on anything else if you are to succeed. At the initial stage, I could not understand why my coach as laying so much emphasis on it. Now I know better.
One of the most important reading materials we were given during the program was an article titled: A surviving Guide for Leaders. It is a must read for every leader! One of the many concepts discussed in the article is for a leader to ‘operate in and above the fray.’ The long trip to Cape Town for the Capstone seminar offered me an opportunity to get up to the balcony to take a look on the dance floor. I came back to Nigeria with 15 pages of handwritten ideas on how to improve what we had started! And now, I look forward to putting it all in practice.