theTeam.

One NHS brand. That’s the way it is today but in 1998 there were thousands of logos, identities and brands in the NHS which confused patients and led to a lack of trust in the service.

Our brief was to transform the NHS from many to one single, powerful identity across every touch point throughout the organisation. We had to put the brand at the centre of the patient experience and move it on from one associated with sickness to one aspiring to a healthier nation.

To win 1.3 million employees' hearts and minds, we capitalised on the 50th anniversary of the birth of the NHS which gave us the opportunity to harness an outpouring of affection for the organisation.

Over the following four years we phased out numerous individual identities replacing them with one, instantly recognisable NHS brand. The key was to use champions to spread the word. The result: many millions of pounds redirected to frontline services and a brand with near universal recognition.

Learning you’re going to be a first-time parent can be scary. It’s a wonderful and fascinating time, but there are always plenty of questions to be answered. The problem is that there’s so much information available, often located in different places. It just so happens that the NHS Choices website contains a host of user-focused and fully approved content relating to pregnancy and early parenthood, but the people who needed it weren’t using it.

NHS Choices (www.nhs.uk) is the largest online resource for the NHS. The Team was asked to help investigate multiple approaches to campaign delivery from integrated digital and print campaigns to the creation of branded utilities, through the use of social networking and onto content syndication to third parties.

Working closely with the NHS Choices team, we took the existing content and delivered it to the audience in a format that gave them what they needed, when they needed it. Our breakthrough idea was sharing this information in a widget that users can download to their desktop. Whenever they log in, the tool reflects where they are in their pregnancy cycle and surfaces content relevant to that stage, directly through the tool.

So, no more legwork trawling sites whenever a symptom appears and no more anxiety about the accuracy of the information. Download the widget from the Pregnancy Desktop page and join tens of thousands of women planning their pregnancy from their desktop.

Competing in the new NHS marketplace is something that tries both providers and commissioners. You’re in competition with neighbouring boroughs, local hospitals and GPs. More than ever before, you need a strong identity and positioning to succeed.

At the moment, even staff don’t recognise the organisation – they’re more likely to identify with the clinic where they work. In addition, NHS Medway Community Healthcare has to consider the possibility that its future might be outside the NHS.

We carried out research with staff including one-to-one interviews and workshops, as well as interviews with strategic stakeholders like the local authority. Based on this intelligence, we developed a brand model that’s built on the NHS brand but allows for strong differentiation.

The result will be a look and feel that can be used alongside the NHS brand, but that can still be retained if they become a non-NHS organisation. The new identity will give them a stronger presence in the marketplace, and the brand will strengthen the organisation’s structure.

Managing a team is never easy and as working environments change to meet the demands in our ever-changing modern world, it’s getting tougher. Look at football – Sir Matt Busby might have been a great manager in the 1960s but could he cut it now? Not without the leadership development, as any institution from Manchester United to the NHS will testify.

As one of the largest organisations on the planet with more than 4,000 senior leaders, every NHS staff member has an obligation to care for all patients to the very best of their abilities, whatever their position. The NHS Institute for Innovation and Improvement has created a raft of leadership development initiatives, from coaching to long-term leadership development programmes.

Using readership surveys and telephone interviews with NHS leaders, we discovered what sort of communication formats leaders found most effective and how best to present them. As busy individuals with high-pressure roles, The Team found that these leaders are prepared to set aside time for development if they could see 'what's in it for them' their team and their organisation.

Through our research we created In View, a journal about leadership inside and outside the NHS. By working with some of the UK's most talented writers, and by creating an editorial board made up of clinical and managerial leaders from across the NHS. The Team successfully took on the role of managing editor of the publication. In View is now in its seventh year of impartial and informed content.

Getting healthcare can seem really confusing. Postcode boundaries don’t make sense, and you can end up traveling a long way from home. In late 2009, NHS Ealing, NHS Harrow and Ealing Hospital NHS Trust announced they were planning to merge to create an integrated care organisation, an ICO, pooling all their resources to make healthcare simpler and more efficient.

On the upside, the move will mean people spending less time in hospital, and getting care closer to home. But the creation of the ICO will have a huge impact the staff of the three predecessor organisations, as well as the local community. There are very few ICOs in existence. On top of which, staff fear the acute trust taking over?

In creating a new name and brand, we’ve consulted all staff, and local residents. The insight is proving invaluable. It will inform the organisational development plan – and that will go a long way to making sure the heritage and equity of the three organisations are retained.

The result will be a name and identity that all staff feel represented by, and can get wholeheartedly behind. It will be one that they and the local community will feel great pride in.

Let's be honest, knowing that I need some medical treatment is the last thing I wanted to hear. But if it's got to be done, it would be nice if I could choose where it's done, with an idea of what other patients think about the quality of care they received. Plus some facts about practicalities like how to get there, where to park and what sort of patient support is available if I need it.

Nobody wants to be told: "you'll get what you're given". Private patients rightly value the options they enjoy in selecting their healthcare services. Policy-makers felt that NHS patients also deserved the right to choose. Building on our long-term relationship with Capita, the internal design team assigned to this task asked for our help in making it happen.

The hospital comparator tool we helped to design empowered patients to assess their healthcare options according to a wide variety of criteria. As the project developed, data was generated from medical professionals and fellow patients alike with all the information easily accessible through the Find and Choose Services link at: http://www.nhs.uk

Patients now have several fewer things to worry about when they need treatment and the hospital comparator has been prominenttly featured in national news media.