In episode 7 of the culture de-cooded podcast, Charlie sat down at Trinity College Cambridge with Dame Sally Davies, who is the 40th, and first female, Master of Trinity College Cambridge. Dame Sally is a trailblazer in the worldwide medical community having been the first female chief medical officer for England, and having held a seat on the WHO Executive Board as well as various leadership roles at the United Nations whilst influencing global cultural transformation.
Global cultural transformation and Antimicrobial Resistance
During the podcast Dame Sally highlights Antimicrobial Resistance, known as AMR, as one of her 3 life works. She explains that AMR is essentially, nature taking its course to overcome treatments and antibiotics, which causes everyday bugs to become ‘superbugs’. AMR is the third most important underlying cause of death in the world, and reports found that 1.3 million people died of AMR in 2019. Therefore, Dame Sally’s invests a lot of time influencing the progression of research into AMR, which was recognised in 2009 when she was made a Dame, and then awarded the Nelson Mandela Prize for Health Promotion by the World Health Organisation.
How to achieve global cultural transformation
Dame Sally is a key figure in health diplomacy and has spent her career trying to influence those in power and build support for AMR research which involved, in her own words “perpetually negotiating”.
Communication
Dame Sally said she spent her time giving a voice to the problem and educating people on just how serious AMR is across the globe by building trust and finding common ground in her role as a health diplomat. During the podcast she said, “it is about creating a social movement trying to get the global health community looking the same way”. This is similar to Martin Glenn, Former CEO of the Football foundation who when previously featured on our podcast stated he united the England squad by establishing a shared collective belief system in which the outcome was a shared common goal for each and every player. It seems to be this narrative that often has the ability to drive purpose and unite organisations to drive change.
Resilience
Dame Sally continued “one of the things about my role is, of course, I work with lots of people, and I have to hold their pain, too. But somehow, I’ve learned over the years to be very resilient”. David Tait, CEO of the World Gold Council, also championed resilience as a key attribute for success when interviewed in an earlier podcast episode. Dame Sally finds herself needing to be very resilient in her ability to forge relationships with diplomats in order to encourage global cultural transformation.
Patience
As previously interviewed on the Culture de-cooded podcast, Tamara Rojo, Artistic director of the San Francisco highlighted “fast change” and speed to be crucial in cultural transformation to ensure success. However, by contrast, Dame Sally, highlighted patience and resilience as highly important in influencing decision makers and encouraging cultural transformation. This is because the type of cultural transformation that Dame sally is concerned with is on a global scale and therefore requires a larger amount of people to alter the way they think and work. Dame Sally recognised the sheer scale of her ambition saying, “You can’t do it overnight. You have to socialise you have to move steadily. So I am unusually in this, a tortoise. I hope we’ll win the race. But I’ve trained myself to take it steadily and slowly because then you can move forward.”
Dame Sally recognised that on top of her ability to communicate persistence and resilience there was a layer of patience that flowed across every aspect of her work. She likened the attribute to a game of chess by saying, ” I’ve done this a bit like playing chess though I’m not a very good chess player. You have to think about the people and take the people with you.”
Storytelling
Dame Sally speaks of using techniques such as storytelling to enable individuals across the globe to relate to those suffering because of AMR. Dame Sally said, ” in my storytelling, you know, people talk about storytelling and it can sound a bit false, but it’s about taking people with you by explaining it in their context.” Storytelling improves bonding, trust and intensifies the strength of relationships with others and it is therefore no surprise that leaders alike, including Dame Sally cite storytelling as a chosen method of communication to enact global cultural transformation.
In conclusion
In conclusion, Dame Sally’s persistent advocacy, diplomacy and resilience allowed her to achieve amazing feats in her career such as establishing the National Institute for Health Research in 2006, whilst being the Chief Scientific Advisor for The Department of Health. It is clear that influencing the priorities of global organisations on medical issues such as AMR calls for a very different approach to those used by leaders such as Tamara Rojo and Martin Glenn who achieved cultural transformation in their own organisation or specific industry or discipline. Despite the differences between them, organisational or global cultural transformations still require, the same foundations of trust, resilience and the ability to communicate and tell stories to unite individuals and stimulate change.
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