Right wording will snare HSE chief executive

Business Opinion: One of our non-core competencies here at Business Opinion is to offer a discrete high level head-hunting service to select clients.

And those of us who have been in the executive search game as long as we have know that getting the job ad right is crucial and to be honest we wonder whether the Tánaiste might not be in the pickle that she currently finds herself in had a little more thought gone into this part of the process of finding a chief executive for the Health Service Executive.

So confident are we of this, that we have reworked the advertisement that ran last December on a pro bono basis. The additions are in italics...

Health Service Executive chief executive.

Appointed in November 2003, the Interim HSE has been tasked with establishing the organisation and management structure which will manage and deliver the Irish health service as a single national entity. With the draft legislation establishing the HSE already published, the HSE is on course to become a statutory body in early 2005. The HSE is a quango of truly epic proportions and represents the Government's last desperate throw of the dice in its decades long struggle to get a grip on health policy It is an area so mired in conflicts and structural problems that one minister likened it to Angola, such was the preponderance of political land mines.

Already the Interim Board has accomplished the following key tasks:

• Designed a new, unified structure for the national health service through the abolition of the health boards. In the process it has generated massive discontent amongst senior and middle management who have lost their fiefdoms.

• Identified and completed arrangements for integrating a number of priority agencies into the new HSE structure which is well on its way to becoming a sprawling and unmanageable organisation.

• Identified the location, structure and people complements of its four new administrative regions together with local service delivery arrangements. The implementation of which will be a human resources and logistical nightmare. If you think decentralisation is hard going, you ain't seen nothing yet.

• Engaged in extensive consultations and hosted comprehensive briefings on the new arrangements but they have not made the plan any more palatable to all the vested interests that stand to loose out.

• Completed the recruitment of most of the national directors including the heads of the three core pillars of Primary, Community and Continuing Care; National Hospitals Office, and the National Shared Services Centre but as you can see we still can't find someone deluded enough to think they can make a success of running this chimera.

• Developed the 2005 service plan and associated budgets but as we all know talk is cheap and we still have to find someone to implement all this.

This is the most radical programme of change in the health sector since 1970 and the board of the interim HSA now wants to appoint a chief executive to lead and deliver on the three tenets of the HSE; better quality services to patients, clients and service users; better working environments for staff; better value for money for the taxpayer and why don't we throw in world peace and an end to global hunger while we are at it.

Based in Naas, Co Kildare (about 30 miles from Dublin city centre and two hours in rush hour traffic) and reporting to the board made up of political appointees and vested interests the person appointed will be undertaking a particularly challenging assignment. It will need outstanding leadership qualities combined with the vision, energy and commitment to be be a key influencer of change in the health system. He/She will ideally be familiar with the sector itself but in any event must demonstrate the ability to operate efficiently at strategic and operational levels. However we will not facilitate a return to the health sector once you have successfully completed your term as chief executive.

In addition candidates will need to demonstrate a track record of managing complex, knowledge-based, people organisations and have successfully delivered on achieving superior levels of service delivery in a profession environment. Ideally you will have done all this on your own as we don't really want to spend money on a team of people to help you.

They will have an empathy with the HSE charter to deliver ever-improving standards of patient care and general consumer service, consistent with promoting a culture of cost-effectiveness within a service ethic, so with any luck you have a bit of a social conscience and we might get you on the cheap.

Experience in the management of significant change in a relevant service sector together with creditable leadership in organisational re-engineering will be particularity valued, but we will only pay you €400,000.

This appointment is of critical importance to the future success of the reform programme so let's hope it's third time lucky. The interim board of the HSE is anxious, desperate to be honest, to secure the interest of those candidates who have the technical management and people skills to get this job done and have not previously accepted it only to change their mind later. It is a unique opportunity for a highly qualified professional to make a substantial contribution to a new era of healthcare in Ireland and destroy a promising career in the process.

To request an information pack... etc. jmcmanus@irish-times.ie