No time to retreat

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• Anonymous23 October 2016

  For more years than I care to remember the American Academy of Optometry has delivered full day leadership courses at its annual meeting. Some years ago Richard Llewellyn and I ran a leadership session at the BCLA. It wasn't well subscribed and it hasn't been repeated by any of the professional bodies. A few principles. Leadership and Management are two entirely different things and weirdly commonly confused. Leadership is about vision, it is about articulating that vision and it is absolutely nothing to do with managing consensus. Leadership can exist within clinical practice, academia, business and politics. UK optometry has had very few leaders and your predecessor Donald Cameron was one of them. Some will think that the changes in Scottish optometry were the fortuitous outcome derived from a change in government. Nothing could be further from the truth. The changes arose because there was clear unified leadership within the profession and a triumvirate of absolutely unity who were prepared to look outside existing bodies and vested interests. Thus when change could happen the leadership ensured that it did. More pertinent is where did they come from ? What programme exists t recognise raw talent and promote it ? Being clever isn't enough, being a good clinical or a great lecturer isn't either. I firmly believe our profession needs to invest heavily in recognising and training our future leaders and not simply picking people who's face fits or who won't upset anyone. This is a defined process not an accident and historically we have not been very good at it.

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