Last week the Health Services Executive Team and I had the pleasure of visiting Alder Hey Children’s Hospital for a tour and a visit to their Innovation Hub, led by Dr Iain Hennessey and team. It was incredibly impressive and I really enjoyed spending time in another healthcare organisation, seeing and learning about how they are delivering excellence in innovation. The hospital puts patients and their families at the heart of every decision they make and actions they take, making the environment as welcoming as possible, including things like the smell and look of different areas to make the children feel comfortable. They also have no sirens when the ambulances arrive so not to distress any of the patients.
The day was organised by Wavelength in partnership with Alder Hey, Adrian Simpson from Wavelength helped facilitate a great session where we were able to share ideas around patient centricity and innovation and look for ways in which we can continue to develop the healthcare we deliver for our own patients and customers. Huge thank you to the hospital and Wavelength for an amazing day it has certainly inspired us!
The Masterclass
Step into the heart of the business
Your residency begins with closed-door sessions alongside the Four Seasons senior leadership team: a transparent look at the elements that drive their global commercial success. You’ll deconstruct the “systems behind the smiles”, the operating procedures that hold global consistency steady while still giving frontline staff room to act.
You’ll learn their three steps of service, Brilliant Basics, Magic Moments, and “Wow Me If You Can”, and the exact blueprint for service recovery that turns operational failures into lifelong loyalty without waiting for managerial sign-off. Above all, you’ll see how Four Seasons treats its foundational values system, The Golden Rule, not as a poster on the wall but as a strict, measurable strategy that drives the highest talent retention rates in the sector.
The Backstage Access
Explore the leadership journey
True inspiration requires witnessing execution in real time, so your leaders integrate directly into the daily operational heartbeat of the property. You’ll embed for the morning line-up: a mandatory, 15-minute daily cascade executed identically worldwide, distilling service basics, critical metrics, guest preferences, and a frank review of yesterday’s glitches. It’s an alignment tool so powerful it has been studied and adopted by market disruptors like Apple Retail.
Then you’ll go behind the operational curtain, from shadowing the legendary housekeeping process to evaluating the 40-plus point room-readiness checklist, and see how operational discipline creates space for human creativity rather than stifling it.
The Human Connection
Reflect and connect
A high-performance culture is only as strong as its quietest advocate. We round off the immersion with a candid, unscripted employee panel featuring a cross-section of front-of-house and back-of-house roles: your team’s chance to put sharp questions directly to the people who live the culture every day.
You’ll discover how Four Seasons recruits, motivates, and retains talent against an “unreasonably high” expectation framework, and how your organisation can replicate that passion to differentiate in your own market.
I feel grateful, inspired and humbled by the incredible work of Alder Hey Innovation led by Iain Hennessey and his team. Their customer obsession, outside the box thinking and bravery in pushing the boundaries of technology to save the lives of children faster and better is refreshing and inspiring. Aldermore Bank shares a unique connection in the name, which symbolises strength, confidence and determination. I’m really proud to be part of this business and am filled with hope for how we can take and implement learnings from Alder Hey to create more value for our customers.
Alder Hey is one of the best development experiences that I’ve ever had. I would highly recommend this day for leaders and innovation teams who want a fresh perspective on the connection between purpose and innovation.
A completely uplifting and inspiring experience - a radical lesson in how to make innovation part of organisational culture.