There are periods in your career you look back on and realise they reshaped you in ways you’re still understanding years later.
For me, that time was during the height of Covid—working with London Ambulance Service as part of the response executive team.

I’ve led difficult programmes.
I’ve delivered under pressure.
I’ve been part of complex operations.

But nothing compares to the NHS during the Covid crisis.
Nothing even comes close.

It wasn’t just operational intensity.
It wasn’t just the urgency of the work.
It was the humanity of it all — the weight of what every decision meant.

Watching the Numbers Rise

You can’t explain what it feels like to watch case numbers climb every single day.
To see wave after wave surge up the chart.
To know those numbers represent real people — families, neighbours, colleagues.

During those weeks, every morning started with dashboards, forecasts, heat maps, and the silent question none of us dared to voice:

“How much worse will it be today?”

When you’re inside the system, those numbers never feel abstract.
They become faces.
Calls.
Lives.
Staff pushed beyond breaking point.

You stop thinking in statistics and start thinking in humanity.

The Impact on Colleagues

I saw colleagues cry in corridors between meetings.
I saw people who had never shown fear suddenly become quiet.
I saw teams holding each other up — literally and emotionally — because there was no other choice.

Every person in the building carried something:

• exhaustion

• fear

• grief

• responsibility

• guilt for not being able to do more

• and pride in the people standing shoulder to shoulder with them

The atmosphere wasn’t heroic.
It was human.

We weren’t “managing a crisis.”
We were navigating trauma in real time — while trying to keep the system running.

The Hidden Impact on My Family

At the time, I didn’t fully understand the toll it was taking on my family.

I came home late, mentally drained and emotionally distant.
I was glued to briefings, updates, and nightly calls.
The constant exposure to crisis changes you — and it changes the people who care about you.

I was physically present but mentally still in the emergency operations room.

I didn’t know the long-term impact until much later:
the worry, the stress, the uncertainty they carried quietly while I carried the workload loudly.

It wasn’t until the world settled that I realised:
they were part of the Covid response too — just in a different way.

Working Through the Impossible

The scale and speed of what we had to deliver was like nothing I’d ever been part of.

Setting up the Nightingale Hospital

Standing up a functioning hospital at unprecedented speed wasn’t just a logistical challenge — it was a statement of intent.
A moment where the NHS said:
“We will not let this beat us.”

Scaling 999 Operations Under Unbearable Demand

Calls were relentless.
Demand was beyond anything forecastable.
We had to redesign how call handling worked, redistribute staff, reconfigure spaces, and rethink processes — all while maintaining absolute calm.

The pressure was unlike any operational delivery environment I’ve ever seen.

Moving 1,000 Office-Based Staff to Remote Working Almost Overnight

NHS organisations aren’t designed for rapid digital transitions on that scale.

But we made it happen.

It wasn’t pretty.
It wasn’t perfect.
But it worked.
Because it had to.

The Lesson: Humanity Is the Real Infrastructure

Technology mattered.
Processes mattered.
Systems mattered.

But what carried the NHS through those months was none of those things.

It was humanity.

• people showing up when they were exhausted

• teams supporting each other quietly

• leaders who made decisions no one should ever have to make

• staff who delivered under pressure that would break most people

• families who endured the worry and the absence

• small moments of kindness in the darkest weeks

I’ve worked in countless organisations, across multiple sectors, in high-stakes programmes.
But nothing taught me more about leadership, compassion, resilience, and purpose than that period.

Looking Back

When I think about that time now, I don’t think about the dashboards, the crisis meetings, or the operational noise.

I think about the people.
The courage.
The fragility.
The power of collective effort.
The quiet acts of humanity in a system pushed to its limits.

It changed the way I lead.
It changed the way I think about pressure.
It changed the way I view organisations and the individuals within them.

Covid showed us the worst of the world — but inside the NHS, I saw some of the very best.

And those lessons stay with me every day.