Innovation, hope and leadership with Tony Young

Matthew Winn in conversation with Tony YoungMatthew Winn interviews Tony Young, a clinician and national leader in healthcare innovation, about his career, leadership mindset, and how he manages multiple senior roles across healthcare, academia, and business.Tony explains that he is a consultant urological surgeon at Southend Hospital, Associate Medical Director for Innovation and Transformation, National Clinical Director for Innovation at NHS England, and Chair of Innovation and Entrepreneurship at Anglia Ruskin University. He is also a non-executive director of an investment trust to better understand how finance, governance, and investment work outside the NHS.Early in his career, Tony founded four companies as a junior doctor, raising £5 million and exiting each business. This entrepreneurial journey was not smooth—he nearly lost his home—but it gave him invaluable insights into risk, failure, and innovation. These experiences shaped his belief that healthcare must learn from business, and that systems change happens when clinicians engage with entrepreneurship and leadership beyond medicine.Matthew challenges Tony on how he balances so many senior roles. Tony explains that the answer lies not in time management but in self-knowledge. His leadership transformation came through executive coaching, arranged by his former NHS England director, Ian Dodge, and particularly through coaching with Dame Una O’Brien, former Permanent Secretary at the Department of Health. Coaching helped Tony understand his internal “operating system” – how his mind works, how assumptions form, and how emotions and beliefs influence leadership behaviour.Tony also draws on neuroscience and psychology, especially the thinking of Robert Kegan (author of Immunity to Change), to explain that leaders often struggle not because of workload but because of misalignment between their actions and their values. Once he became clear about his core values, he learned how to structure his working life around them.He explains that when your work aligns with your values, you gain a sense of clarity, speed, energy, and resilience. For Tony, these values include equity, justice, creativity, education, family, community, and autonomy. Because all his roles express the same values, they reinforce each other rather than compete for energy.⸻Key Leadership Quotes“Not being normal, being a bit crazy, being on the edge – that’s where change happens.”“I nearly lost my house. I learned a lot about business the hard way.”“Coaching felt like a luxury for my mind.”“I learned how my ‘operating system’ works – and why I think the way I think.”“If you live according to your values, you can work at speed and scale.”“When your work aligns with your values, your mind becomes super-efficient.”“I don’t manage multiple jobs. I live one life in different expressions.”“Healthcare is actually a very safe system compared to how the City works.”⸻Leadership TakeawaysSelf-awareness is more important than time managementHigh performance is not about squeezing more hours into the day; it comes from understanding yourself, your motivations, and your mental patterns.Coaching is not a luxury—it is leadership infrastructureAccess to high-quality coaching enables leaders to reflect, grow, and avoid burnout. It’s not weakness; it’s strategy.Innovation happens at the edgeTony’s career shows that progress in healthcare often comes from people willing to cross boundaries between medicine, business, and academia.Values create energyWhen your work reflects your personal values, you gain momentum rather than exhaustion.Failure is a leadership teacherNear-collapse in business taught Tony as much as success. Leadership maturity grows through challenge.Think cross-sectorUnderstanding how money, governance, and investment work outside healthcare helps leaders build better systems inside healthcare.Align roles around purpose, not statusMultiple jobs only work if they serve one unifying mission. Matthew Winn, podcast host and an experienced leader in healthcare in the UK.