About Anthony Lawton
CEO & Founder of Fit to Care. 18 years of NHS experience. CIMA qualified. Creator of the Return On Heartbeats methodology.
Fit to Care is the trading name of Front Foot MI Ltd (Company No. 05457319)
Why This Work Matters
Anthony developed Return On Heartbeats after witnessing 18 years of brilliant NHS leaders consuming millions of heartbeats on strategies that never got implemented.
The insight was simple but profound: your heart beats about 5,000 times per hour. When you spend 2 hours in a meeting that achieves nothing, those 10,000 heartbeats are gone forever. They can't help patients. They can't develop staff. They're just... gone.
ROH asks one question: For every heartbeat you invest in this activity, what value reaches the people who matter?
Anthony's approach is guided by a simple principle: before investing heartbeats, ask if it will Serve. Energise. Matter.
"I've seen too many brilliant people consume millions of heartbeats on work that doesn't serve anyone, drains their energy, and won't matter when they look back. That's heartbeating, and it's the opposite of transformation.
Every intervention we design must pass all three tests: Does it serve patients and staff? Does it energise the team or drain them? Will these heartbeats matter in six months? If the answer's no to any of those, we don't do it."
If the answer is "not much," you're heartbeating. And your organisation can't afford to heartbeat transformation capacity away.
That's why Fit to Care exists: to help NHS organisations stop heartbeating and start implementing transformation that actually reaches patients and staff.
AI Governance Through Implementation
Anthony has particular expertise helping boards navigate the gap between demanding AI adoption and actually understanding it.
The Transformation Trilogy emerged from a simple observation: boards can't credibly demand AI fluency from their organisations whilst heartbeating away board time on manual processes that AI could streamline.
Our tools don't just improve efficiency, they model the behaviour boards should expect organisation-wide: using AI to enhance human judgement, not replace it.
Credentials & Experience
Professional Qualifications
- • CIMA Qualified (Chartered Institute of Management Accountants)
- • 18 years NHS experience
- • Systems thinking practitioner
Expertise
- • Public sector strategy development
- • Collaborative co-creation processes
- • AI-powered transformation
- • Return On Heartbeats methodology
The Return On Heartbeats Methodology
Return On Heartbeats (ROH) is a framework that helps you see where your organisation is consuming finite heartbeats without creating value for patients, staff, or citizens. It reveals three critical problems:
Documents That Consume Heartbeats Without Return
Strategies that look professionally written but fail to drive change, consuming millions of heartbeats that could have been spent on implementation.
400,000 Heartbeats Wasted
Strategy development processes that drag on for 6-12 months, consuming hundreds of thousands of heartbeats from your most experienced leaders with little to show for it.
70% Heartbeating Without Buy-In
Stakeholders who feel unheard, consuming their heartbeats without creating ownership, leading to disengagement and resistance when implementation begins.
The Transformation Trilogy addresses each of these problems, helping you stop heartbeating and reclaim capacity for transformation that actually reaches patients and staff.
How I Work With Clients
I don't consult, I co-create. Every engagement starts with understanding where your organisation is heartbeating capacity away, then we work together to design a solution that fits your context.
The Transformation Trilogy products are built through this co-creation process. We develop solutions together, test them in your environment, and refine until they work. This means you get solutions that actually fit, not generic templates.
The result? Strategy development processes that compress 6 months into 1 day, that engage stakeholders meaningfully, and that produce documents people actually use.
Speaking & Consulting
I speak regularly on NHS transformation, systems thinking, and AI-powered strategy development. Available for:
Keynote Speaking
NHS conferences and events
Workshops
Co-creation and transformation
Consulting
Strategy development transformation
Ready to Transform Your Strategy Development?
Talk to us about your implementation challenges, we partner with you until change embeds
Discuss Implementation