What makes for effective partnerships?
Julian Lomas
For decades the public and voluntary sectors have placed a high importance on partnership working - at least in word and, to be fair, often in deed. The recognition that working together we can achieve more than we can alone is ingrained in the DNA of most organisations in those sectors.
And yet partnerships feels like hard work? We hear repeatedly from clients that partnerships are mired in bureaucracy and lengthy set piece meetings. That “politics” and “power games” often dominate. That, at times, it can feel like “wading through treacle”. And sometimes it feels like partnerships exist so people in power can say they exist rather than to achieve anything meaningful.
How depressing.
But in the last 6-9 months we’ve been hearing a different story. As clients have been reflecting on what has worked well during the Covid-19 crisis we have been hearing about a revitalisation of partnership working within and across sectors. About really important and tangible outcomes being achieved. About agile and effective responses to both immediate and medium term needs. About camaraderie and even “fun”.
Why is this? What has changed?
Of course the reasons are different in different contexts but here we describe a few examples given by our clients:
The pandemic created a very strong sense of shared purpose. We knew what had to be achieved and we all wanted the same things.
Many needs were immediate and, as a result, much of the unecessary bureaucracy was done away with.
There was a much greater sense of equality, “the other partners needed us as much as we needed them”. In particular, statutory authorities needed the hyper-local knowledge and reach of the voluntary sector every bit as much as the voluntary sector needed money and/or materials. The historic power imbalance that comes with cash was reduced or removed.
There was less concern with who gets the credit/blame and more concern with getting the job done - it’s not that politics went away, it just became less important for a while.
We were allowed to take some calculated risks, because we had to - no one knew exactly the right way to do things and we had to experiment, learning as we went.
Almost everyone understood that in a crisis flexibility was needed, just parroting back what the contract says simply didn’t wash and many sensible and pragmatic decisions were made and levels of trust were high.
The required use of video conferencing resulting in much more frequent and much shorter meetings without the travel time - weekly or even daily catchups rather than monthly or quarterly set pieces.
The novelty and speed of some of the things we were doing led to some “fun” moments when people had whacky ideas or made funny/silly mistakes.
It’s interesting to compare these experiences with some established principles of partnerships working. Of course, if you search for “principles of partnership working” you’ll find countless different ways of, essentially, saying the same thing. Here’s our distillation of what we think are key principles for effective partnerships:
Shared goals - everyone wants the same thing and this is agreed openly from the outset.
Equity - genuinely shared power and responsibility. If one partner is bringing the money, the value of the resources brought by others (people, expertise, reach, knowledge etc.), must be given the value they genuinely deserve and this should be reflected in behaviours.
Transparency - being open with each other and everyone else about what you’re trying to achieve and why - no hidden agendas.
Complementarity - each partner brings something to the table that complements what other partners bring.
Responsibility - everyone can be relied upon to do their bit.
Underpinning it all has to be a strong sense of Trust.
It’s easy to see how many of the reasons for more effective partnership working during the pandemic map onto these five principles. Of course, no-one would advocate triggering a crisis to achieve better partnership but let’s at least hope that the learning from the pandemic can be taken forward into the new normal in both a strategic and practical sense and embedded as good practice.
If you would like to find out more about effective partnerships about our services for supporting collaborations more generally, please contact us at julian@almondtreeconsulting.co.uk to arrange free initial telephone discussion