Tag: partnerships

On collaboration

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Euan Semple writes:

I have always said that the first step to real collaboration, as opposed to just having a shared space to stick your unreadable documents, is having the self awareness, the humility, and the courage to admit that you need help.

Too right!

Back when I was a local government officer, I used to be involved in things like local strategic partnerships – only the first word was, I think, accurate.

Anyway, various ‘delivery partners’ would turn up to a meeting, pledge to do something collaborative – i.e. something they were going to do anyway – and then go off and do it on their own, as they always would have done. Three months later, this activity would be announced at the result of partnership working and collaboration.

Am sure everyone reading this will have seen this happening, and as Euan says, no file sharing platform is going to fix this.

Instead, a sensible collaboration conversation ought to look like this:

  1. Decide on shared outcomes – are they really shared? are they really outcomes? Much of this is about aligning interests – all organisations should be open about their motivations and why they are collaborating. Then, through some enlightened self interest, it ought to be possible to plot a course that meets everyone’s needs, including the people all the partners are trying to help.
  2. Map what every organisation can bring to the table to help achieve those outcomes
  3. Identify the gaps. Is there another group who could meet those? If not, are they collaboration-killers? Can you still achieve your shared outcomes without those skills or resources? If not, you might need to reboot. Important: don’t pretend you can do something you can’t!
  4. Come up with a framework for organising and measuring activity and how it maps across to your outcomes, so you know whether you’re succeeding or not and can pivot accordingly
  5. Only meet if you really need to – and only have those that need to meet turn up – no agenda stuffing, or meat in the room
  6. Have an open way of reporting progress, through an online dashboard, say, so that everyone can see who is doing what and how much of an impact it is having.

LocalGovCamp 2014 thoughts #3 – collaboration is key

I found LocalGovCamp a really refreshing and cheering event this year. I’m going to spend a few quick posts writing up my thoughts.

Mary McKenna brilliantly facilitated an excellent discussion on collaboration – why it is needed, why it hasn’t worked that well up to now, and how that might be fixed.

Some great input came from FutureGov‘s Dom Campbell, who spoke about the some of the challenges trying to implement their Patchwork tool across multiple agencies.

There was also discussion of the limitations of the traditional approach to partnership working – overly bureaucratic, slow to make decisions, agencies working individually to deliver what should be shared objectives, really boring meetings, and so on.

What’s needed is a more agile, responsive and flexible approach to working in partnership to deliver shared outcomes.

This needs to mean organisations sharing people, resources, systems, data and more – and not just tick-box style partnerships.

What’s also vital to to this working are grown up conversations are needed about who can deliver what with the resources they have. This is no time for pride.

More travels, more talking

After this week’s exciting trip to Scotland, I’m venturing slightly less far north a couple of weeks afterwards, to Lancaster.

It’s for the ‘Digital networking and community safety partnerships conference’, taking place at the town hall in Lancaster on 16th February. It’s a joint LGID and NPIA event, and features really interesting discussions about how digital engagement can be used to make partnership working more effective, and to actually help change behaviour.

I’ll do a quick introduction to the subject at the beginning of the day, and will hang around to answer questions and help out where I can.

Here’s the blurb from the site:

Bringing together the worlds of community safety and digital networking, this free one-day event organised by LG Improvement and Development, the National Policing Improvement Agency and Lancaster City Council aims to provide an overview of social networking, social media and digital networking, their use generally and how they are being used within community safety and policing.

The event will include sessions on:

  • the policy landscape for digital engagement in community safety
  • what digital engagement is and how to use it
  • community use of digital engagement.

If you are interested in attending this free event, just email Rachel Duke by 9th Feb.

Incidentally, I’m probably going to be driving up to Lancaster on the 15th. If you’re on my route, let me know and maybe we can arrange a meet up at a motorway service station, or perhaps something less seedy.