Subject: What are the first steps to successful collaboration?
It's all well and good for the sector gurus to tell us that getting together is the answer to all our ills but in reality, its not possible to make good partnerships work quickly. Sitting back and considering your options, being absolutely clear about your purpose for working together and being willing to get honest about your expectations at the outset - all these help to make relationships straight-forward and trusting.
Here at bassac, we've been trying to think through how and why we get into collaborative relationship with other organisations. We are looking to find the stages that make sense to most people heading into partnerships. As a result of this work, we are hoping to provide a special resource on working together that will make all our lives easier.
What do you think are the key first steps in working up a collaboration? How doo you chose the partner to work with in the first place? What are the warning signs that should cause you to think twice about going further with a potential partner? Are there good ideas that will help to set things on the right footing? Give us your views and we will try to ensure the new resource is as useful as possible.
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
Hi Mark-
You raise a terrific question! Speaking from my experiences working in organisations, I would say:
- Coming together for a short-term, specific project or event first to test the partnership/participation/process/workability.
- Be honest and outright at the outset about what each party needs from the relationship to stick with it. (if you are working on sharing resources including staff time and budget in order to coordinate an event, for example, both organisations need to be clear about who is paying for what, which staff will be dedicated to how much time/contributions, and so on.) This way all parties in the relationship can have a definitive line to reference if they feel something isn't working as planned.
- Create opportunities for in-person collaboration as well as virtual. Emailing files and working when appropriate/available is fine and necessary. But it is extremely helpful for efficiency and effectiveness to create times where staff from partnering organisations can come together at the same time. Even if people aren't discussing something or folding papers together, a chance to work in the same space is helpful - you can ask questions when they come to mind, take time to think together and then separate again, and so on.
- Ensure that staff of all partnering organisations know each other (at least the staff that will be working on the event, project, or product) and feel comfortable contacting the appropriate person or team when they need to. This helps cut down on lost time and lost messages, instead of sending all information or questions to the ED, the ED sending to the other ED, and then on to staff.
It would be great if you could share a link to any report you do put together on this topic! You could post that link here in the forum, or you could post the article to the Working Together section.
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
Deanne - the link to the Bassac report you mention plus another on sharing is in our 'Other Players' part of the Strategy section. There are a few other links in there too
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
London Net Tuesday's March event will focus on online collaboration tools, as well as offline collaboration practices. It is a free event and geared towards charities and other organizations using new technologies.
Representatives from Huddle will be presenting at the event, as well as others working with online tools and offline partnerships. The event is 5:30 pm, 3 March, at Public Life's offices off of Commercial.
You can find more details and RSVP on the London Net Tuesday group's page (Meetup.com).
This comment was last edited on Feb 12, 2010
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