Building Capacity through Partnership

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Building Capacity through Partnership
CollaborationOLA Leadership Summit November 8,
2004

• Principles of Partnering
• Deb deBruijn
• Executive Director
• Canadian Research Knowledge Network
• Réseau canadien de documentation pour la recherche

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Agenda

• Partnerships what and why?
• Principles
• Best practices
• Why partnerships fail

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Partnershipsmore than passion

• A wedding anniversary is the celebration of
  love, trust, partnership, tolerance and tenacity.
  The order varies for any given year.
• -Paul Sweeney
• I hand him a lyric and get out of his way.
  -Oscar Hammerstein, on partnership with
  Richard Rodgers

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What is partnership?

• Partnership is a relationship that results from
  putting in practice a set of principles that
  create trust and mutual accountability
• shared vision, values, objectives, risk, benefit,
  control learning
• joint contribution of resources
• degree of interdependence is unique to each
  relationship, depends on context, and evolves
  over time

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Soccer ball analogy

• Partnerships can have different outer structures
• Partnership principles are the air within
• Partnership is a matter of degree
• ball will expand or contract depending on the
  degree to which the partnership principles are
  being practiced in the relationship

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Typical degrees of library partnerships

• Communication
• Coordinated programs
• Merged programs
• Changing outdated organizations
• Creating an umbrella or coordinating organization
• Merger

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Why partner?

• To achieve together what we cannot achieve alone
• Take a page from business pleasure!
• Extend reach
• Meet new needs
• Seize new opportunities

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Partnership Principles

• Ensure participation
• Build relationships
• Create value
• Achieve accountability

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Ensure participation

• Expand your organizations sphere of influence ?
  build a bigger tent
• Broaden the participation to those sectors that
  are creating and driving growth
• Take care not to dilute the power or
  effectiveness of autonomous organizations

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Ensure participation cont.

• process of partnering can be as important as the
  substance
• genuine participation in collective decision
  making demonstrates respect, and respect fosters
  trust
• the more inclusion you get, the more power to
  influence you have but the less ability you have
  to come to a conclusion

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Ensure participation cont.

• Entering into partnerships is analogous to
  doing business in a foreign country. The culture,
  the language, the form of interaction are
  different, and the most successful international
  business people are those who study, understand,
  and respect the different cultural norms and
  expectations. Furthermore, they learn at least
  the basics of the other's language and culture to
  communicate effectively. The resultant broadening
  of leadership, communication, negotiating skills,
  and general knowledge makes them better managers
  back in the business.

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Build relationships

• Build is the keyword relationships do not
  just happen
• Requires a bridge-building mind-set and an array
  of political skills
• Heart of relationships are respect and trust

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Creating value

• Power of collaboration comes from combining
  partners' core competencies in mutually
  reinforcing ways
• Different partners bring different
• management methods
• communication skills
• approaches to planning prioritization
• competencies in problem analysis
• structures discipline

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Achieving accountability

• Goodness is not self-evident
• Broader membership and visibility brings greater
  influence, and more relevant agendas
• AND being answerable to a larger constituency
  demands greater accountability
• Effective partners expect a lot of each other. If
  results are not forthcoming, value is not being
  created

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Create your own set of principles

• Be strategic - work together towards common goals
• Reduce bureaucracy focus on outcomes and
  speeding up service improvement 
• Keep all meetings strategic, relevant and
  interesting
• Value diversity and treat people with respect
• Be inclusive looking to engage local people in
  more creative ways
• Be proactive in finding new opportunities for
  joint working

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Best practices

• Communication
• Shared responsibility
• Commitment
• Organization
• Finances

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Best practices cont.

• Communication
• You can never have too much communication
• Build formal communication mechanisms
• agree on process for decision making
• value disagreements
• avoid thinking in terms of win-lose
• use small groups to mobilize large group
• articulate agreement / decisions clearly often
• Shared responsibility
• Seek out mutually beneficial projects
• Seek out economies of scale
• Focus on collaboration, not merely cooperation

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Best practices cont.

• Commitment
• move from problem-driven to vision-driven
• problems catalyst vision commitment
• seek broad agendas build agreement on big
  issues
• people support what they own

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Best practices cont.

• Organization
• Create a Partnership Framework written agreement
  on how to work together
• Memorandum of Understanding will make explicit
  agreement on
• Decision making
• Communications
• Conflict resolution
• Financial accountability
• Administrative responsibility
• Reporting to the community or constituency
• Sustainability post-project or post-relationship
• Maintain a focus on what your organization does
  uniquely and well

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Best practices cont.

• Finances
• Attract new sources of funding rather than
  attempting to refocus existing funding
• Allow funds to flow through old organizations so
  that they continue to play a role
• Determine who has the funding and who is most
  able to do the work these are not necessarily
  the same organizations
• Demonstrate return on investment

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Why partnerships fail

• Fatal assumptions it is easy, normal,
  self-evident underestimate complexity
• Lack of change management knowledge or skills
• Lack of accountability
• Change structures missing
• Participative management skills lacking
• Merging vs. Joining
• Fears of losing funding reputation
• Sense of loss perception of one organization
  "following" another
• Lack of follow-through reinforcement of early
  successes

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Final thoughts
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Final thoughts

• "If someone had told me years ago that sharing a
  sense of humour was so vital to partnerships, I
  could have avoided a lot of sex!"
•  
• -Kate Beckinsale

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Thank you

• Deb deBruijn
• debruijn_at_ResearchKnowledge.ca
• www.ResearchKnowledge.ca
• www.DocRecherche.ca