Joan Roberts Consulting

You hear it all the time. For a collaborative to become successful there needs to be a high level of trust amongst its members. I agree. Trust is needed for collaborative members to share important and relevant information and work out issues that cross their organizational boundaries.

But what exactly is trust? It can be an elusive concept. Trust is an emotion or a feeling held by an individual based on observations, facts and gut instinct that tells you that you can rely on a person, product or process to do what it is supposed to do.

In a collaborative we are relying on each other to do what we are supposed to do. And if we can't deliver on our commitments then we need to talk about why and then figure out how to the task done.

Yet you must often compete with other collaborative members for funding or profile — so how you can trust a competitor? This often is the crux of the problem.

Despite being competitors, private and nonprofit sector organizations often find ways to work together. It is the only way industry standards ever develop. Private sector competitors join together in industry associations to work together on common causes like industry standards and regulatory frameworks. Nonprofits cooperate in a similar manner in sector organizations that advocate on behalf of their members.

Despite remaining competitors, trust can develop when collaborative members do what they promise, and hold each other accountable when they don't. Holding each other accountable means communicating that something wasn't done and a conversation is held about what to do next. It might feel like confrontation and is not easy but it's essential to achieve common goals.

So to build a high level of trust, we need to follow up on our promises and communicate honestly and openly.

To read more go to:

http://www.charityvillage.com/cv/research/rpart14.html

10 Governance Traps for Collaboratives
 
Governance is especially important to inter-organizational collaboration because it’s about power and authority. When power and authority are clarified by an effective governance framework that spells out the methods of making decisions, identifies who can make those decisions, and includes a policy making process, conflict is normalized and regularized.  But as the number of collaboratives increase and the responsibility to represent organizational members gets assigned to staff unfamiliar with organizational governance many collaboratives don’t even think about governance.

If there is not a governance framework, most likely there is not enough structure to work through the issues that come up when implementing a shared vision and intervention strategies. In 10 Governance Traps Collaboratives Fall Into! I identify 10  predicaments  that collaboratives fall into that are related to the lack of governance structure.  Also the article covers  organizational dynamics common to collaboratives where members come to share information but don’t make decisions, where basic strategic questions go unanswered and decision-makers fail to address repetitive issues with policy.

1.       Many members believe they are just there to share information or act in some kind of advisory role. They believe they don't make decisions.

2.       Members are not clear about just what the problem or issue is they are there to work on.

3.       The collaborative does not clarify the decision making method they will use.

4.       The collaborative does not stick to the agreed decision making process.

5.       Collaborative members do not know there is a need for something called governance.

6.       The collaborative is not clear about what they have control over in terms of decision-making.

7.       ...

8.       ...

9.       ...

10.   ...

Read more at http://tamarackcommunity.ca/index.php#res2

I have been working with a multi agency-collaborative all summer. I started
on this project right around the time I finished my second book. The project
required a lot of consultation and qualitative research in a short period of
time so I had to put my efforts at blogging on the back burner.

The funder of this project dictated the process steps which were to be broad
based consultation and strategic planning.    Logically it sounded good- the
consultation and data gathering would create the rationale for change and
then the planning piece would create the vision and plan that would catalyze
the partnership towards its desired future. I came in after the
collaborative was already formed.

However, the collaborative now finds itself with a strategic and action plan
that used a participative consensus based decision-making process (Step 4 in
my 6 step model) but without enough buy-in from the decision makers that run
the member agencies.  Senior managers and EDs are too busy to participate in
every collaborative that asks for agency representation so they send
someone- a manager or a community developer or a front line worker.   These
representatives participated in the planning activities of the collaborative
despite much direction or guidance from their home agency.   Everything
proceeded smoothly until the time arrived to implement the plan. (This is
Step 5 in my 6 step model))  Now we find that the most people around the
table have little power to commit their agency to any of the joint decisions
in the plan.   Stalemate!

Partner agencies who have an organizational policy on collaboration and use
it to brief their staff before embarking on joining a collaborative could go
a long way to preventing this inertia.     I missed this key item in my
first book but made sure to address it in my new book Governance for
Collaboratives: A Guide to Resolving Power and Conflict Issues. Chapter 3
Getting your agency/department ready to partner! addresses this issue and a
sample organizational collaboration policy is included in the appendix.

Last week in Toronto I attended a one and half day session hosted by ONN.  The Ontario Nonprofit Network (ONN) is a network of networks that helps to build communication and coordination amongst nonprofit organizations working for the public benefit in Ontario.

The event was annual province-wide forum for nonprofits in Ontario - "Our Sector, Our Vision". The purpose was to come together to start building a cross-sectoral agenda of priority issues. The agenda will be further developed in upcoming fall regional consultations.

I thoroughly enjoyed the session and am delighted to see progress on a united front. There are so many issues that need co-ordinated action across the non-profit sector and the need for a collective voice in discussions with government. I urge you to get involved. The website is www.ontariononprofitnetwork.ca.

Carol Goar of the Toronto Star wrote an insightful article which you can access at  C:\Users\Joan\Documents\TheStar_com Opinion Many names but not much of a voice.mht.

In her comments to the session, Carol gave some great tips to Non-profits on getting your message out there.

Dos:

• Do show people the difference you are making.
• Let the people you have helped speak.
• Use a news hook to grab the reader's attention.
• Put yourself in the shoes of your audience.
• Connect your mission to the listener.
• Explain why you are dependent on government money and why you relinquish control of your agenda to government ( in return for funding).

• Contact reporters who cover the topic

Don'ts

• Don't rely heavily on statistics.
• Don't use wooly language (jargon and buzzwords).
• Imagine yourself talking to your neighbour.
• Don't assume the internal workings of the NPO sector matter to the audience. They are not issues outsiders care about.
• Don't rely on polls-they have little credibility.
• Don't let setbacks defeat you.

Great advice!

I am ambiguous about sharing with you the book I am reading right now. It’s called Nudge: Improving Decisions about Health Wealth and Happiness, by Richard H Thaler and Cass Sunstein. But I think those of us who serve the public, are not very conscious about the choice architecture we design into the programming and form filling procedures. Nudges can be as much a policy instrument as legislation but are also used by the private sector to nudge our purchasing decisions.

I  was just doing some training with a predominately female workplace.

People sometimes wonder why I am so versatile? Why not just specialize in one aspect of NPO development and then bill myself as a specialist. 

It’s too simple and frankly undermines the breadth of skills that collaboration practitioners need to build effective multi-stakeholder organizations. I wouldn't be modeling what I teach.   Over my wild and wacky career, I have developed the key competencies either through education, training or direct experience. After learning how to train professionally, I translated my knowledge and skills into skills training designed to build skills quickly for the non-profit and government workplace.  As much of my work is focused on collaboratives I market it as such. However I do the same kind of training and consulting with sole organizations. The only real difference is the scale and reduced complexity because of the number of players involved.   

In my first book, Alliances, Coalition and Partnerships, Building Collaborative Organizations,  I presented a model of trans-organizational effectiveness that illustrated that a practitioner had to tend to three streams at the same time- people or trust building processes, power and governance processes and work or management co-ordination processes.  My new book focuses just on one process stream in that model-the power and governance process stream but touches on all the rest because the skillsets are intertwined and interdependent.   You still need to build a good group dynamic and trust if you expect effective governance in a collaborative organization. The same holds true for work or implementation processes.

Recently I attended a session with an American Professor who teaches a program for strategic alliance managers (sort of a private sector counterpart of collaborative practitioner except every partner in the collaborative has an alliance manager) and she reported that the job of strategic alliance manager is now seen as a direct route to the office of CEO.  Managing the complexity of alliances requires a very high level skillset similar to a CEO's task of of managing stakeholders  and shareholders.

I think the same holds true in the non-profit and government sector.  For a practitioner to work in the ambiguous territory outside of their home organization requires all the skills of a manager including project management skills to financial and HR knowledge plus high level change management skills.  And as my new book points out the practitioner needs to hold the skillset for governance too.

So building your collaborative skills is not a waste of time or energy but a direct investment in your career. All the skills and tools needed for collaboration originate from simpler applications in a single organizations.  Getting comfortable with conflict is only going to improve your ability to handle conflict in your workplace as it will in working with a collaborative. Ideally people would not engage in a collaborative unless they were highly comfortable with conflict because much of what a collaborative process does is resolve conflict.  From becoming proficient in managing staff to developing awareness of group dynamics and learning how people adapt to change, to understanding governance and oversight functions, all are necessary to work in the complex territory that demands a collaborative response for effective change to take place.

This was written in December of 2008 but just posted.

• Adaptive to emerging resident’s needs
• Nurture leadership and citizenship
• Outreach to citizens on the margins
• Pilot new policy approaches
• Advocate systemic change
• Shape culturally appropriate services
• Holistic policy through services co-location and continuum of supports

Canadians are engaged in learning about the national governance structure like never before. Opinions of ordinary Canadians are being expressed non-stop and many are deeply disturbed at the overt power struggle underway and the overheated conflict. Yet despite the fighting that looks to be all over the map, there exists clear rules of engagement called parliamentary procedure. These rules have evolved over nine centuries and provide for all kinds of possibilities including the rare form of government in parliamentary democracies- coalition government. The amazing thing about this “so called” crisis is that everyone is playing by the rules.

A lot of the debate is focused on what the rules are and interpretation of the rules. Granted the rules are being stretched to the max as with the situation today with the Governor General agreeing to the suspension of parliament. However, in my work with organizations and collaboratives, the most frequent situation I find is that they are playing without any rules. Often there is so little governance in place that when there is conflict and power struggles, as can happen with any difference of opinion, the parties to the conflict be they board members or collaborative members don’t know what the rules are or have none in place, so that the conflict is managed and resolved.

The rules that guide decision making and guide the resolution of conflict are found in a governance framework not only for governments but for all kinds of organizations. A governance frame work includes things like decision making processes, organizational assignment of powers and authority and guidelines for decision making called policy. I am writing a new book that provides a guide to creating an effective governance framework for collaborative organizations. Difficult issues and power struggles are as inevitable with collaborative organizations as they are with governments. Stay tuned as I talk about the topics of collaboration and governance.