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.