Key Factors for Effective Collaboratives

1. Key Factors for Effective Collaboratives • Presented by • Joan Roberts, MA • Joan Roberts Consulting Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

2. About Joan Roberts • Inter-agency Services Collaboration Project, (IASCP) 2008 • Author of Alliances Coalitions and Partnerships, Building Collaborative Organizations, 2004 and Governance for Collaborative: A Guide to Resolving Power and Conflict Issues 2010 • Over 15 years working in area of collaboration Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

3. Definition of Collaboration When we speak about collaboration there is widespread agreement that the term refers to a group of people working together to reach a common goal. Within this definition, collaboration can describe a group of people working within an organization or external to an organization. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

4. The Structure of an Inter-organizational Collaboration includes: • A common agenda, vision, program or function. • Two or more autonomous organizations maintain their separate organizational governance systems while creating a new trans-organizational system (to manage and oversee the collaboration). • Shared investment of time energy and resources and risk . • All of the above may be specified in a formal agreement. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

5. TYPES OF COLLABORATION INTER- AND INTRA-GOVERNMENTAL COLLABORATION COMPREHENSIVE COMMUNITY INITIATIVES INTER-ORGANIZATION COLLABORATION Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

6. We are pioneers! Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

7. 6 step development model Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

8. A Developmental Model to Develop a Collaborative Step 1 Problem /Problem set identification • What intractable problems are surfacing in our environment that we cannot resolve by ourselves? Step 2 Motivation to Act • Someone alone and then with a small group decides to act in concert with others because of the perceived benefits of collaborative action. Step 3 Member Identification and Selection • Who cares about the problem and is willing to join our process? Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

9. A Developmental Model to Develop a Collaborative Step 4 Collaborative Planning • Should a collaborative be created and if so what is its vision and action strategies? Step 5 Building an Organization • Operationalizing the vision and action into structure, leadership, communication, polices and procedures. Step 6 Evaluation • How is the collaboration performing re: performance outcomes, quality of interaction, member satisfaction? • Outcome measurement. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

10. 10Critical Success Factors • Developed from the literature and recent research including the Interagency Services Collaboration Report. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

11. #1 Motivation to Collaborate Motivation to collaborate is critical to the success of collaboration. The desire to address gaps in service delivery and resource enlargement are the principal motivations to collaborate for NPOS. Forced or incentive driven partnerships designed by funders may have motivations that are unclear and not in the interest of participants. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

12. Motivation to Collaborate • Is the organizing issue compelling enough to maintain interest and commitment? • Are there clear benefits to undertake collaboration. • Is there a clear value proposition. • Is the problem complex and cannot be addressed by a sole organization. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

13. #2 Environment is Ready • Conditions are favourable in the external environment. • Funding is available. • Convenor and convening leadership is seen as legitimate and acceptable. • Collaboration members have developed collaboration skills and built some inter-organizational trust from previous efforts. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

14. # 3 Power issues addressed head on • Collaboratives are consumed with power and turf issues! Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

15. Power • Boundary negotiation is constant-boundaries around the problem, the boundary around the system -interpersonal boundaries. • Ambiguity reigns- attribution of power must be worked through in decision-making processes, policy and governance structures. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

16. Some people believe conflict is not desirable in any relationship or organization! Is that possible? Is that desirable? Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

17. Collaborative organizations are created to explore and mediate conflicts. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

18. There are always power dynamics in any human system. With each autonomous partner, the likelihood of power issues increase exponentially. Alliance type organizations are vehicles for conflict resolution. Their implicit purpose is to resolve conflict by naming it and working through it. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2008 www.joanroberts.com

19. Political Skills Successful coalition developers require political and networking abilities. Political competence is needed to understand and resolve conflicts of interest and value dilemmas inherent in systems made up of multiple organizations, each seeking to maintain autonomy while jointly interacting. Political savvy can help change agents to manage their own roles and values in respect to those power dynamics. It can help them avoid being co-opted by certain collaborative members and thus losing their neutrality. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

20. #4 Get the Right People • The persons and organizations that have an interest in the problem. • Those with resources (not only financial) that can address the problem. • Those that have the skills to co-create boundaries and negotiate the creation of a new structure. • Organizational representatives that can act. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

21. Lateral Leadership Leadership across and power with- rather than up and down- is what leadership looks like in a collaborative, whether shown by member or staff. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

22. Leadership and Skill Building • Inter-organizational collaboration requires a range of skills, often high-level. This complex skill-set includes all the skills required to run programs and organizations, and the ability to deal with a high level of conflict and change leadership competencies. Programs and training need to be made widely available to enable the people who will lead successful collaboration. • Looking at collaboration in the for-profit sector highlighted another important lesson: poor relationship building among organizations is what leads to a failure in their collaborative efforts. Relationships are built over time. Time and energy for this must be allocated. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

23. Tent of Collaborative Competencies Lateral Leadership Content Expertise Human resource management Pattern Recognition Problem solving Systems Change Adult Education/Facilitation Emotional Intelligence Project Management Financial Management Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

24. #5 Terminology Jargon Agreement about the terms used to describe collaborative arrangements and the target issues must be a widespread goal. Professional jargon impedes trust building across sectors and with lay people. Organizations should move towards adapting the same definitions. Until these terms have been widely agreed upon, an emerging collaboration even needs to develop shared definitions of collaboration before beginning their conversation. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

25. # 6 Find Common Ground • Development of a unique purpose and common vision is critical. • Begin the process with self-interest but to continue -need to transcend difference to find common ground. • Along with an agreed to common vision, the project needs clear measureable goals and objectives that can be linked to outcomes. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

26. #7 Sufficiency of Financial and Other Resources • Financial resources are necessary for the extra time to build inter-organizational relationships in a collaborative process. Insufficient staffing prohibits the organizing of meetings and the work to implement intervention strategies. • Smaller agencies although motivated to collaborate to access needed resources often have little extra financial capacity to invest.But they bring skills and expertise, information, and connections to target populations. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

27. #8 Leadership and Participation • Everyone in a multi-organizational collaborative experiences some form of culture shock and culture clash. Culture is a belief system-organizations and sectors all have many covert beliefs that only come to the surface when you work with people from outside your group. • Collaboratives need lateral leadership processes and role modeling tobridge the diverse cultures, perform boundary-spanning functions, and reveal and challenge assumptions that limit thinking and action. Change management tools from OD and adult education can help work through difference. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

28. Leadership and Participation • Literature scans in Inter-agency Services Collaboration Project (Wellesley Institute) found that good collaborative processes are necessary to improved outcomes. • Participative processes are needed to develop a vision and for governance especially decision making, trust building and the co-ordination work amongst multiple partners. These processes can facilitate the egalitarian leadership and commitment needed amongst disparate and autonomous partners to co-create a new mission and collaborative organization. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

29. # 9 Role and Structural Clarity • Members need to understand their roles, rights and responsibilities and how to carry out their responsibilities. • A flexible governance framework needs to be developed to ensure participation, clear roles, and the policies needed to support the work. • Implementation strategies require a flexible organizational structure and multi-talented generalists as staff. • Once developed, its wise to formalize arrangements in a collaborative agreement. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

30. Often collaborative members assume collaboratives are organized the same way as the organization they work in or a collaborative is just a process not an organization. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

31. Collaboratives can function as democratic organizations if they are organized on a power sharing model. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2008 www.joanroberts.com

32. Organizations of Origin Co-ordination Team Comprised ofstaffand chairpersons Democratic TSStructure Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

33. What kind of work do organizations do? Organizations manage knowledge to achieve desired results. They are comprised of knowledge specialists and generalists who manage the interface between specialties. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

34. What kind of work do collaboratives do? A trans-organizational system ( technical term for a collaborative) manages knowledge too. It must be managed in a similar fashion to any organization comprised of specialists, but with TSs it is organizations that hold specialized knowledge rather than individuals. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

35. Some collaborative members assume the work of a member of an alliance, coalition or partnership is to only attend meetings and share information! Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

36. The work of any organization is to transform knowledge. You do that through decision making. If no decisions are ever made, then the process is not an organization or a system. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2008 www.joanroberts.com

37. # 10 Communication • Co-ordination of communication among partners and partnership activities, and the preparation of materials makes it possible for multiple, independent people and organizations to work together. • When there are only monthly meetings, ongoing communication can be supplemented with newsletters, e-mail broadcasts intranets and other technologies. • Maintaining a group memory is critical if there is member turnover. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

38. Model of Trans-Organizational Effectiveness A collaborative is built and maintained using 3 process streams: • People processes • Governance processes • Management/co-ordination processes Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

39. 3 Process Streams Trust Building Processes Co-ordination Processes Governance Processes Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

40. Trust Building or People Processes As with any human system you need to build a team or a group where people feel safe and a sense of belonging. Trust-building processes are used to help build relationships among the individuals who come together to form a new group. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

41. Group Development Theory Collaboratives need to incorporate group development theory into day to day activities. Most known theory is Brian Tuckman’s stage theory: • Forming • Storming • Norming • Performing Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

42. Trust Building Processes Tools include: • Ice breakers-openers or closers-round robin • Value discussions • Visioning and strategic planning processes • Dialogue • Adult education principles • Roles of group members • Social events • Storytelling and myth building • Process consulting Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

43. What is Governance? • Governance process are organizational structures, decision making processes, and communication strategies. Governance structures and processes are concerned with and use power.

44. Tools to accomplish these objectives: • Contracting • Terms of Reference • Policy-making • Decision-making • Conflict Resolution • Regular Meeting Management • Collaborative Agreement

45. Why is Co-ordination the third leg? • Another thinking trap is that an alliance, coalition or partnership can be organized and maintained with very little co-ordination effort! • This set of processes and tools is essential for the work that must occur to form a TS and keep it operating and implementing its vision and strategic plan. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2010

46. A collaborative needs more co-ordination not less, since it needs to transcend so many organizational boundaries and interests. Joan Roberts Consulting, 2008 www.joanroberts.com

47. Tools for Work Co-ordination Include: • Note or minute taking • Logic models • Work plans • Timelines • Communications mechanisms (i.e., e-mail, listserv, internal newsletters, meeting agenda packages) • Large group meetings • Work groups and subcommittees or virtual teams • Hiring staff or contracting with a consultant to coordinate the work needed to keep the TS going Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

48. Adizes' 10 stages of an organizational life-cycle Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

49. Organizations must cycle back to stability to avoid decline Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com

50. Story of the Canadian Geese: As each bird flaps its wings, it creates an uplift for the bird following. By flying in a ‘V’ formation, the whole flock adds 71% greater flying range than if the bird flew alone. Joan Roberts Consulting www.joanroberts.com