Note from Collaborative Leadership in Place Cell 3
Summary of key points
Successful collaborations require good relationships, a shared vision, shared principles, shared behaviours and shared infrastructure, e.g., workforce development, and need to be enabling and facilitative, to adapt through learning and work to shared targets.
This is very different from co-operation or partnerships. Everyone has to be involved in developing the shared purpose and has to work together to achieve it.
Personal and relationships and behaviour can make or break collaborations, and need to be actively nurtured.
Shared infrastructure needs to be developed. Behavioural standards and joint leadership training can play a role, and shared language, values and principles and information are also important.
Shared leadership requires a change of culture and systems: engaging with end users through deep listening; involving front line staff, not just the top teams, in designing change; creating time and space for imagination about future possibilities; moving away from organisational plans with pre-determined goals; and different commissioning and procurement arrangements
In more detail
Steve Wyler, Co-convenor of a Better Way, said that some clear messages had emerged from the previous meeting, which had looked at how to sustain change when a leader moved on:
A clear, shared purpose across organisations which has become part of the culture is important.
A focus on the needs of communities and individuals served, not organisations, helps sustain that sense of purpose, and they need to be engaged and their voices heard.
Relationships are very important too, and the connector role need to be recognised and funded.
Lasting change only happens through distributive or shared leadership, and change becomes more embedded when leaders stop seeing themselves as organisational representatives and instead act as ‘systems leaders’ and ‘systems stewards’.
Great leadership is also about enabling others.
Governance can very important where formal partnerships are established, and succession planning is too often neglected.
He said that this time we were looking at what good collaboration, systems and distributive leadership looks like in practice, and introduced Dawn Plimmer from Collaborate as our main speaker.
Dawn said that Collaborate work with many place-based collaborations and often work with local authority partners. Complexity is their starting point: no one individual or organisation can address an issue alone and systems, not organisations come first. The collaborations they were involved in often have a geographical dimension and are seeking solutions at local level. It was important to put people first, not services. Collaborations are a long journey, she said, and can be challenging: there is often a ‘fox and chicken’ wariness between commissioners and those funded, for example.
She identified the following conditions for success
Relationships
Shared vision
Shared principles
Shared behaviours
Shared infrastructure, eg, workforce development.
The features of collaborative or systems leadership are:
It’s personal: ‘start with our own capacity, appetite and commitment for challenge’
Relationships and trust are key, which is why the most effective local action on Covid-19 took place where these existed.
A shared purpose must be developed.
Enabling and facilitating.
Adaptive, constantly reflecting, learning and finding new truths.
It’s about delivering shared results, with clear roles.
Today’s collaborators are pioneers towards what will hopefully become the new normal.
Covid-19 had galvanised the system, she said, and put an emphasis on trust and empathy, and the crisis had helped to turbo charge relationships and helped people to work beyond boundaries. The challenge now was to stop reverting to the old model, after the end of the crisis.
In discussion about what makes a good quality collaboration in practice, key points included:
The difference between collaboration, partnerships and co-operation
The key to shared leadership and collaboration is to ‘leave the lanyards at the door’. There had been many earlier attempts at collaboration, for example Local Strategic Partnerships, Our Place and Community Planning, but many so-called collaborations are just tick box exercises and unequal ‘partnerships’.
In partnerships, partners often start working together by signing up to a pre-determined agenda. Collaboration can only flourish where there is no set agenda and a shared purpose can be developed together.
As one person in the group put it, co-operation is where everyone is working alongside each other toward a number of independent goals to achieve particular targets. ‘In contrast,’ she said, ‘collaboration is where a group are working collectively toward a shared goal, parking the business of their particular organisation. In collaboration, rather than exchanges of information and resources, team members share, no-one pulls ahead of the pack and the success of each individual depends on the success of all.’
The importance of behaviours
To be successful, you need to ‘get the right people on the bus’ and work with people to make sure that everyone is on board. Behaviours are often the reason why collaborations failed to lead to systems leadership. People are not intentionally blocking, but can dig in behind entrenched positions, seeing change as criticism of what they have achieved.
Facilitation techniques with open-ended questions and the limitation of dominant voices can help. OPERA is one technique designed to create a functional meeting that is quick, efficient, and inclusive. OPERA stands for OWN, PAIR, EXPLAIN, RANK, and ARRANGE. Participants start with their own suggestions by writing down their ideas. Next, they are grouped into pairs to discuss their best suggestions. The best ideas are explained and shared with the whole group followed by a ranking of the proposals. Finally, similar ideas are arranged into groups.
A focus on users, not organisations
A focus on users can help break through entrenched organisational positions and is an important starting point for creating a shared sense of purpose. Deep listening is important, with an open-ended agenda. We heard of one example where families were brought in and asked, ‘What would good look like?’ Another example was where policy makers in senior roles held late night sessions with rough sleepers in what became deeply personal encounters, and this made a big difference for a while.
Shared infrastructure, including behavioural standards and shared language
Shared infrastructure can help to break down organisational boundaries and culture.
Cross-sector training is one element. There need to be shared learning spaces.
Shared language is important.
Shared values and principles are important. Behavioural standards might also play a role. For example, respect for each other rather than judging, recognising the value different partners can bring, curiosity, and not being risk averse.
Some shared governance might be needed.
A change in culture and systems
Commissioning and procurement and funding can be a block to systems leadership and must be addressed.
Organisational strategies and planning can create inflexibility and be a block. We heard of one example where a major organisation is trying to move away from 5 year strategies with clear plans and trying to align instead around common purpose and principles.
To create a shared sense of purpose, it helps to imagine the future you want to see together, setting aside the practicalities, as set out here by Robert Hopkins, the founder of the Transitions Town Movement, and author of From what is to what if. He says using imagination needs time and space and for us not to feel under constant surveillance.
There needs to be an organisational shift to focus on people. Part of systems leadership is to give permission to the front line to become systems leaders. The principles for collaboration can be agreed at a high level but change can only be achieved by front-line staff.
Participatory budgeting is a useful technique and one we might explore in further discussions.
Reflecting on the discussion, Cate Newnes-Smith, the thought leader for the group, said she would particularly take away the thinking on shared infrastructure, including shared information, shared language and behaviour. Steve Wyler agreed that shared infrastructure was important and that there were very few good examples of cross-sectoral infrastructure at present.