Strategic Partnerships
A Working Notebook

offers animation and support services for various forms of partnership. We have helped clients reach out in new ways to public groups or to work more effectively with their memberships for example. We have organized multi-stakeholder planning and policy exercises that required new forms of partnering around particular issues and needs. The following is the Table of Contents and Preface for 'Strategic Partnerships, A Working Notebook' (1999). We produced this working notebook to explain how we approach partnerships and for clients to use in their particular situations. The notebook is currently being updated and will be available in the spring of 2006 for $49.50 plus GST and handling charges.

Table of Contents

A.  Background to the Notebook
B.  Partnership, 1990's and Canada
C.  Operational Principles for Effective Partnership
a generic overview of basic principles for strategic partnerships
D.  Guidelines for Maintaining Effective Partnerships
practical suggestions for planning and implementing partnerships
E.  Partnership Case Studies
descriptions of actual partnerships with background and lessons
F.  Resources
additional materials to supplement the Notebook
G. Community Communications Group
reference information on the author and

Preface

The Strategic Partnerships notebook is a working guide for creating and maintaining collaborative relations between groups and organizations, where the partnerships are focused on common goals or are a response to common issues (events, problems, change, developments) that affect a community-of-interest or the community-at-large.

It provides general principles and detailed suggestions on how partnerships can be better understood and made more effective.

Strategic Partnerships will help organizations, associations and government agencies carry out their mandates where the active cooperation of such bodies is needed. It is a resource for people working in socio-economic areas that are facing increasing workloads with declining resources. If some form of cooperative enterprise or working interaction is needed, where one organization can not succeed alone, then Strategic Partnerships and Community Communications Group can help.

This resource is not a template for structuring all partnerships, as it is impossible to predict what should be done in all situations. It does suggest significant ways that stakeholders can synchronize action to be more efficient, effective and economical. There are certain mechanisms that can be used to support a partnership, but the overall approach can never be mechanistic or simply imposed on a situation.

In actual practice, creating effective partnership is more like taking the lead in a jazz combo. There is a structure to the music; there are set elements; but the best jazz is improvised and the quality of the music depends on a combination of varying features, not just the underlying pattern. Just as good music is always unfinished in that it is constantly played differently and modified constantly, so is the 'score' of a good partnership.

Section B of the Notebook introduces a cultural and political context within which partnerships function in Canada today.

Section C briefly describes important guiding principles for partnerships.

Section D of the Notebook sets out, in some detail, what is important in managing effective partnerships within the requirements of current political and economic conditions in Canada.

Section E includes a few examples of different partnerships, with a brief account of 'lessons learned' and other descriptive information gleaned from the experiences.

The Appendices provide additional resources and supportive documentation to think about before forming a partnership.

Strategic Partnerships was written to accompany training and advisory exercises. It documents much of what our input would be on helping organizations with their cooperative enterprises. However, if this notebook is used independent of professional support, we would appreciate hearing how effective it has been in helping with formative partnerships. Our intention is that this resource be a growing and evolving one, always adapting to organizational needs and abilities.

The Essence of Partnership

A vision of partnership, as 'a dynamic results-driven process' underlies Strategic Partnerships. The thinking behind the guidelines in this document is oriented by a sense that partnerships constantly evolve and change, but are essentially collective efforts to accomplish particular goals. Partnerships are seen as fluid combinations of many different factors and vectors, never static nor fixed, though ideally focused on what can and should be achieved. Dealing with partnerships means structuring specific resources and events but also managing an array of intangibles that converge and diverge as a partnership functions over time.

There is an architectural order, a musical 'score', to partnerships though, that can be understood and facilitated to help make these social constructions function or work better. By architecture we mean the interconnection or relationship of various parts, a form that holds diverse elements together. Unlike architecture of a building or an organization, the architecture of a partnership is less structured and defined, as it often shifts with the changing mood and perceptions of participants or the fluctuating demands of situations - yet there is an order to it nonetheless.

There are other social constructions that we often treat as fixed phenomena but which are similar evolving processes; family - organization - workplace - community - nation. Each, like a partnership, are seen to be structured phenomena, with rules of order and means of sanctioning behaviour, histories and specific characteristics that distinguish one from another. Yet all are in constant metamorphosis, in transition, evolving, emphasizing different qualities at different times and responding to different environmental pressures.

A 'results-driven process' model, therefore, can give guidance to planning, preparation and implementation of a partnership in a manner that is adaptable but concrete. As a wise old sage once said, "If you know where you're going, you'll always find the best way of getting there!"

In our experience, a central element of successful partnership is participatory communication -interaction that involves and attracts, educates and energizes, all those with a stake in the issues involved. The means to facilitating effective partnership - and therefore accomplishing the goals of a cooperative enterprise - is productive, inclusive communication among all the partners.

Participatory communication creates functional and ephemeral bridges between the players, enabling them to share responsibility and authority, to accomplish the tasks involved. This does not mean that communication is a magical solution to the difficulties facing all partnerships. Nor will communication guarantee cooperation. However, the major constant in a process of building and maintaining organizational cooperation is communication that leads to both overt and subtle understanding and, inevitably, to the exposure of particular interests and strategic actions.

While there is no simple blueprint for effective partnerships, there are lessons and simple truths that do lead more often than not to successful outcomes from a partnership. What has been proven true or valuable and therefore what informs the content of Strategic Partnerships is the value of:

• including all stakeholders,
• clearly defining expectations,
• sharing responsibilities,
• facilitating open communications, and
• keeping a balance between process and content requirements.

For music, once the score is read it is up to the players, singers and conductor to put life into the piece. Similarly, it is up to the people within a partnership to make a go of their efforts. It will be their passion, commitment, and faith that drive the partnership and give it its character. The mix of individual and institutional factors, timing and socializing, chaos and planning, will determine whether a partnership succeeds. It will be the combination of intuition and skill, thought and feeling that make the process function.

The suggestions and guidelines in Strategic Partnerships should be treated as music to be played.

Director: Dennis Lewycky
Phone/fax (204) 453-2605
dennisgl@mts.net

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