Reporting on a Fresh Conversation on Partnering: The Need for Bridges and Boats
By Claude Vuille-Lessard
On the afternoon of the Tuesday July 17, Asia P3 Hub, INSEAD Alumni Association and Singapore Management University (SMU) convened 85 participants from different sectors for a Fresh Conversation on Partnering: The Need for Bridges & Boats. Hosted by INSEAD, this event was the first of an upcoming series of events aimed to provide an interactive and unique space for practitioners to explore fresh perspectives and new angles for navigating partnering complexity.
Focused on raising awareness on the mindset shifts needed to accelerate and encourage successful partnerships that achieve sustainability and innovation, Asia P3 Hub and the Fresh Conversation team is now looking to expand this conversation into a series of sector-specific gatherings. Are you or do you know practitioners working within the healthcare, education, technology or green finance sectors? We would love to hear from you and to know if you are a bridge or a boat! Email us at hello@asiap3hub.org or contact us through our Facebook, LinkedIn or Twitter!
What exactly do we mean by bridges and boats?
In her 2017 article, “Cultural Brokerage and Creative Performance in Multicultural Teams”, INSEAD Professor Sujin Jang examined the composition of multicultural teams and how multicultural individuals enable their team members to better collaborate, enhancing the team’s performance, creative and effective outcomes. These multicultural individuals or cultural brokers approach and facilitate cultural differences in two ways:
- Bridges (cultural insiders):
- Have backgrounds that match with other monocultural members;
- Leverage the group’s resources by bridging, integrating and translating different perspectives.
2. Boats (cultural outsiders):
- Have backgrounds that don’t overlap with any of the other group members;
- Help the group navigate differences by eliciting new ideas and information that otherwise wouldn’t have been shared.
While Prof. Jang modeled and tested this framework on the basis of multicultural individuals who have internalised two or more cultural schemas by having lived or worked in more than one country, we can expand the concept of cultural brokerage to the realm of multi-sector partnerships in which culture is translated to different sectors (public, private and civil).
Defining whether they’re a bridge or a boat can help practioners understand how to use their own cultural baggage and experience to improve the way they partner across different sectors to solve the region’s most complex issues.
Bridges and Boats: A Storytelling Circle
Five storytellers shared their interpretation of bridges and boats. Before opening the discussion to the practitioners in the room, storytellers reflected on how this framework resonates with their experience working intentionally across different sectors to create innovative and sustainable solutions. Moderated by Mr. Teymoor Nabili, this storytelling panel featured Ms. Reshmi Rajendran (Head of Sustainable Innovation for INSEAD’s National Alumni Association), Mr. Bruno Occhipinto (Director, Strategy & New Business Development at Philips), Ms. Christy Davis (Executive Director of Asia P3 Hub) and Mr. Sriven Naidu (Director of Programme Development & Partnerships for SMU). The main points are summarised below.
“Boats” and “Bridges” : A Promising Framework to Improve Impact
While the concept of ‘cultural brokerage’ has been studied by Prof. Jang within a strict national interpretation of ‘culture’ in mind, all storytellers agreed that the discussion can be taken further. They expanded this framework to organisational and sectoral contexts — in a sense, ‘cultures’ in their own right.
Sriven Naidu pointed out that each organisation and sector within the same country operates with a ‘culture’ of its own, defined by the underlying values, visions, norms, working language, systems, symbols, beliefs and habits.
Christy Davis shared about the founding of Asia P3 Hub, which recently celebrated its second anniversary. Facing increasingly complex challenges, practitioners from different sectors and organisations are aspiring to come together to combine resources in new ways to create a multiplier effect. This begins with her own team — intentionally bring together a diversity of members of different national origins, ages and personal and professional experiences.
On the other hand, the storytellers also recognised, as Prof. Jang mentioned in a recent interview, that cultural diversity can potentially stand in the way of high levels of creativity, innovation and effectiveness. In the case of multi-sector partnerships, a lack of direction, awareness and knowledge of how to broker and operate multi-sector partnerships can increase challenges and conflicts.
For Christy Davis, using a consultative approach and intentionally maintaining an ongoing conversation has helped leverage and combine experiences from various stakeholders to create mutual value. Bruno Occhipinti agreed that we need to pay attention to cultural differences across various sectors and organisations while brokering partnerships. For example, something as simple as time can be interpreted and valued very differently for multinational corporations (MNCs), which tend to follow a very tight timeline, with stricter pressure on fiscal accountability, than, for example, non-government organisations (NGOs), who may interpret and appreciate time more flexibly. This is understandable, given their intimate work with beneficiaries and communities who may operate at a different pace. While this can lead to friction, successful cultural partnership brokerages have also brought valuable insights into new emerging markets. For MNCs and the for-profit sector, partnering with NGOs is valuable in order to develop a better understanding and access to remote communities and important stakeholders that MNCs typically cannot reach.
It was agreed that labelling roles in simple and evocative terms like bridges and boats can help raise awareness, spur discussion and clarify partnership dynamics. Reshmi Rajendran mentioned that it could help practitioners to identify which roles they can and are willing to play, according to the prevailing context and their experience.
Cultural Brokerage: The Need for a Neutral and Safe Space to Partner Equitably Towards a Bigger Common Purpose
As we learned during Asia P3 Hub’s Springboard 2018, one of the ingredients of a successful partnership is the ability of all partners to negotiate at equal value even though material resources are not quantifiable in the same way. It all comes down to respecting the three core values of a partnership: transparency, equity and mutual benefits.
Managing a diversity of interpretations and expectations coming from (and even within!) the various sectors and organisations involved can be challenging when trying to broker a partnership. For Reshmi Rajendran, “integrating and eliciting information should be a norm for people to work efficiently together, by agreeing on a common language and agenda, instead of focusing on the differences between sectors.”
Bruno Occhipinti tapped into the notion that bridges and boats can break down the sectoral cultural barriers and challenges MNCs and NGOs face when working together. As NGOs and MNCs are still learning to work together, he believes that both need to show their respect for each other’s individual and common commitments. From the perspective of MNCs, he suggested, it is important that NGOs set milestones on the journey towards the long term goal. While reaching a common timeline can be challenging, leveraging a design thinking approach helps acknowledge the roles of bridges and boats in the facilitation of a partnership.
Christy Davis concurred on the necessity of creating a safe space for different sectors and players to come together. “The ground may not be common, but stakeholders can agree on the shared value territory and how they will each contribute to it. It takes intentionality to build a common language, trust and relationships to stay the course.” Therefore, defining the roles of bridges and boats can be effective tools to facilitate and gain transparency during this process.
Getting Real and Designing in Complex Systems
In the second part of the event, participants stepped into the roles of bridges and boats to explore ways to tackle the complexity of building a partnership to solve a complex and systemic issues. Alexander Lau of the Public Service Division’s Innovation Lab (Prime Minister’s Office) facilitated this engaging systemic-centric /design-thinking workshop.
As the participants formed teams, one could clearly witness the wide diversity of practitioners present in the room. Participants hailed from various multicultural origins and sectors ranging from healthcare, finance, tech, environment, economic development, WASH (water sanitation and management), and international development to organisations like MNCs, consulting firms, government and public agencies, foundations, small/medium enterprises, social enterprises and universities.
In an enjoyable and realistic simulation, participants worked to provide solutions on the issue of improving hawker centres (Singaporean open food courts) by considering many levels of stakeholders. To do this, they were divided in 3 groups representing 3 levels of analysis for designing solutions, products or services in a complex system: micro (personal), macro (relational) and meta (organisational). Many participants reflected that this was particularly interesting, given that everyone in the room felt a strong investment in this issue!
For Mr Lau, “to be successful, public sector transformation can be done by promoting three key innovation mindsets: 1. empathise with all stakeholders to better diagnose issues; 2. collaborate across agency and department silos and with all stakeholders for holistic and cohesive outcomes; and 3. experiment to test assumptions and gain evidence-based validation for our proposals”. He compares his work to building partnerships with a wide range of public agencies. Putting these mindsets to good use has helped his unit broker product and policy development for complex public issues.
This workshop was followed by a networking session and a facilitated white-boarding conversation with Anne Lochoff, Asia P3 Hub Business Advisor, to discuss participant feedback about bridges and boats they know, and topics for future Fresh Conversations. These include health, green finance, education and telecom.
Are YOU a cultural broker — whether a bridge (cultural insider) or a boat (cultural outsider)? Do you know any? Have you brokered partnerships or are you interested in building relationship within and across sectors while integrating or eliciting information to create innovative and sustainable solutions?
We are looking to expand our community of practitioners who share these interests and mindsets. Be in touch through our Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter or our website to find out how you too can be involved!
Asia P3 Hub expresses its sincere thanks and appreciation to the moderator, storytellers and partners previously listed and all participants. In particular, Graham Hastie, Associate Dean of Degree Programmes, INSEAD, and Prasanna de Silva, Sr. Director of Operations, Impact & Engagement, Asia Pacific, World Vision International for their opening remarks and continuous support.
Full report was written by Asia P3 Hub’s Advisor for Projects and Programmes, Claude Vuille-Lessard, with sincere thanks to Sriven Naidu (Director of Programme Development & Partnerships for SMU) and to Muying Ser (Regional Operations Coordinator for Save the Children) for their additional reporting.
Claude holds a Master in Public Administration, with experience as a project manager, organisational development consultant and volunteer. Originally from Canada and in Singapore since late 2012, she excels as a self-starter and out-of-the box thinker. She has worked to improve corporate social responsibility and address community issues through capacity building, outreach projects and stakeholder engagement. More recently, she has committed to encourage multi-sector partnerships create social impact, particularly through social entrepreneurship, philanthropy and women empowerment
