Work in progress: NET collaboration toolkit to grow our collaborative leadership practice

In the build up Leading, together: Growing and developing collaborative leadership practice in March, in the spirit of collaboration and an ambition to work out loud, we’re sharing more what we’re thinking and doing to design and get ready for the event. This time we’re sharing how we’re getting on with the collaboration toolkit/resource and next time we’ll say more about the event itself (design, thinking, planning, etc).

North East Together collaboration toolkit — work in progress

By the end of the year we’re looking to publish a North East Together collaboration toolkit. We know collaboration is a complex, tricky business and our aim is to create some resources to help us with the nuts and bolts of it and help us develop our collaborative leadership practice.

We’re taking a three-part¹, iterative, co-creation process to harness the wisdom and experience of North East Together members so the published toolkit will be made for us, by us. The NET team is getting the ball rolling by creating version one, which we take to the March event to explore, see what’s missing, what we need add, and maybe design new tools to incorporate. We’ll take this version two to the June event, repeat the process to create version three. We’ll publish the toolkit using Creative Commons so we can be clear it belongs to us (North East Together) and how we can all use it.

The best of three

In crafting, creating, curating the toolkit, we’re drawing on the best of three

• things what we’ve done and witnessed ourselves including at North East Together events and the Collaboration Action Fund collaborations
• what other people have done, written up and shared — here we’re following our passions and interests rummaging about in material collected over the years²
• academic papers and available evidence — to provide some rigour and backing to what we’re saying

Through all this we’re making new connections — connecting ideas — gaining a deeper understanding and generally making sense of this thing we call collaboration.

How it’s shaping up

We’re crafting the toolkit around the collaboration model that emerged from the Collaboration Action Fund activity and evaluation created by NET team member Dr Jo James adapted from 2015 research by Bryson, Crosby and Stone. The main sections are below. We’ve shared the original wording from the collaboration model (in bold), and some notes about what this means and what content we’ll likely include. This is very much work in progress.

Trigger or motives for collaboration — We know why we are collaborating, and me and my organisation are ready to collaborate. We understand ourselves well and we’re prepared to share who we are with others so together we are ready to collaborate. This is about making sure each individual and organisation is in the right place to collaborate with others, and is prepared to be open and vulnerable with each other to get off to a good start. ‘Being in the right place’ might be being confident in ourselves, our organisation is healthy and not in crisis, having a plan, clear about our own motivations for wanting to collaborate with others, having the time and commitment to do it, open to working differently, with the right mindset (collaborative not competitive).

Initial alignment/relationships/vision — We have created the right conditions for our collaboration. We understand each other well and have been open and honest about who we are and what we want to do, about our relationships and our experience. We have enough shared goals, values and vision to work together. We can trust and have confidence in each other.

Collaboration structures and processes — We have activities, processes, systems and ways of working in place to nurture and care for the collaboration and our work together. This includes building trust, deepening our relationships, how we communicate, how we share information between us, ways of planning, tools, practices and systems we use for the work, using inclusive processes, how we reflect and learn together, how we make decisions. We know collaborating is complex and dynamic so we know we need to pay attention to all this and take a design approach, starting with the end in mind. This section connects strongly with governance one so we’re not sure at this stage what will sit here and what will sit there.

Capacity and competence — We have what we need to collaborate. We have the right skills, experience, knowledge, behaviours, mindset and time individually and together. We’re willing to learn and practice to get better at it. These include emotional intelligence/interpersonal understanding, openness to collaboration, a concern for the common good, ability to work across boundaries, strategic planning and teamwork.

Conflicts and tension — We know how, why and when conflicts and tensions can happen in collaborations. We have thought about this early on (while everything is going well!) and know what to do if they arise. We have strong relationships — because of the work we’ve done so far, the structures and processes we’ve designed and put in place and the capacities and competences we all bring — and we can be open and vulnerable with each other.

Goals, performance, indicators and outcomes — We know what we’re doing together. We have a plan and we know what good looks like. We have ways to measure what we’re doing, to reflect and learn, and to share what we’re doing with others.

Leadership — We have the leadership roles, practices and skills to nurture, care and lead our collaboration. This might include creating common purpose, acting as a sponsor or champion, creating and holding the right boundaries between your organisation and the collaboration, coping with the ambiguity, risk and loss of control when collaborating.

Governance — We have the right governance for our collaboration. We can manage our risks, accountability to others, and other legal matters. We have the right formal and informal agreements and documentation and decision making processes in place, and can allocate resources, and manage and report on our work as we need to.

This is to give you a taster of our thinking…these are our early thoughts so the wording needs to be tidied up and will likely change as we continue to work on it throughout February. We think most of the hard work will be not carried away and making it too long and unwieldy…we can but hope.

We’ll add to this as we go along, and we’re happy to receive comments, suggestions and contributions!

¹ yes, it is always threes with us

² I knew my squirrel-like³ tendencies would come into their own at some point

³ hoarding