The partnership dance

Responding to my recent posting, 'Find your issue', Declan Baharini of the Wansbeck Initiative writes:

"For an LSP, process and 'issues' go hand in hand - you have to have the right people in the right places in a partnership, everyone must be clear why they are there and what their role is and how the partnership works and fits together - they must take responsibility and must be open to challenge and scrutiny. Our partnership recognised its faults in a partnership review event last year and has been working hard to revise the operation, structure, membership, themed groups, communications and training in our partnership over the last year. This was not just about process, but also about building trust, respect, understanding and commitment.

"In terms of issues, we have been using the National Floor Target Action Planning Toolkit (NRU/ODPM) for a year now within the LSP and our themed partnerships, which is all about identifying the performance against key issues, evidence, what works, options appraisal for action, any gaps and the interventions to fill the gaps and I find it a useful driver for action on issues as it highlight performances, evidence and shows up where there is no effective action on key issues.

"On Learning, for example, because of this process we actually commissioned a programme based on best practice and adapted for Wansbeck through NRF (the first ever NRF commission - and the way that the Government is now pushing NRF it seems) - it is called Aspiration, Action and Achievement and is a programme running across 16 schools, with a heavy emphasis on family and community involvement and support for learning, as well as extended learning opportunities and out of hours activities which communities and other partners can be involved in.

"The programme went through rigorous challenge and scrutiny as it developed and has engaged all partners at some point to ensure that it is robust and can add the maximum value to the work of the partnership in supporting and engaging young people and their families in our most deprived communities. Perhaps this may be something we can report on in the future as a good example of process and issue being inextricably linked and actually helping to make a good idea/programme better."

Thanks, Declan. It seems to me that not enough partnerships challenge themselves constructively on these matters.

On the topic of who the appropriate members of a partnership are, I know this is a subject that taxes a lot of the people I talk with. One of the concerns they have is that the people who turn up to the meetings are not the 'right' people in the sense that they are not the real decision-makers or the key influencers. Another concern is how often these representatives change as people move on, or simply delegate the responsibility to someone else, and gradually things just seem to fritter away.

I understand these concerns, but my feeling is that the best way to tackle this is by fully engaging the people who are there in the first place. Constantly looking over their shoulders, trying to pick out more appropriate partners, is a bit like casting your eyes around the dance floor while you are with your current partner to spot the people you'd prefer to be close to. That's something of an insult to the person you're dancing with, and will do nothing to improve your dancing skills.

As Stephen Stills once sung: "If you can't be with the one you love, love the one you're with."

Adapting two of the key principles that are used in Open Space meetings (with acknowledgement to Harrison Owen), I would suggest:

1. Every one who comes is the right person.

2. Acknowledge the law of two feet.

Partnership will never work effectively merely by prescriptive representation. It works through engagement. The difference between a successful partnership and a failing one, in the final analysis, is that the successful one inspired enough of the right people to take constructive action to create a desirable future.

Our job as partnership enablers is not to subpoena this or that Chief Executive to attend the meetings of the coordinating committee - it is to generate enough passion and excitement about what we are doing to ensure that every mover and shaker in the vicinity is tearing the door down to participate.

One of your greatest allies in creating a sense of 'I must be part of this' is that very dance partner you may have been denigrating. The people who come round the table to take part, whoever they are, are the potential champions, the igniters of passion in their own organisations, among their own community. They are tinderboxes which, once sparked, can help light bigger, brighter fires.

Conversely, if they are not engaged, they will walk away, and they should be allowed to; that's the law of two feet. When I do values work with a partnership group, inevitably they will come up with words like 'responsibility' and 'accountability'. These qualities are vitally important but, like trust, they can't be demanded, only earned.

Perhaps the best dance analogy is a large public ceilidh. Not everyone takes to the dance floor at first, and the way these things work you may find yourself facing a row of complete strangers (who, let's be honest, don't look as if they have much about them - what have you let yourself in for here?). But, guided by a skilful caller and roused by a spirited band of musicians, pretty soon the whole room is alive with excitment, and all the people who sat with their arms folded on the sidelines are now jigging, hopping and hollering with huge verve and enthusiasm.

And so are you.

Country matters

Leicestershire Rural Partnership kindly sent me a copy of their booklet Rural Services - a good practice guide along with their rural strategy. The guide is full of practical ideas which could be replicated elsewhere. Among a whole range of partnership intiatives the ones that stood out for me were:

Wycliffe House - a one stop shop for voluntary and community services, self funded from the budgets of the nine tenant organisations. By getting together these voluntary sector bodies have been able to provide a high quality and welcoming centre with the convenience of several services under one roof.

Chill Out Bus - a mobile youth club custom built with disabled access in response to the requests of young people across the district of Harborough. The bus is available, with driver, free of charge to all voluntary groups in the district.

Community Playbus - a converted double decker bus which provides both a play area for all ages and a multi-purpose meeting area that can be used by community groups in North West Leicestershire. Original funding came from Children in Need, Leicestershire County Council and the Rural Development Fund.

Mobile ICT Training - By putting together a portable set of equipment that can quickly transform any venue into a teaching centre, this project has been able to deliver 'first rung' ICT training to rural communities wherever they are. The project involves learning champions who assist in the planning and delivery of courses, aiming to match local needs and aspirations in a responsive way. At the time the guide was published over 4,500 learners in more than 100 localities have benefited.

New Life for Redundant Buildings Grant Initiative - This scheme came from concern about the way traditional farm buildings have fallen into disrepair partly as a result of general decline in the sector and partly because of the growth of larger scale, capital intensive farming. It provides grants to help convert redundant buildings into new economic uses, combining conservation with employment opportunities. The initiative has proved extremely popular and has stimulated the imagination: completed projects to date include the conversion of a 19th century stables into an organic food supplier, a cattle pen into a rural training centre and a disused railway station into a mail order stick insect supplier!

The cover of the guide shows a photograph of the lovely All Saints Church in Sleepy Magna with a billboard outside displaying the notice: 'Post Office open Tuesday and Thursday 9 - 12.'

When the original post office in the village was closed and sold as a private residence, the vicar of the church decided that a post office service could be fitted into the church vestry. She also had the bright idea of placing a coffee area in the church so that people could meet and chat while using the post office.

Her idea, however, would never have seen the light of day without good partnership working. She got together a steering group of interested parties to discuss the practicalities, including funding options. The Post Office came up with money from their Capital Subsidy Grant and other agencies weighed in, notably Leicestershire Rual Partnership, Leicestershire County Council and the Rural Community Council. As a result the villagers not only kept their post office service, they also found a new social centre, and Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council have even started to run a help desk from the church to allow local people to access council services.

Thanks, Leicestershire Rural Partnership, for sending me this guide, and for the great work you are stimulating in your patch.

I would love to hear from others in rural areas about creative projects you have launched as a result of great partnerships.

Find your issue

Thanks to everyone who has been in touch this week, not least Imogen Potter of Government Office for the South West who kindly sent me a publication called The Road to EX4, a remarkable collaborative effort bringing together fifty very different accounts from people living or working in that postcoded area. The project started as a proposal to the Royal Mail Stepping Stones Fund and grew to include volunteers, various community groups, writing workshops, and the local media. The book became "a chorus of voices" from the area. I look forward to reading it.

I've just come back from working with a couple of very different partnerships in the North East of Scotland. Very different, but like so many of the groups I have worked with, both until very recently had a fixation with process over issue.

I define issue as "a specific problem, topic or challenge" and process as "a way of acting or operating".

Of course both are fundamental to the success of a partnership, but those of you who have seen my Partnership Works model will know that The Issue lies at the centre of the model, and everything spreads out from there.

I'm constantly surprised to be still coming across partnerships that do not seem to be quite clear what their purpose is. Too often they appear to have come together for political reasons, or because partnership is fashionable, or because funding is in the offing, or because some distant authority told them that's how they must work. Well, my guess is that none of these partnerships are going to last very long until they find out what it is they are really there for, and that should be something tangible and challenging.

Every partnership must form around a specific issue, usually some sort of problem or challenge. It is important that all partners are clear what the issue is.

Finding and stating the common challenge allows everyone to be clear about the purpose of the partnership.

It also provides the opportunity for engagement between partners as everyone is involved in finding the solution to the problem.

Every problem comes to you with a gift in its hand. You can enrol people effectively around a genuine issue, because you can awaken their passion to solve the problem or commit to an improvement. Otherwise the partnership is just an empty framework.

So don't get too obsessed about how the partnership is going to be structured and organised, and who is going to be on this or that committee, or panel, or theme group, and who the decision makers are - at least until you have agreed why you are there in the first place.