This article originally appeared in the Municipal Journal
There are many barriers which stand in the way of organisations forming useful partnerships. Veredus director Jonathan Flowers looks at how the difficulties have been overcome in Kent.
Organisational friction. We all know it exists - it's really surprisingly hard for two organisations to work together - all sorts of little things get in the way. A slightly different budget cycle. Different ways of making decisions (and no organisation really makes decisions the way its constitution says is does). Different things are valued by different organisations, and unintended signals are sent.
We all know that even within one organisation these things happen - the (in)famous silo mentality isn't always about a lack of will to work together, often it's simply that people with a busy schedule take a path of least resistance and it's just harder to be make things happen with another organisation (or a bit of your organisation) than to do something yourself.
Our regulatory regime is moving to force us to do the things that our better informed customers want, our less-informed customers really need, and our better members and officers have wanted to do for ages - actually work together to make tgings better, and better value for the people who depend on us. But the fact that we want tio do it (and increasingly have to do it) doesn't make it easier.
One place that's working hard to crack this is Kent. Kent has a Leadership Development Programme which draws together senior officers and members from across Kent councils, blue light services, health, voluntary sector and even business to explore what it means to be a local leader. It's a top-class leadership programme, backed by two business schools, and with the active engagement of commercial partners. Participants work together over two years, forming extremely useful cross-organisational relationships (trust, understanding) and working on real projects that bring a reality to the concept of local leadership for a place.
The first cohort of Kent leaders recently held a workshop run by one of the commercial partners, Veredus, (the others are Accenture, Cap Gemeni, Edexel and LBI). Commercial partner workshops intersperse academic input modules from Kent University Business School and Tanaka: Imperial College Management School. This particular workshop focussed on differences between organisation, in a structured way. In a confidential contact folk from a wide range of organisations were able to compare notes on what makes their organisation tick. Some key themes emerged:
The Unwritten Rules
All organisations have things that are unstated, un-inductable, and things that work because 'everybody knows': except that everybody doesn’t. And partners especially don't. Really opening ourselves up to partnership working means being prepared to share our unwritten rules, some of which may be a bit uncomfortable, because some of our unwritten rules may not make us look good. The Kent cohort were able to share these, in a Chatham house context, bound by a commitment to use their insights for the good of the locality.
Differences in what's needed
Some organisations require their top managers to stand back from day-to-day, to keep a broad perspective - they will value people with a strategic grasp, and insights that move the whole organisation forward. Other organisations place a premium on command and control - even at the most senior levels, and there's an expectation - even an enjoyment - in very effectively managing a crises.
The effectiveness of engagement at a personal level
Organisations have difficulty working together. People don't or at least the people with the ability to reach senior management positions within their organisations, armed with a bit of good intention, don't. They can very quickly establish a sense of common purpose and make it real. And the whole point of the Kent Leadership Programme is to create these relationships, and add value to them by the external inputs.
The dramatic impact of individual leadership
Even in large bureaucracies with massive constraints of budget, regulation, inspection and statutory requirements the leader sets a tone for the whole organisation that manifests itself in lots of ways: risks you can take and get away with it, ays to get people on board, how to make things happen. A change of leader is hard enough to cope with, let alone the partner organisations for which the ripple effects will be harder to make sense of. There's no better topic for discussion amongst leaders destined for the very highest positions.
About the author
Jonathan Flowers is a director of Veredus and leaders our local government practice. He is formerly deputy chief executive of Befordshire County Council and has worked in local government and in the public sector.