Leading Collaboration and Partnerships

The challenge now is to ensure that the capability of the delivery system – staff, structures and processes – match up to the aspirations of the National Assembly, Assembly Government and the needs of citizens in Wales. This requires action to tackle the constraints of organisational culture, capacity and process complexity.
– Beecham Report – Beyond Boundaries –

Today’s greatest social challenges – community safety, child poverty, social exclusion, developing healthy lifestyles, education for life, active aging – are impossible to solve by any one agency. Meaningful progress can only be made through intelligent collaboration and partnership. As Welsh citizens and Council Tax payers,we are passionate about helping leaders in Wales to ‘get their act together’ in order to:

  • develop more healthy and progressive organisation cultures, and recognise that collaborative activities require even more effective attention paid to how they do things;
  • genuinely increase capacity by working smarter with each other and involving citizens in helping to shape their future;
  • understand how to make complexity work to the advantage of the people of Wales, rather than as a barrier.

We have been proud to be associated with a number of initiatives aimed at addressing these challenges.

  1. We are the only private sector organisation that has actively contributed to the design and delivery of ‘Leadership for Collaboration’, a flagship leadership development programme delivered by Transformation Partners in alliance with UWIC and Bangor Universities. We are part of the programme facilitation team and supervise the coaching programme that underpins the programme’s sustainability.
  2. We have provided facilitation training for learning facilitators at the PSMW Summer School and have contributed actively to the School as facilitators.
  3. We have co-written with Dr Neil Wooding (Director of PSMW), a thought leadership pamphlet in the Sowing Seeds series on Co-Creation, a new way of organising public services (link to pamphlet).
  4. We have produced ‘Working in Harmony’ a substantive and practical guide to working collaboratively, which was released as a key resource to visitors to the PSMW Public Services Expo 2009.
  5. We have run collaborative leadership programmes, in conjunction with UWIC, for participants from teaching and education, local authorities, housing and the Welsh Assembly Government.