Partnerships are becoming a normal way of agencies cooperating to delivery complex services to complex groups. But what we call partnerships can cover many different beasts in the organisational jungle. The term partnership is used loosely to describe a range of relationships. Yet in all of them, the natuure of authority and control is different from an ordinary organisation. These differences need to be understood better both to build and to maintain strong partnerships.

In general, too little investment of time by partners is given to sharing views and developing a shared view about how things are going to work in practice and how conflicts are to be resolved amicably and constructively. Not only too little time, but also many partners lack the skills to set the right tone for partnership from the outset.

Clients approach us to:

• help set up great partnerships
• help sustain them once they are under way
• help fix them when they get stuck
• help learn from them when they are towards the end of their life
• help plan for a merger (excluding due diligence).