Healthy Partnerships

Partnerships and other forms of alliances are now a normal way for organisations to cooperate to deliver complex services to meet complex needs’s. But what we call partnerships encompass many forms in which the nature of authority and control as well as structure can vary.

In order to build and to maintain strong partnerships, these differences not only need to be understood, but the varying assumptions and needs of the parties in the partnership often need to be considered and worked through.

Clients Approach Us To

  • Support the set-up phase of a partnership.
  • Help a partnership sustain its momentum.
  • Help plan for a merger or growth phase.
  • Review the effectiveness of a partnership.
  • Help a partnership  learn from its  experience.
  • Help a partnership fix a challenge when it gets stuck.

We help clients invest in their partnership by understanding better how things are working in practice, how conflicts or differences are to be resolved in a constructive way and by developing greater skills in having a partnership that has clarity of purpose and well as an effective way of working together.

A particular tool that helps clients is:

  • Our Partnerships Development Framework which supports partnerships understand where they are and their next development steps.

See our Tools page for more details.

“Our multi-agency delivery partnership is working well. But what do we need to do to strengthen it further and prepare for a bigger future?”

In brief we:

  • Reviewed the existing partnership arrangements.
  • Designed and led a workshop for all partners, analysing the partnership’s status collaboratively, drawing on the Partnerships Development Framework approach.
  • Considered a range of future strategic options.
“John at Transform has done some great work with us including working with the SUSTAIN consortium in Shropshire enabling it to function effectively at a strategic level. As a partnership of 16 organisations delivering support services to vulnerable customers, John was able to give us the lift we needed out of the detail enabling us to agree vision, aims and objectives to take the consortium forward. John is a fantastic communicator, he adapts according to the task in hand and his style with this group was inclusive, supportive and gently challenging which was exactly what was needed”.

Sue Groom – Neighbourhood and Community Services Director, Severnside Housing