Ask five people in the same organisation to define the word ‘partnership’, and chances are you’ll get five different answers.
Some will describe a funding relationship. Others will point to a memorandum of understanding. A few may describe a professional relationship with a representative from another organisation. Without a common language, conversations about partnerships are often based on miscommunication.
This is where a partnering strategy comes in.
A partnering strategy provides a coherent, intentional approach to how and why an organisation partners. It defines what a partnership means, articulates the value of partnering, and sets out the systems, priorities and ambitions that will guide collaborative work. It is best developed alongside and in service of the organisational strategy, acting as a bridge between ambitious goals and the collaborative action required to achieve them.
Why do organisations need one?
At a time of rapid change, working together with other organisations and sharing intelligence and resources is more important than ever. And for those organisations pursuing systems change, the scale and complexity of the challenge exceeds what any single organisation can deliver alone. Partnerships are a strategic necessity.
Organisations succeed when they are intentional about what partnerships mean, in practice, where there is a shared understanding of key terms and how partnerships create value.
A partnering strategy sets all this out. It recognises that partnerships are something an organisation does deliberately, aligned with strategic priorities.
What goes into a partnering strategy?
There is no single template, but the strongest strategies tend to address five things.
The ‘why’: A clear articulation of why partnering is essential to delivering the organisation’s goals, and the specific value it creates — reducing duplication, enabling innovation, building legitimacy, and accessing resources. This makes the case internally and sets the standard against which partnerships can be assessed.
Definitions and types: A shared language for partnerships and partners. This might distinguish, for example, between implementing partners, thought partners and funding partners, or between transactional relationships and long-term transformational alliances.
Level of ambition: An honest account of what kinds of partnerships the organisation is pursuing and why. If the organisational goals are transformational, the partnership goals need to be too.
Enabling infrastructure: The systems, tools, templates, incentives and governance arrangements that will help people across the organisation partner effectively.
How progress will be measured: A commitment to monitoring not just the number of partnerships, but the value they create and, in some cases, even the organisation’s growing capacity to partner well.
Three levels of strategy
Not every organisation needs the same thing. A useful way to think about this is across three levels of ambition.
Light touch: A brief document — sometimes little more than a clear glossary, a statement of intent, and some basic parameters for what the organisation will and won’t call a partnership. This is appropriate for smaller organisations or those at the beginning of their partnering journey. Even at this level, the act of writing it down generates alignment.
Developed: A more comprehensive internal document that defines partnership types, articulates value added, sets priorities for the portfolio, and describes the basic systems and processes that will support partnership management.
Aspirational: A partnership approach that is fully integrated with the organisational strategy, regularly reviewed, accompanied by cascading regional or thematic versions, and supported by real monitoring of both partnership outcomes and capacities (see partnership health checks), perhaps by a dedicated partnership unit. This is state-of-the-art — and while few organisations are fully there, it represents the direction of travel for those seeking to maximise the value from partnership.
When a strategy won’t work
As with any strategy, the document is not effective if there is no buy-in.
The first is leadership buy-in. Without genuine commitment from the CEO or equivalent, a partnering strategy becomes an aspiration without authority. Sceptics need to know that this is a direction the organisation is taking — not just an interesting proposal from the partnerships team.
The second is an organisational home. Someone has to own and champion the strategy and be accountable for its implementation. This is why partnering strategies and partnership units so often go hand in hand: the unit provides the strategic direction, and the strategy gives the unit something to steer by.
Where there’s leadership support, a dedicated home, and patience for long-term payoff, a partnering strategy is more than a good investment — it’s what sets organisations apart
