Strategic partnerships are an increasingly common feature of today’s organizational landscape. Qualities such as connectivity and cooperation are frequently superceding more tangible factors such as physical assets and economies of scale as drivers of success.

This means effective and enlivening work with strategic partners is becoming an increasingly vital component of a thriving organization.

Although usually underpinned by a clear contract or agreement, the success of such strategic partnerships depends much more on skillful leadership and high-quality management processes to actually deliver the hoped-for outcomes. Leaders need to be able to ‘join-up’ the respective capabilities of the parties involved.

Integral Change Consulting works with those involved in leading joint ventures, strategic relationships, multi-agency and inter-agency working, and other forms of business partnership to ensure that these entities are well set up, satisfactorily underpinned by mutual agreements, and that problems that arise during the life of the partnership are surfaced and addressed in a healthy manner.

Our integral, 'minimal intervention' approach is likely to include the following:

• Aligning mutual aims and measures - supporting key leaders to jointly clarify their objectives and work through optimal ways of proceeding

• Partnership team building - catalysing a new joint leadership team to articulate a crisp shared purpose, joint journey plan and create some pithy key partnership messages - and quickly resolve any relationship dynamics that may prove destructive in the longer term

• Extended leadership team buy-in - developing strong engagement and helping it to develop rapidly throughout the various partnership organisations, and boosting the leadership capability to deliver

• Joined-up team away days – to bring different parties together to catalyse progress through various forms of team building – to establish new ways of working, settle lurking cross-organisational issues, support/guide implementation of the joint journey plan and stimulate/release fresh effort in service of clear agreed outcomes.

Recent work includes:

• Supporting the integration of a new, more strategic level of business director into local government positions, and catalysing the development of their external partnerships with District Councils, PCT, voluntary sector etc.

• Facilitating/catalysing the initial connecting, definition of aims and selection of productive, high value tasks for 16 local government HR Departments interested in stimulating positive change together, making savings and innovating across boundaries

• Building strong productive connections between the senior leaders of two merged companies through offering a quick diagnosis, which catalysed a transforming workshop.

Client feedback: