Management Discussion Nadine Andrews
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Arts Marketing Association Tailor Made: AMA Conference 2007 Seminars: Management Discussion Nadine Andrews Managing to collaborate As well as working with organisations like Arts About Manchester, the 2002 Commonwealth Games cultural programme and Mission, Models, Money, Nadine has spent two years as a fellow on the Clore Leadership programme. She is a trustee of Quarantine, a board member of Culture Northwest and in the past has been a Pirate Radio DJ, worked at the Hacienda and produced the black music culture tv show The Next Level. She is also working towards a qualification as a mountain-walking leader. In this session delegates were provided with a range of techniques and principles to enable them to collaborate well. Managing to collaborate Nadine began the session by recommending the following publications: • ‘Greater than the sum of its parts - a joined up guide to working in groups’, written by Heather Maitland and Anne Roberts and available at http://www.artscouncil.org.uk/publications/publication_detail.php?browse=title&id=565 &page=9 • ‘Managing to collaborate: The theory and practice of collaborative advantage’, written by Chris Huxham (available from www.amazon.co.uk) The aim of this seminar was to help people work in partnership more successfully including: • The key themes in partnership working • Factors influencing success • Group work around collaboration – so that knowledge and experience within the group can be shared The key themes • The case for collaboration – why are you collaborating? • Agreeing aims and roles – what are you aiming to achieve, who is responsible for what? • Membership structure and dynamics – who is representing the different organisations in the partnership, does the representative change at each meeting? Is the representative bringing the organisation’s perspective or their own views? • Management - funding and financial management, decision-making, admin, group discipline, meetings, communication, leadership, membership, speed and action • Relationships - building trust, power balance, conflict resolution 65 Arts Marketing Association Tailor Made: AMA Conference 2007 Nadine asked for some delegates to introduce themselves to the group and outline one thing that has made a difference for them in partnership working. Feedback from the group included: • Being given the authority to make decisions • Everyone in the partnership having a clear role to fulfil Delegates were then asked to get into small groups and list three things that have helped partnership working and three things that have hindered it. Feedback from groups included: Things that have helped partnerships: • Clear leadership • Putting agreements in writing • Agreeing clear actions Things that have hindered partnerships: • Hidden agendas • Dysfunctional relationships • Individual egos • Selective engagement of partners Factors influencing success These are the elements that have come out clearly through Nadine’s research into partnership working • Shared/agreed goals, clarity of purpose This can be really difficult to achieve and takes a huge amount of time. Often it is the very difference between partners that brings them together but can also make partnerships very challenging. The key is to keep breaking down each partner’s aims to reach a shared, but perhaps quite abstract goal, for example ‘to engage new audiences’ • Shared / known values - Individual/organisational/partnership; espoused/operational There are differences of opinion about whether it is important to have shared values. Often there is confusion about what it actually means and there is a lack of common language about values. Many partners don’t discuss this explicitly at the outset. Nadine recommended ‘The Leader’s Guide to Storytelling’, written by Stephen Denning (http://www.stevedenning.com/LeadersGuide.html) which has a section on values. Espoused values are the values that organisations say they have and operational values are the ones that are put into practice and there is very often a dissonance between the two. This dissonance can lead to a 66 Arts Marketing Association Tailor Made: AMA Conference 2007 breakdown in trust between partners if the actions differ from the words. It is possible to work with partners who hold different values, but you need to know what those values are. If you want to work on a deeper level with each other though and enjoy working together, than shared values are essential. • Self-regulation and ‘tit for tat’ reciprocity Nadine referred to ‘The Prisoner’s dilemma’ – a win-lose game. Two ‘prisoners’ are given the choice of cooperating with each other or defecting. The decision is made by each player with no knowledge of the other player’s choice. If they both cooperate, they receive a specific punishment or reward; if both defect they receive a larger punishment. However, if one defects, and one cooperates, the defector receives a large reward and the co-operator a punishment (the sucker's payoff). In most cases, players don’t collaborate and so both lose. Tit-for-tat works in a similar but positive way, each partner reciprocating according to the way that the other partner behaves. The idea is that both partners realise it is for their benefit to work supportively with each other and this self- regulation leads to positive outcomes – that is, unless someone doesn’t play the game. Nadine recommended Robert Axel-Rod’s book, ‘The Evolution of Cooperation’. Quality of relationships - same individuals, ‘shadow of the future’ reputation, power, leadership, equality, commitment, trust, respect, personal connection The qualities of relationships are usually better when they exist over a long-term and if people know that they will work together again in the future. It is then in everyone’s interests to make the partnership positive. Often partnerships come down to how well the individuals get on with each other and trust often stems from this. Additionally, people’s concern for their reputation affects how they work with each other but this is often more important for smaller organisations than larger, more established organisations. Big, building-based organisations are often less concerned with partnerships and the impact of the way that they work with others. This comes down to organisational culture and the decision-making responsibilities that individuals hold within those organisations. The more responsibility an individual has, the more investment they will put into partnerships. If a staff member has been told to work in partnership but doesn’t know why, the partnership is likely to be difficult. • Collaborative energy A person who initiates a partnership often brings lots of energy in order to make the partnership work. People who have a partnership imposed on them bring a lack of energy. 67 Arts Marketing Association Tailor Made: AMA Conference 2007 Q: Do you have a view on whether organisations should collaborate? Is it OK not to work in partnership? This comes down to organisational culture, values and the purpose for working in partnership. It doesn’t work if people are forced into partnership with each other, but if both partners can see how they can achieve something together then it is worth it. There have to be good reasons for working together and keeping the partnership going. If you can achieve what you want on your own without partnerships, then why waste time and energy developing them for the sake of it? A reason for a lot of organisations to work together is to get money for projects, but when things go wrong, money isn’t a sufficient motivator to make things right again. Q: If research has shown this, then why are pots of money made available specifically for collaboration? Because it can work, bring added value and extra possibilities, as long as everything else is working. You may, by chance, develop fantastic working relationships with people you have to work with. One of the big clashes in partnerships is between short-term versus long-term working. The other is to do with consistency versus flexibility. Consistency is great because it means you can trust the other partner and you know what they’re aiming for, but it can also be a nightmare when things need to change. In the morning session, people worked in groups and were asked to reach agreement through one of the following methods: • Voting • Reaching consensus • Participatory appraisal • Someone to self-select themselves as the decision-maker for the group • Tossing a coin The groups were only given a few minutes to make their decision and unsurprisingly the group needing to reach consensus didn’t make a decision as they hadn’t got around to deciding their process for decision-making. But they did enjoy the process. The self-selected group reached their decision fastest and the group that tossed a coin misunderstood the task, and tossed a coin to decide whether to go to lunch or not, the decision came up as no and people weren’t happy about that. Although this exercise was an extreme example, it highlights the ways that decisions get made in partnership working and the emotions that people have around that process. It’s useful to be aware of how you feel about decision-making. Many decisions come down to feelings and then the justifications come afterwards. 68 Arts Marketing Association Tailor Made: AMA Conference 2007 Q: How do you deal with people who have no self-awareness and you know that their perspective isn’t the right one? There’s a school of thought that you should think not how that person can change but what you can do to change the situation. Q: One thing I’ve tried before is giving everyone assigned tasks and giving that person a role. In our case, the person rose to the challenge and it changed the partnership for the better. There’s some underlying need in that person that needs to be met and which isn’t currently being met.