Six Partnership Propositions

Six Partnership Propositions

Six Partnership Propositions

The roadmap for business engagement in partnership, being launched at GPEDC in Mexico in April, is based on a series of linked propositions. These draw on a recent BAA / Harvard CSRI / TPI report, and they have been refined during the roadmap interview process. In this blog article we are inviting feedback and challenge on these propositions.

1. Reframe the private sector as a source of problem solving capabilities. Our first hypothesis is that there needs to be greater understanding of the role that business can play in development through partnership, and trust between sectors. Government, business, donors and civil society all work differently, talk different languages, and have different motivations and timescales. When the sectors do communicate, they don’t always understand or trust each other. More cross-sector dialogue and communication can only help; but development challenges should be expressed clearly and in ways that are relevant to a local context. They should also be expressed in terms of a problem requiring a solution. This paves the way for business to be engaged as problem-solver.

2. Engage business in the national development planning process. Our second hypothesis is that more work needs to be done nationally and locally by governments to identify the potential contribution of partnerships in their own context. In other words, as part of a country’s development planning processes, attention should be paid to the potential for business engagement – while remaining aware of the need for open, transparent markets. Tanzania, for example, has identified partnerships with business as key to delivering the country’s current five-year development plan. GIZ’s ‘Partnership Landscape Analysis’ is an example of the kind of approach that we are advocating.

3. Create multi-stakeholder platforms that can drive partnership action at the national and local level. These can help engage business more systematically. In parallel to the development of the roadmap, TPI is undertaking a thorough analysis of country-level multi-stakeholder ‘platforms’. These platforms bring together local actors from the public, private and not-for-profit sectors to improve dialogue and jointly to generate partnerships for development. Platforms of this kind most directly reflect the priorities articulated at Busan – they are at country level; based on the alignment of interests between participating actors; and committed to practical, measurable impact on development needs.

4. Measure and understand partnership impacts more effectively. There is currently a lack of tools and meaningful information about what partnerships achieve, although this gap is rapidly being filled by organisations such as the DCED – which recently reviewed donor partnerships with business by assessing additionality, measuring results and achieving better development outcomes. Not least among the challenges is interpretation of data: as the Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative has demonstrated, it is one thing to publish data, but to make it meaningful it must be interpreted and explained in many ways in many different settings.

5. Make organisations (across sectors) ‘fit for partnering’. As outlined in this blog by Katie Fry Hester, organisations need the right leadership & strategy, internal systems and processes, champions, and a culture that supports collaborative working. For example, donors may need to change their structures to enable more nimble decision-making. Companies may need to acknowledge that working in partnership may be more intensive than doing something unilaterally, and therefore partnership requires additional resources. However, being ‘fit for partnering’ manifests in different ways and may boil down to having the right person in the right place at the right time. A small company with the right person in place can achieve a lot; a large company may not be able to engage effectively despite having more resources.

6. Individuals within organisations need to have the right skills and mindsets for partnering. Technical skills (such as developing a partnering MoU) can be learned to some extent through training. Ultimately, though, having the right mindset implies a deeper shift, relating to values, worldview and outlook. One of our roadmap interviewees suggested that, as long as the current senior management was setting the tone of their organisation, partnership progress would remain at a glacial pace.

Which of these propositions would your organisation endorse? How can the propositions be improved? Are we missing anything?

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Editor’s Note:

This blog is part of a series co-hosted by The Partnering Initiative. Join the online discussion here.

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8 Responses

  1. Pilots are one of the best ways to start a partnership, to test the resolve of the partners, and to test the limits of the partnership.  Pilots, depending on the strength of the partnerships allow for flexibility and room for innovating midstream. 

  2. Hi David, this is a great point, thank you. Do you have any suggestions of where / how effective pilot projects were taken to scale? One of the findings from our research process is that there are often really good small pilots but when it comes to scaling up, there are not so many good examples! 

  3. Thanks for the reply, Dave.  We have currently scaled up two of our CSV programs called “Cut and Sew” and “Business on Wheels”.  We have had very little difficulties, if at all.  One of the ways to ramp up scale-ability is to fine tune the pilot as you go along, assuming you will be expanding the program.  The key is really a change of the beneficiaries’ mindsets by showing them successful models and of course you need awesome people skills.  Our Business on Wheels or BOW is operating nationwide with 548 micro-entrepreneurs at the BOP level.  The metrics show that the BOW program contributes more than 25% to National Sales for Nestle Professional.

  4. Thanks David. Designing pilots with scalability in mind is clearly essential – congratulations on making it work! Has your experience been written up anywhere? Also I know that Nestle uses the concept of Creating Shared Value. Do you have any thoughts on the overlap / distinction between that term and our working definition of partnerships:

    – business understands its role as a development actor and makes a conscious decision to work with other actors to ensure development benefits from its business investments, operations and products / services and/or

    – It invests resources of all kinds to support the wider economic, social and environmental fabric in which it operates, thereby directly supporting development and helping to ensure its own long term prosperity

  5. Hi Pamela, thanks for sharing this inspiring example. Can I ask what you see as the main barriers to increasing the scale of your project? And how are you planning to tackle them? 

  6. Creating Shared Value (CSV) is all about valuable partnerships.  “Benefit to Business and Benefit to Society” is the theme you will find in Mark Kramer and Michael Porter’s conceptualization of CSV. You can access this link- http://hbr.org/2011/01/the-big-idea-creating-shared-value

    Pamela, congratulations on your work with St. Paul grade school students. It has always been my belief that “it all starts in grade school”.  This is so inspiring.  Partnership is the non-negotiable for any successful CSV, at all levels, including partnership with your beneficiaries and stakeholders.  Dave, when you forge partnerships in CSV your partnership is defined by your value chain as the lead partner.  As in the BOW, the BOWers (micro-entrepreneurs) are linked to our distribution link in the value chain and therefore for as long as we continue to produce the products for the BOP, our BOWers continue to profit as entrepreneurs.  An easier example would be Nestle’s Nescafe Coffee Plan where we train farmers to plant the best coffee, which we purchase from them through our buying stations.  Here in the Nescafe Plan, it is clear that the farmers have become a part of Nestle’s supply chain and value chain.

  7. Something which may interest you, happening on May, 6 at the London School of Economics. 

    Register here bit.ly/cfit14  C-FIT Partnership Forum 2014 for small charities and companies #CFIT2014.

     
    I really hope you can join us! 

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