The murderers next door

Here is another telling example, this time from a remote region of Romania (Maramures), which illustrates how disempowering local people can have disastrous effects.

When local people had control of the system for dealing with land disputes everything worked fairly well. But things worked less well when central government took control: there were, quite literally, deadly consequences.

This shows,once again, that giving control and collaborating rather than taking control and enforcing is often the most effective option, especially where limited but easily taken and hard to police resources are concerned.

The Guardian: The Murderers Next Door

Bite-size pieces: lead and follow; yes and also

'To live, work and lead in this modern world we need to address challenging and complex paradoxes. We need results now and we need to build for the future. We need to lead and to follow. We need to be secretive and open and honest. Partnership working offers a way of addressing these complex paradoxes. This is because it demands a new, richer way of thinking that is based upon ‘yes and also’ rather than ‘yes or no’. Partnership working demands that we address both sides of a paradox by sharing and exploiting our diverse perceptions and resources.'






From Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success:
          4th Edition                                      

 

For more details click here

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Music collaborating for health

Music and collaborative working come together once again: 

Arts in Hospitals

This project promises to open up a rich seam of information about how creative collaborations between very diverse cultures and sectors form, develop and begin achieving things.

Hats off to the open-minded innovators driving it forward!

Bite-size pieces: withering on the vine...

'...a large Canadian mining corporation, kept all its geological data to itself. This was consistent with the accepted assumptions and practices of the sector, which instinctively tended towards confidentiality and secrecy. Over time, the company became 'data rich', but efficiency and profitability poor. This was because Goldcorp failed to realise the value others external to the organisation could add to the data by analysing, manipulating, developing and presenting it in new, innovative and useful ways. Goldcorp's data was allowed to wither on the virtual vine, its juicy bits of information never harvested and fermented into vintage wisdom and sparkling insights.'




From Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success:

          4th Edition                                      

 

For more details click here.

 

 

 

Bite-size pieces: create an attractive identity and reputation

'Where criminals seeking to attract potential partners in crime create identities and reputations that discourage the law abiding but attract a wide selection of the criminally useful, those seeking to collaborate within the legal overworld can create identities and reputations that discourage the non – collaborative but attract a wide selection of the collaborative.

For example, a high profile construction project focused upon building a new rail link to London's Heathrow Airport invested great time and effort into making a collaborative, partnership approach part of their culture and identity. This collaborative culture then ingrained itself into the day – to – day activities of the project, gradually providing it with a reputation that attracted a wide range of suitably skilled and collaboratively inclined businesses and organisations with the potential to work effectively in partnership within the project.'

 

From Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success:

          4th Edition                                      

 

For more details click here.

Bite-size pieces: the where and the when

'Criminals go to where their potential partners in crime are likely to be and they go to these places at times when they are likely to meet them, however inconvenient, anti – social or even dangerous doing so may be. 

Legitimate collaborations can certainly learn from this. They often suffer from the ‘Carousel Syndrome’ where the same old faces, the same old partners, turn up again and again and again, whenever a new collaborative initiative is formed. This does not enhance a collaboration's ability to be innovative or to benefit from new perspectives and insights. It also limits the pool of potentially valuable knowledge, experience and expertise a collaboration can call upon.

Being prepared to go to where more 'hard – to – reach' potential partners are, at times and in ways that are convenient to them, however anti – social or even dangerous these may seem, can make all the difference to a partnership's ability to engage effectively with its target audience and gain the knowledge, expertise and resources it needs to achieve its aims.'

 

From Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success:

          4th Edition                                      

 

For more details click here.

 

 

Bite-size pieces: magnetise your brokers

'Criminals know that they have to 'magnetise' the brokers or linking people within their collaborative networks and the breeding pools for developing potential partners contained within them. They know it is not enough to introduce and resource brokers, and that it is not even enough to ensure that brokers have good collaborative skills. Criminals know that for brokers to be effective in their roles they need to act as magnets within the network, attracting people to them not just because they have good contacts but also because they possess invaluable knowledge, skills, expertise and experience that aspiring criminals need.

 Those seeking to create legal overworld collaborations need to realise a very similar thing: that to attract potential partners the brokers they introduce to their collaborative networks need to be magnetised with the power of valued and sought after (mostly legal overworld) knowledge, skills, expertise and experience.'

 

From Sleeping with the Enemy - Achieving Collaborative Success:

          4th Edition                                      

 

For more details click here.