In December we invited Mary Frankham to share her superb paper on dual roles for partnership brokers, which examines the tension between being a partnership manager whilst also representing a voice independent from all partners involved.
Following on to this topic, we are now presenting you with another excellent think piece on the issue of duality of partnership brokering.
In this edition of Stories from Practice, Australia based Gillian Pearl builds on her experience of cross-sector partnerships with companies like Microsoft, Visa and Facebook. She compares and contrasts the roles of internal partnership brokers and project managers by exploring the similarities and differences in the skill sets and how these are applied. The paper also looks at two key challenges many internal partnership brokers grapple with: a lack of awareness and perceived value of partnership brokering.
The author has spent the past twenty years working for and with the private sector and in this paper, she highlights her observations about the dual role that internal private sector partnership brokers must play when engaging in cross-sector partnerships. Internal partnership brokers are often expected to be both project manager and internal partnership broker and move fluidly between the roles. The paper focuses on the three key areas: the skill set required to perform both roles simultaneously; the way to address the lack of awareness and perceived value of the brokering role and; the ways to promote a better understanding of partnership brokering principles and skills.
Read Gillian Pearl’s paper here and share your comments via Twitter using #partnershipbrokers.