In this edition of Stories from Practice we look at the question of transactional and transformational collaboration.
PBA accredited partnership broker ANNELIES CLAESSENS invites us to glimpse into the professional world of an internal partnership broker in an Alliance setting.
She explores ways of looking at added value, transformation and evolution of a complex partnership, and shares her reflections on helping partners move across the collaboration continuum. Annelies’ paper offers an excellent analysis of how collaboration can be both transactional and transformational, as well as an analysis of drivers and approaches to collaboration in the humanitarian sector.
“Imagine accepting the challenge of supporting a partnership of 15 Dutch aid agencies and the Netherlands Ministry of Affairs in moving from ‘transactional’ to ‘transformative’. I found out along the way that this process is not linear but that fluidity between different concept and processes is key. This article describes how an internal broker can assist in finding appropriate decision-making processes for managing such an alliance, whilst being accountable and vulnerable. To co-create, adopt and model the results of the alliance, the internal broker should pivot between providing traditional leadership and encouraging collaborative leadership of the individual organisations.”
Read Annelies’ thought-provoking paper here and tell us about your experiences on Twitter and LinkedIn.