Betwixt & Between

The emerging partnership was between a European global technology company and a European medium-sized arts NGO to co-develop digital solutions for education, co-production, creative and social networking for deaf people living in different countries. The company is a global brand and Fortune 150 manufacturing company with a mass market of millions of people using its consumer technology products world-wide. The NGO is a not-for-profit deaf arts (theatre and dance) organisation which deals with a niche market of several thousand people.

In the early days of the discussion between the six key protagonists from the two organisations on their working relationship and planning process, I noticed they made references to “our culture”, “our values”, “our way of working” when they talked about their organisation.  I suggested to the lead protagonists whether it would be useful to explore further the cultural dimension of their emerging partnership. They agreed, and together we set the scope of the enquiry I would facilitate: to engage them in articulating and understanding their respective organisational cultures and how this was being reflected in the management of their partnership arrangement and its emerging organisational culture.

The partnership was in its early development phase and I felt it would be important to draw out the protagonists’ description of their own organisational culture; their perception of their partner’s organisational culture; and their aspirations and expectations of the partnership organisational culture, looking at both enablers and barriers to effective working. At the same time, I thought it would be useful for me to observe how organisational cultures and artifacts as well as their personalities were being reflected in their interactions. All the information gathered could then be fed into the partnership building and managing work.

However, I did not want to make the enquiry process too onerous, especially given the small number of participants – hence, the choice of an ethnographic approach, using a combination of techniques (Table 1).

From the enquiry I facilitated into the particular corporate-NGO partnership, I can offer the following observations:

Open-ended interviews can yield different types of descriptions on an organisation’s culture:

Those that reflect what the person personally experiences daily and those she/he believes is the ‘official line’ on their organisational culture, behavioural norms, structures and value systems. This was certainly the case with the individuals in the corporate-NGO partnership. In response to the open question – ‘tell me about your organisational culture’,  they shared personal anecdotes around specific incidents or experiences to illustrate the values, norms and systems of their organisation but also used language which was consistent with what appeared on their websites, marketing, HR recruitment, internal publications and other materials.

The Cox and Hopkins’s organisational culture grid type of tool can help provide a direct comparison around some common organisational culture and identity criteria.

The grid focuses on four types of organisational culture – Role, Control, Goal and Soul – and uses a simplified terminology for each culture (Table 2).

The principals from the global company highlighted all but one of the traits of the Soul culture with several also of the Goal. According to Cox and Hopkins, the positive features of the Soul culture are good communication, commitment, high trust, co-operation, caring and listening and sense of belonging. The positive features of the Goal culture include high motivation, maximum use of talent, rapid learning, unity of effort, reduced controls and mutually valued goals. All these attributes of Soul and Goal cultures were also evident in the responses the individuals gave in the interviews, for example, trust, and respect for diversity, meritocracy, co-operation, informality, emotional ties, and results orientation.

The NGO principals’ responses to the features on the grid suggested they believed their organisation fitted the Soul and Goal cultures the most with some elements of the Role culture. According to Cox and Hopkins, the positive features of the Role culture are clear lines of authority, structure, and limit to personal power, efficient operations, and well-designed systems. The attributes of Role, Soul and Goal cultures were also referred to in the open-ended interviews, for example, the sense of belonging, caring, informality, community, emotional connections, and high motivation for disability culture.

Interestingly, none of them mentioned that there was on paper at least, a good ‘fit’ based on the Soul and Goal traits of their organisations. I chose not to steer the conversation towards finding a ‘good’ or ‘perfect fit’ – partly because I wanted any such inferences to come from the individuals themselves, and partly because I felt it would lead to an anodyne outcome.

It can help draw out their views on which aspects of their own organisational culture they would like to take with them into the partnership, share what they see as enablers and barriers to effective working, reflect on their motivations for working with a particular organisation as well as consider the learning and other outcomes of working with each other.

In the case of the corporate-NGO partnership, the participants had formed some favourable perceptions of each other’s organisational values, reputation, and behaviours and had recognised each organisation’s commitment to the deaf community and young people. That was considered a good basis to proceed with developing the partnership programme. When asked to articulate their aspiration and expectations of how their emerging partnership should work, their comments were open and forthright, as can be seen from the sample of quotations in Box 1 below.

In my view, an added bonus of facilitating a discussion around enablers and barriers is that it can help illustrate the value of transparency and equity of voice and influence between partners.

The second component of my ethnographic approach was to observe the group’s behaviours, interactions and relationships which I felt could best illustrate culture in action: meeting management; communication and socialisation; learning; and partnering process development. These are also the areas where, as a partnership broker, I would normally be expected to make a helpful and practical intervention.

In practice, I found I had little cause to intervene. There was a healthy correlation between what the individuals were saying and what they were doing. For instance, the meeting process was disciplined and structured, where by mutual agreement, the lead protagonist from the global company chaired the meetings. The discussion was focussed, even during creative brainstorming. The participants were pragmatic, wanting to move from concept and abstract ideas presented by the plant[5] and shaper in the group to delivery and action: ‘how quickly can we get this to the youngsters’ was tacit in decision-making. There was an early emphasis on agreeing a collaboration agreement and an outline plan.

Interestingly, when the group was working on their collaboration agreement, I posed the question about whether the group needed to include a conflict resolution process, both lead protagonists rejected the idea on the basis that as they had agreed to ‘speak their minds’ with each other, share any concerns openly, and find solutions together, it was unnecessary to put that down on paper. During my time with the partnership I did not see any signs of open dissension, putting it down to the quality of partnership management processes and the commitments the lead protagonists had made.

An early mutually agreed decision was for the company to co-locate one of its technical staff with the NGO for a period of six months. It was not only a sound operational decision but it was also seen by the NGO as a sign of serious commitment from the company in customising the technical product.  In terms of communication and socialisation, the communication style and tone was informal, the use of language a reflection of the social origins of the team. Informality extended to humour and social banter, with the stories and anecdotes they shared a reflection of their common interest in the arts, parenting, food and travel.

All individuals showed they were open to new ideas and making some adjustments to their way of working. For instance, at the first meeting, the presenter from the company used Microsoft PowerPoint slides to present her proposal in a very structured way. Her counterpart from the NGO took a looser, much more ad hoc approach. At the next meeting, although she did not use PowerPoint, she was more structured in her presentation. Over the next few meetings, the individuals from the company made more use of illustrations and diagrams to present their ideas, which was closer to the way people at the NGO worked. The end result was a hybrid format where both approaches to presenting information could be accommodated.

So what, and where next?

The enquiry described above provided two types of information: (a) an understanding of the organisational culture context in which the particular emerging partnership was developing and the role its protagonists played in shaping and living it; and (b) an ethnographic methodology I could use again in understanding organisational culture of other partnerships I would be involved with.

On reflection, this was a cultural exploration of a relatively trouble free, emerging partnering relationship, as it involved protagonists with a relatively ‘close cultural fit’. There was some homogeneity in their perceptions of their organisational cultures – for instance, around notions of egalitarianism, pragmatism, informality, directness, trust, modesty, transparency, adaptability, respectfulness, a genuine engagement with social issues. The close organisational match combined with the personalities, personal values and conduct of the protagonists meant that no one culture was dominant over the other. The partnership ended after 20 months when the agreed objectives were achieved. In that time, the partnership had not developed a new, distinctive way of working. Instead, it had adopted and modified some practices from each organisation to support its way of working and accommodated differences in each organisation– i.e. found a way to be flexible. The partnership culture was a hybrid rather than a brand new product.

It is likely that I would have seen a different outcome had there been more pronounced diversity in organisational or social cultures and individual personalities and behaviour and the types of challenges we often see in partnership building and development. We could envisage several scenarios which provide the context for cultural behaviour in action (Table 4).

It would be useful to explore further these scenarios and look more broadly at cultural dimensions of partnerships. I would be keen to hear from peers who have experiential insights and evidence of such dimensions at play.

In terms of the methodology, I believe ethnographic study is a valid way of understanding and deciphering organisational culture in emerging partnerships: it yields useful cultural understandings from the viewpoint of the people directly responsible for creating the partnership. It contributes to the partnership story. It is a useful aide to the work of a broker in the early stages of the partnering life cycle – when we are identifying potential partners, making the case to potential partners, using every opportunity to help them deepen their understanding of each other, and managing their expectations. However, it is possible – and even desirable – to keep the process simple, allocating a few days to ‘survey’ the protagonists, synthesise and present the information gathered as an input into the planning and review processes. Keeping a ‘culture mapping’ exercise simple and relevant may also be easier to sell to partners.

After a career in the corporate sector, Surinder Hundal is now working specifically in the field of cross-sector partnerships, partnership brokering and partnership evaluation. She works as an independent accredited partnership broker and as a specialist in corporate social responsibility. She sits on the Board of the Partnership Brokers Association (PBA), the international professional association for partnership brokers. She holds a post-graduate certificate in Cross-sector Partnerships from the University of Cambridge.  Surinder has worked in Asia Pacific, Europe, the USA, the Middle East and Africa, principally in telecommunications businesses such as Nokia and BT, where she led multi-faceted communications, strategy, marketing, corporate responsibility and partnership development roles. She also led policy and communications at the International Business Leaders Forum. Surinder can be reached on surinder@rippleseed.com.

Footnotes