1. Getting Your Stories Straight
An organizational learning approach to effective collaboration
Center for Organizational Leadership and Renewal Saint Louis University
Presenters: Bob Mai, Ed.D.
Mary Domahidy, Ph.D. Christine Luebbert, M.H.A.

2. Center for Organizational Leadership and Renewal
Focuses on how organizations learn and manage deliberate change
Activities:
Conferences
Workshops
Formative evaluation projects
Technical assistance and coaching
Research; demonstration projects

3. Learning Through Partnering Conference
Presented13 successful collaborations involving community organizations and higher education
Findings: 4 themes underlie effective collaboration management
Sharing & respecting each other’s objectives
Managing personal relationships
Creating structures and processes to support collaboration
Learning about yourself as a partner, and how to be more successful at it

4. 1. Sharing and respecting each other’s interests
2 kinds of objectives: common and individual
It’s about self-interest, both personal and organizational – and the need to describe and understand the self-interests of each partner (transparent goals)
Big picture thinking
Tree people, forest people
Individual interests and issues can be redefined to accomplish common goal
Who owns the program?
Continuous focus on partner objectives to define what “ownership” looks like
Partnering is about “doing a deal”

5. 2. Managing personal relationships
Agree on routines to insure everyone has a voice
Demonstrate willingness to listen
Open direct lines of communication; get around the bureaucracy
Unequal partners
Address power issues up front
Be candid; don’t sugar coat or pull punches

6. 3. Creating structures and processes to support collaboration
Building upon functional requirements
Go around bureaucracy whenever possible
Get decision-makers, check-writers involved
Governance and decision-making
Put it in writing, but keep it flexible
Work for horizontal decision-making
Articulate and agree on a process
Green/yellow/red
Slow the process down; don’t railroad outcomes

7. 4. Learning about yourself as a partner
Partnering attributes
Can you speak their language?
Can you step outside your own professional reality?
Can you question their assumptions – as well as your own?
Must the solution be “invented here”?
Learning tactics and tools
Shared action research
Evaluation and feedback: data as a learning tool
Mai, R., Kramer, T., Luebbert,C. (2005). Learning Through Partnering: Lessons for Organizational and Community Renewal, Journal of Community Practice, 13(2),

8. Organizational Learning Tool: The Learning History*
Is both a process and tool to integrate critical events and learning experiences an organization gathers over time.
Creates a feedback loop for the system that leads to actionable knowledge.
Results in a story about change told by those participating in it.
(*A. Kleiner and G. Roth, 1997)

9. Components of Learning History Team
Historian
Interviewer
    
Interviewee

10. Example of Learning History Method: University-Community Partnership
Center for Organizational Learning & Renewal
~And~
Neighbor to Neighbor Task Force

11. Finding Common Ground in University-Community Partnerships
Findings
Proximity
Values
Direct Support
Time and Energy
Leadership

12. (Theme) Leadership: Participants saw leadership as necessary to sustain the partnership.
Left Side of Column (Historian and insiders)
Contains analysis and commentary
One assumption here is that while some in the university are so committed, it is uncommon to value connection with the community, a view that corresponds to the concern for the legitimacy of such work. Questions that then arise include why is it uncommon to value connection with the community as well as how does the institution shape that perspective.
Right Side of Column (Interviewees)
Direct quotes from interviewees
(In considering the future, one participant stressed) “I hope…that those kinds of partnerships would again pull together people who have a commitment to the work and are willing to do the work, and a commitment …to the community beyond the university.
It took people who really believed that we needed that connection to the community and I think most of the people on the Steering Committee really did have that commitment.”

13. Learning History Exercise
Form Groups: (Interviewer, Interviewee, Historian)
“As you think of past partnerships you have been involved with, describe some of the facilitators that helped sustain these collaborative partnerships…”

14. Steps in a Learning History Methodology
Planning
Interviews
Dissemination
Writing, distilling themes and validation with interviewees
A. Kleiner and G. Roth, 1997

15. Challenges to using the Learning History
Time
Disciplined process
Organizational Readiness
Commitment

16. Why Use It? Involves all stakeholders
Identifies issues important to individual and organization
Gets to underlying assumptions
Engages collective learning and reflection
Provides “safe” place to challenge
norms