Lessons Learnt

Internal preparation

Testing internally

If you are coming together as a partnership or network of organisations to use the C2C Toolkit, before rolling out the toolkit externally, consider a test implementation within your own organisation.  This internal trial allows you to identify what’s working well and can be built on as well as any gaps or areas for improvement.  Focusing on your internal collaborations across directorates or teams can help you to identify specific areas of mutual interest with potential external collaborators.

Leadership designation

Appoint someone internally to lead and champion the collaborative efforts required as part of the C2C process.  Having a designated leader ensures clear accountability and direction.  Ideally, this should be someone in a position of senior operational leadership, such as a Head of Service, with the support of a senior strategic sponsor from the Executive Leadership Team.

Understanding the need for collaboration

Contextual reflection

Reflect on why collaboration matters in your specific context.  Centre your efforts on people experiencing or at risk of homelessness (in all its forms).  Understand your area of focus from the perspective of the challenges faced by individuals.  Ask yourself what difference you’re trying to make for people  receiving or delivering services to prevent or relieve homelessness.

Mutual interests

Explore the mutual interests that drive collaboration.  People and organisations generally guard their precious time for activities that contribute to their own objectives.  Whether you’re working to collaborate internally or externally, it is worth spending some time considering what objectives or problems are held in common.  What common goals can your organisation or network work towards?

Areas of collaboration

Thoughtful assessment

Take time to assess the specific areas where collaboration can make the most difference.  This may exist outside your usual network of stakeholders.  Consider prevention and relief strategies that extend beyond traditional housing and homelessness services.  Recognise that collaboration can involve diverse sectors — healthcare, employment, education, and more — think broadly.

Leadership and sponsorship

Senior champions

Secure senior sponsorship for your collaborative efforts in each participating organisation.  Senior leaders can advocate for the initiative, provide necessary resources, and supply impetus to give the collaboration a greater sense of urgency, unblock sticking points and barriers, or navigate tricky issues.

Partnership governance

Strategic partnerships undertaking the C2C Toolkit should think carefully about how the Toolkit can contribute to the shared objectives of stakeholders within their terms of reference.  Particularly where ownership of the pledges and action plans rest and how progress will be monitored.  In these circumstances, pledges and actions should sit within the overall remit of the group for activity.  These will often be about collaborating to influence policy or strategy within the area of concern rather than delivering service improvements directly.

Time management

Realistic timelines

Understand that collaborative projects take time.  Set realistic timelines for planning, implementation, and evaluation.  If the relationships within the collaboration are new, set some time aside to develop these and understand the areas of mutual interest.

Flexibility

Similarly, while adhering to deadlines, wherever possible, allow for flexibility.  Unexpected challenges may arise, so adaptability is crucial.  Most deadlines are soft and it won’t be the end of the world to change them.

Preparatory steps

Internal and external stakeholders

Conduct a thorough stakeholder analysis to identify who might need to be involved through a scoping exercise or similar.  Consider both internal team members and external partners.  Provide them with a briefing about the initiative to familiarise themselves with the process.

Situational analysis

Understand the main conversations surrounding the intended area of collaboration.  Assess people’s likely feelings, contentions, and potential tensions related to the critical issues.  These will likely  have elements subscribed by organisational culture or counter cultures, as well as being influenced by general attitudes prevalent in the wider population.

Problem definition

Specific problem focus

Clearly define the problem you aim to solve.  Concentrate on a specific aspect of homelessness prevention or relief.  Whether working through the C2C Toolkit as an internal or an external collaboration, it will be helpful to hold a scoping session to narrow the area of focus to a specific issue in a specific area of the Positive Pathway Model.  This will also aid  stakeholder analysis and identification of the shared interest among stakeholders.

Theory of change

Impact-driven approach

Consider developing a theory of change by starting with the desired impact.  Work backwards to define necessary outputs, activities, and inputs.  This will help to understand the logical relationship between activities and impacts as well as deciding on a few simple progress measures.

Messy discussions

Non-linear conversations

As you work through the Toolkit with collaborators, the conversations are likely to be non-linear.  People’s patterns of thinking and problem-solving will not necessarily fit with the linear nature of the Toolkit.  Participants my leap from identifying a problem to offering suggested pledges and actions before the workshop has reached that section.  Encourage people to capture their ideas in the moment rather than waiting for the planned part of the workshop as they may otherwise be lost.

World café

One method to account for the non-linear nature of conversations is to run the workshops as a “world café”.  In that model, all four workshops of the C2C Toolkit are occurring simultaneously and participants can move organically between conversations depending on their train of thought.

 

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