Partnerships are a central part of the delivery of modern public services and are becoming common practice in the private sector.

A high and increasing proportion of government expenditure is channelled through public service partnerships. As government seeks to find answers to seemingly intractable problems, it is clear that no single organisation is unlikely to be able to provide the end-to-end solution. Similarly, the private sector has found that huge single projects have a higher likelihood of failure than well-connected smaller, shorter projects.

We often find ourselves working with different partners as part of our commissioned work. It is vitally important to ensure that partnerships work, as successful partnerships deliver more successful outcomes.

From our experience, obstacles to partnerships working well come from more general problems:

• Wider organisational performance
• Failure to adopt a programme management approach
• Associated problems with incentives and structures

Partnership charters, risk registers and "just turning up to partnership meetings" are not enough. Partnerships must be managed properly and probably more intensively than work taking place within the confines of just one organisation.

Quite a lot has been written about public service partnerships and how to make them work, but much of it is in long unwieldy documents with check-lists and criteria that are either incomplete or not prioritised.

So to help people responsible for setting up and managing partnerships, we have distilled this work and the best practices and learning from our own extensive experience into an approach that works. Please contact us to discuss your particular situation and issues.

For general enquiries contact Kieron White.