Five Common mistakes
that prevent and destroy multi-sector CSR partnerships
The private sector is playing an increasingly
important role in development. Companies
from all sectors, including especially the extractive and fast moving consumer
goods sectors, are investing in development initiatives in areas such as
education, health, poverty alleviation and livelihoods, environment and gender
equality.
The impact areas of these private sector social
responsibility investments closely maps the impact areas outlined in the
Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) and anticipated impact areas of the soon to
be adopted Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).
The MDGs and SDGs serve to
guide the development activities of the member countries of the United Nations
and the vast majority of development NGOs and organizations. Official Development Agencies, national
governments, multi-lateral and international organizations and NGOs focus
development efforts on areas such as education, health, poverty alleviation and
livelihoods, environment and gender equality
While the various private,
public and civil society organizations noted above approach development with a
focus on common areas, they often bring unique skills, experience and
capacities to the work.
In many cases these are complimentary and
synergistic, at first glance, would seem to naturally invite partnerships and
collaboration and the various sectors (e.g., ODA agencies, private sector,
NGOs, etc.) even have stated goals of collaborating with each other in support
of their development efforts.
Simple logic would suggest
that collaboration would result in efficiencies and more and better development
impact per dollar spent or effort expended.
Value is lost for all partners and for society when
multi-sector partnership opportunities fail to start or start and fail
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Yet, the
reality is that, while there are notable exceptions, this collaboration is not
easy to achieve. Whether on an
individual project level or a strategic organizational level these natural
partnership opportunities too often do not result in effective
partnerships.
Value is lost for the
organizations involved but the real price is paid by their community partners
who do not receive the full impact that they could have received had these
natural partners found an effective way to collaborate.
Here are 5 common reasons why they start and fail, or even
fail to start.
1. Egos of main actors
This is common to the destruction of many
different sorts of partnerships. What
makes multi-sector CSR partnerships more prone to ego related challenges is
that, in many cases, the partnering organizations will have a general history
of opposition or antagonism towards each other.
For industry to embrace and support the
role that NGOs and development agencies can play in the success of a business
or project is relatively new. Similarly
for NGOs and development agencies to acknowledge the important role of the
private sector in development projects.
In many cases the sectors, or at least many organizations within them,
have been actively opposed to each other.
These means that in some instances a 180
degree about face is necessary along with an acknowledgement that previous
perspectives were flawed. This can often
be overlooked during the giddy early days of a partnership but will often come
back in a destructive way as the partnership plays out over time
2. Didn’t hang in through the tough stuff
Every partnership is bound to run into
difficult challenges over time. Project
issues arise, personnel changes, partners have strong opposing views on
external issues, finances come under pressure, etc. Sometimes these come out of the blue and
sometimes there is a slow build up over time.
In many instances if the partners can hang
in there the issues will either resolve themselves, or they will find a
mutually acceptable way to work through them.
However, for reasons discussed above, there
are latent pressures in the partnership that can surface when other issues
emerge. This can make it more difficult
to work through the inevitable issues and challenges that always show up.
Those partnerships that survive over time
will find ways to hang in and work through the rough spots and will also
actively seek to reduce the latent pressures.
Conflict and differences of opinion happen in every partnership. All the time.
There are ways to systematically prevent conflict and disagreement from
destroying partnerships
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3. Internal buy-in wasn’t there
Multi-sector CSR partnerships are often
developed and negotiated by front line personnel with some level of support or
acquiescence from corporate and NGO head offices. They frequently end up in place and operating
without ever really getting the attention of key senior stakeholders.
In many cases the partnerships bring both an
expanded and enhanced ability to achieve some of an organization’s objectives
and, along with that, constraints in other areas.
As partnership and relations issues arise,
as they always will, there is sometimes a sudden realization in the leadership
ranks that the partnership has taken away degrees of freedom to act. This can be exacerbated by historical
organizational opposition as noted above.
When this happens you can have key internal
stakeholders, who hadn’t really paid attention to the creation of the
partnership and don’t have any ‘ownership’ in it, start to question both the
partnership itself and the general principle of multi-sector CSR partnerships.
.
4. Only business is efficient mentality
Historically there has been a strong theme
in many business sectors that business is inherently more efficient. The theme maintains that because it more
directly subjected to the demands of the marketplace, business is somehow more
efficient than NGOs and governments.
Dig deep enough and you will find that
perspective exists somewhere in most businesses and sometimes can permeate
individual businesses and even large swaths of industry sectors.
This mentality can surface when problems
arise and present barriers that prevent the challenges from being worked
through objectively or prevent constructive solutions from emerging.
Too often you will see much effort being
put into finding confirming evidence of inefficiency, rather than a balanced
analysis looking for examples of efficiency and inefficiency and their
underlying causes.
This can create a dangerous spiral that can
undermine even the best partnerships.
5. Business is too greedy mentality
The NGO equivalent of the Only business is efficient mentality is
the Business is too greedy perspective.
NGO partners that fall into this
perspective are prone to examining business decisions only from this vantage
point and not taking a more balance and objective approach to understand the ‘why’
of business decisions.
Confirming evidence is sought and focused
on and more and more partnership and operational decisions of the business are
seen as being based, at least partly on greed
There is another discussion on the
relationship between greed and shareholder interest, which are often quite
different. Greed based decisions tend to
be short-term and with narrowly defined interests. Longer-term strategic shareholder interests
are broader and provide much more scope for interest alignment.
As with the only business is efficient mentality the business is greedy perspective can create a partnership killing
spiral of unbalanced confirming evidence.
These
are some of the reasons that multi-sector partnerships, that start off with
enthusiasm, potential and goodwill, can fall off the rails and turn aligned
interest into lose-lose situations
Strategy and insight can turn opposing forces into aligned interests Avoid the temptation to pull apart. Find a way to win together |
I will be posting more thoughts on this topic in the coming weeks. If you are interested, we are offering a training forum on the subject in Ottawa, Canada in March see below.
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