Partnerships - Building

Build it well and it will work better

Much of the building a partnership is about putting down strong foundations. The stronger they are, the greater the likelihood of success your partnership has.

• Clear Terms of Reference
• Communications Strategy
• Performance Monitoring procedures
• Rewards for achievements

Getting to a set of Clear Terms of Reference will generally mean that you need to think about how you and your colleagues negotiate. The sort of things you need to negotiate on can include:

• Scope of the project or a series of projects
• Targets to be achieved
• Activities to be undertaken for delivery of the targets
• Roles of the different partners in delivering the targets

More details on the Negotiation Styles is available in the Partnership Guide (PDF).

An effective Communications Strategy should help in:

• spreading the news;
• reporting progress;
• solving problems together;

• sharing knowledge;
• giving feedback;
• showing recognition;
• maintaining regular dialogue; and
• developing relationships.

Monitoring Performance for a partnership is not (exactly) the same as monitoring performance generally. The difference is that you are monitoring the performance of the partnership, not the construction project.

Before setting the selected performance measures in stone (or concrete), you need to make sure they "pass the test". Check each of your measures against the list below.

Performance Measures Mini-Checklist

1. Design - are we measuring what we want to measure and not something else?

2. On-target - are we only measuring what we want to measure?

3. Right Measure - are we measuring the right thing?

4. Clarity - is this measure consistently defined, will people measure the different data under the same set of rules?

5. Real-world check - is it easy to measure in our daily working conditions?

6. Side-effects? - we do not want behaviour to be changed by the measure - we don't want people to work in a peculiar fashion just to satisfy the measure.

Rewards
There are many ways to distribute rewards for achieving the targets, realising the benefits and simply saying "Thank you".

In general , most rewards are made up of one or more of the 4 elements below.

• Money - this can be cash, bonus, pay rise, gift voucher or anything that has a "market value"
• Recognition - this is showing respect to your colleagues and workmates. Often these can be a report in the newsletter or site notice board or the awarding of some citation for achievements.
• Feel Good Factor - this is an emotional reward: you've done a good job, you've helped somebody, you've made a difference.
• Being In-Control - this gives us a feeling that we are not the tiny cog in the massive construction machine. We can have a say in how we do our work, we do have some control over our daily routines.

Each of these elements have their strengths and some have specific weaknesses as well.

	Strengths		Weaknesses
Money	It's money and everyone wants it		It's money and everyone will want more!
Recognition	Saying "thanks" does not cost anything. Respecting people will result in people respecting you back back		Sometime people think they deserve recognition even when they have not contributed
Feel Good	It is the best motivating technique and people find it themselves.		You need to create conditions for people to feel good about themselves and their work
In-Control	This encourages innovation and gives people self-confidence and self-respect		You need to make sure rules are in place - some areas of work may not be suitable for this , for example Health and Safety

Often, rewards are made up of a combination of these 4 elements.