Claire Hague.
Now that the dust has settled (mostly) from the great amalgamation debate last year, it's safe to look at one of the outcomes of that region-wide "discussion".
While a majority of people were opposed to amalgamation, many also wanted to see councils working together more closely, where it made sense to do so, for the greater good of each community within Hawke's Bay.
On the face of it this would appear to be very sensible, and there are plenty of examples of individuals and groups, not just councils, working together on projects that are intended to improve well-being in our region.
There are some significant challenges, however, in the area of working together, or to use the current buzzword, "collaboration", and these are not unique to local government. It's straightforward to set up a meeting, and then a group, to start work on some of our most pressing issues. It's not as easy to actually agree on the goal, to make anything that looks like action occur, and then to work out if any progress has been made.
In the past I've struggled to work out why collaboration should be so hard, given that there are many talented and visionary people in Hawke's Bay who invest huge amounts of time and energy into collaborative initiatives.
Sometimes there's just not a lot to show for that work. Looking for answers, I came across some international work being done in this area of collaboration, called "collective impact".
Collective impact is the term that's now being widely used to describe a range of organisations coming together with the community in cities and regions across the world to work on complex community issues. Examples include improved health or education outcomes, boosting the well-being of children, and making our town the best place to do business on the planet.
The Tamarack Institute in Canada (tamarackcommunity.ca) is just one organisation that supports action and research in this area, and their website contains information and examples of wha
This information gives us some useful insights, I believe, into how we could further improve what we are doing in Hawke's Bay. Briefly, the issues seem to broadly fit into the following categories.
Key people come and go - our three-year electoral cycles (in the case of councils), and leaders of other organisations changing jobs, means groups that start out with a hiss and a roar often lose momentum as champions leave. Then new people arrive who want to start again or change tack. This can result in a frustrating cycle of "we've all been here before", which saps the group's energy and commitment. The group flags, there's a lull and then a new one forms and the cycle starts again.
We all have different ideas about what our communities' goals should be, and how to achieve them. The Tamarack Institute says there's a lot of talking and listening to be done before agreement can be reached on goals and the work can begin. If we all think we know best, and don't really try to understand or value the opinions of others, nothing of substance will change. A room full of egos and bluster won't get anywhere fast.
Building trust and shared vision takes more time than we think. If we were really serious about working together to change things (according to a seminar I attended run by Tamarack) we would be putting aside a weekly time to get together with other key community leaders, look at what's being done here and overseas, read the research, share ideas, listen, listen, listen and then formulate a plan.
That's a big commitment that many already busy people cannot or will not make. Additionally, it frustrates the heck out of the more task-focused people who just want to get on with the job. Putting aside time to learn before taking action is hard but necessary in this case.
We can't achieve momentum without devoted drivers. A trusted convenor, community and organisational champions, and critically, a backbone organisation, are must-haves. The formation of a backbone organisation is critical and I'm not sure we have got a handle on what this would look like. All of us have our own organisations to run, and our own funding to be accountable for. The minute things get busy and money tight, we will all naturally put our own imperatives to the top of the to-do list and the collaborative ventures drop to the bottom. So, developing and maintaining the sense of urgency, activating community support, gaining funding, co-ordinating work, helping measure progress - all those things need to be assigned to a separate organisation.
Collaborative projects take time and money, and if we're not prepared to find both, we shouldn't even go there. If collaboration is always the "bit on the side", it will soon flounce off when our attention is diverted back to home.
We don't know if it's working unless we measure it somehow - not our own little pieces of work, but the work as a whole, together. Measuring anything as complex as social, educational and economic progress is fraught with difficulties. Trying to do it across a range of organisations is incredibly taxing, but it can be done.
If this all sounds a bit negative, it's not meant to be. In Hawke's Bay we are blessed with a wealth of vision, talent and commitment. I see individuals like Pat Magill, groups like the intersectoral forum, health and social sector models, and organisations like Business Hawke's Bay all working with great intent to improve the quality of life for us all. The new Regional Economic Development Strategy, for example, will hold huge potential for a "collective impact" on the well-being of our people. All the foundations for effective collaboration exist here, and indeed success is already evident in pockets within the region in some form or other. With some further work based on the findings from other communities across the world, we could really gain traction and see even better results.
- Claire Hague ONZM was principal of Napier Girls' High School and deputy chief executive of EIT. She sits on the board of Ako Aotearoa, the National Centre for Tertiary Teaching Excellence, and is an education consultant.
- Views expressed here are the writer's opinion and not the newspaper's. Email: editor@hbtoday.co.nz