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Please stand by for realtime captions.
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This is Miranda Kennedy with NDI incorporated. I would like to welcome
you all to today's presentation. We're looking forward to sharing an
overview and strategies around networks and growing effectty
partnerships that result in positive outcomes for -- if you have any
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Also, you will note in the lower right hand side that we have captioning
available for participants who are Deaf or hard of hearing or for
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by minimizing the media viewer window. You can make it bigger by
minimizing the windows above it. The chat window, the Q&A and the
panelist window. This is being recorded and it will be posted on the DP
navigator -- next week. We're also going to be having posted there the
transcript and the power point from today's Webinar. You'll be able to
accesseded to's web. On to your own personal desktop. So you can
transfer from the Webinar -- if you havefy questions during the
presentation, you can submit them by using the Q&A and the chat mungses
on the right hand side. -- functions on the right hand side. As I
mentioned before at the end of the presentation I'll give everyone
directions on how to raise your happened using the hand icon on the
right hand side. Then I'll be able to unmute your line and you can ask
your question at that point. We would love to hare from all of you out
there. If you have any questions or comments, Chip would love to
entertain those. As part of that I would like to direct you to the
information on the screen right in front of you. If you dialed in the
866 number I suggest you hang up and dial again -- that will help you --
many of you have already done that. A few of you who have not, who use
screen regards disregard what you -- you already did that anyway. Until
that point when we open the lines everybody will be on mute. Now let me
tell you a little bit about our expert against presenter who we have
here today. Chip sceneny. Chip is the director of the southeast
technical assistance and Continuing Education center. The taste and he
also -- TACE. Prior to this W Chip was the director -- for community
rehabilitation providers at Georgia state university. Prior to that he
was the bureau chief of client services for the Florida division of
blind services. Vocational reha bill for over 30 years. He has a master
degrees in educational research in organizational psychology. He's a
graduate of the national executive leadership institute and has
contributed to the institute of rehabilitation issues. He has been a
certified public manager since 1983. 5. So as you all hear, Chip has a
great deal of expertise on the Sunday of building strategic networks and
partnerships. Sharing your incites with us. I'm going to let you take it
away.
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I think that beep was my queue there.
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Yes. That was me Un-muting your line. [ LAUGHTER ]
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Thank you so much Miranda. It's a great please to be a part of any work
that involved the navigators and the DPN project staff. I have been
working with staff on this program since April and combing from
vocational rehabilitation, this was something I [ Indiscernible ] The O
of the navigators. I learned a lot in a short period of time and talked
to a lot of navigators. So a lot of those discussions and the survey
work that we did has kind of informed this presentation. Some of you
might have remembered the survey we did in April where we basically
asked navigators what competencies they felt to be effective in their
job. Asked them to design effectiveness. Out of that work and results
came a lot of discussion around networking and partnership development.
So from there, we thought it would be timely to present strategies on
building networks and partnerships.
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Couple of things before we get going. This work builds upon 2 work
thymier ran da has done around collaboration -- Miranda has done.
Collaboration will be part of this discussion but won't -- I won't be in
to it in depth bosomier bosomier ran because spotlight -- because
Miranda -- in its entirefy and track where we are in terms of in terms
of each screen. So let's dive in to this, if you're ready. I assume you
are. So the objectives for today, for our time together, are for us to
understand the distinction among networks, collaboration and
partnerships. There are differences and we're going to highlight those
and they're key differences. Understand the importance of being
strategic. Understand and how to create and sustain strategic networks
and partnerships. Talking about results and accountability and the
connection of results accountability to establishing partnerships. It's
also important for us, I think, to define these terms because we throw
around collaborators. We throw around partners. We're going to really
distinguish between the two. It's an important distinction and you'll
find out why in a few minutes. Gofers of all, sort of a broad overview
of this. I think what will define organizations in the 21st tenture
reare the following element -- century are the following elements. In
includes and is especially pertinent to public organizations from which
most of you represent. I think -- it's not only me, it's based on
research -- organizations need to have the following elements. They need
to be strategic. By strategic, I'm talking about understanding the
operating environment, being mission and vision driven. Establish
organizational goals objectives and strategies. They need to be
competent in that they have the capacity and the competencies to reach
those strategic objectives. They need to be collaborative because nobody
can do it all. One agency is not everything for all people. And the
organizational culture must emphasize collaboration. They also need to
be accountable, which means they need to be results oriented in all
activities or all major activities. If I had room on the slide, I would
put one very important addition an we'll talk about that as we go on,
and that's innovative. Organizations need to be innovative. Those
organizations that are kind of stuck where they are, have been stuck,
are likely going to have trouble surviving much less thriving in the new
my almost yum as it reaches the second decade. So what I would like to
ask each of you is to spend a couple minutes looking at your work.
Thinking about your work. What percentage of your time do you spend in
meetings with external organizations and what percentage of your time do
you spend in networking events?
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Just take a second here and think about the percentages of time you
devote to external meetings and networks events as a percentage of your
total work time. .
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Having done that, the next question I would like to ask you, is, does
this time result -- there's two Ns I didn't catch in measure rabble
results?
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Measurable results. The amount of time you spend which could be
substantial, does this result in measurable results? Can you say
honestly I attended this networking event and this outcome moved my
organization forward? Or these meetings contributed to my organization's
bottom line? If the answer is no, to a large percentage of that time,
then it's important, even more important to look at the work you do
strategically. Let's get a definitional overview soft what we're going
here. When we're talking about networks, exchanging information or
sharing resources. If we're doing networking in terms of exchanging
information, we're usually sharing information about our organization
and linking our activities with the activities -- just information wise,
so people know who we are and what we do. If we're doing networking for
cooperation, more or less we're just sharing resources, our resources
are available for the benefit of other people. They're out there. People
know about it. That's basically it. There's not a whole lot of action
unless some external organization calls upon us for -- excuse me one
second. So the next definition is collaboration. This is what Miranda
spent a lot of time on. We define collaboration as working jointly to
accomplish shared vision and mission using joint resources. That's
probably the work that most of you do in your external meetings. Meeting
with people. Working jointly. Putting in resources with organizations
that have similar missions. To take that a step further, partnerships,
is collaboration, but it's collaboration where decision-making is shared
by all and all partners are accountable for all outcomes. The two key
elements, decision making as a shared activity and partners are
accountable for outcomes. Those outcomes are defined and agreed upon and
the work is evaluated. So that's the key distinction that we're going to
emphasize when collaboration and part near ship is the accounteddability
element. -- accountability element.
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Strategic is connecting networks, collaborations and partnering
activities to the goals of your organization. It's also setting goals
for this activity. In other words, every time that you go out and are
involved in a networking activity, you established goals. What you want
to accomplish. Every time you are in a meeting, those meetings have
defined goals. Something tangible comes out of those meetings. Obviously
talking about results that are important to you and your organization.
That you're actually consciously developing plans around these
activities. How much time you'll spend. How much of your agency's or
organizations resources you'll devote. At the end of the month or opened
of the quarter or end of the year, you're evaluating the effectiveness
of these activities. You're in effect, asking yourself, all this time,
all this effort that I spent on networking, collaboration and developing
partners, what has that meant to our organization? How has that
contributed to our bottom line? What's the relationship between these
activities and our strategic plan?
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I had not been good about announcing the slide number. We are on slide
8. So why be strategic? A A lot of people talk about being strategic but
few people, few organizations really commit to being strategic. Why is
it important and why it is more important now than ever? Because in
talking to you and knowing the work that you do, your time is limited
and is valuable. That it's valuable to your organization and valuable to
the consumers you serve. Also, other's time is limited and valuable. So
when you are bringing people together, it needs to be purposeful and it
needs to end up in some results that are important. Time is a commodity.
Time is a resource and there's less and less of both.
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Another reason is that no organization can be all things to all people.
In the past and especially coming from a vocational rehabilitation
background, in years past, VR would say we can be all things to all
people with disabilities. It was probably not true then. It's certainly
not true now. So I think it's safe to say that no one organization,
whether it's public or it's non-profit, can be all things to all people
because, the next bullet, resources are limited and trending downward.
That everyone's totally aware of the economic environment that we
operate. The impact on resources. I was meeting with a group of state
agency people nationally last week. All of them without exception are
going through cuts. Some, cuts are as high as 10%. Some organizations
are talking about laying off people. Some organizations are talking
about limiting services. Given that environment, now more than ever,
this environment is conducive to developing partnerships. Then the
networks and the partnership work that you do, has to advance your
strategic objective. Again, your time as a resource to your own
organization and if you're not using it strategically, you are in
effect, not getting full value for the resources for your organization.
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What are the benefit of establishing -- first and foremost is the
ability to leverage your organization's resources. As you personally
might leverage your own resources to get credit that allows you to buy
cars, buy houses that you normally wouldn't be able to do, leveraging
your organizations means ticketing the resources that you -- contributes
the resources that create a resource network greater than you would
normally be able to do. So you're able to expand your organization's
resources by leveraging resources from other organizations. By doing so,
you create the opportunity to improve your organization's performance.
This is if you wisely use the resources that you leverage through
networks and collaborations, it makes sense then, you would be able to
improve your organization's performance whether that's serving more
people, increasing your outcomes, having greater satisfaction, being
able to respond to people's needs quicker an more comprehensively.
You'll also be able to build your customer pool. If you want, if that's
what you're looking for. If you're looking for new referrals. If you're
[ Indiscernible ] Count on the population that you serve is low and want
to build it, this is a good way of doing it. Or if you want to reduce,
which is currently the case, with VR agencies who move in to what's
called an order of selection because of limited resources, they need to
reduce their customer pool. Potential partnership between an VR agency
and a One-Stop, you might be able to increase your customer pool, which
would be beneficial for you while the VR agency reduces it's customer
pool, which would be beneficial for the VR agencies. By establishing
networks and partnerships, you're able to increase your visibility in
the community. That you're in a sense, riding on the coat tails of other
organizations that may be also riding on your coat tails which means you
increase the amount of contact with the community. Increase your
effectiveness in the community perhaps and certainly by doing that
community recognizes your work. Therefore, more visibility for you in
your organization. And by establishing partnerships, theoretically would
allow you to expand partnerships even greater when you link on the
resources of other organizations and the other organizations that they
partner with. There's not an infinite but there's a good deal of
expansion that can take place and your ability to access resources for
your consumers for your organizations. It's like a continuous connection
of resources and partners.
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So let's talk about strategic networking for a second. Strategic
networking is those activities -- those networking activities that are
intended to accomplish the strategic objectives of your organizations by
one, promoting your services by developing trust relationships with
other organizations including employers and by expanding the
collaboration and partnership potential. So these are purposeful acts
where you're out there in the community, again promolting your services
-- pro moting your services and building those strong relationships with
the people and the resources you need to make your organization more
effective. Talk about networking objectives for a second. This is slide
11. When you go out to a typical networking opportunity, whetherthat's
think a chamber of commerce meeting or a job fair or something like
that, it's really man that before you go out that you have a purpose in
mind for each networking activity. Those purposes would be identifying
employers, identifying needed resources and identifying potential
partners for collaboration. So each time you go out, prior to go out,
set objectives for those networking activities. Then after each network
-- hello?
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It's Miranda. I wanted to interject really quickly. I know we have a
number of very new navigators on this call that haven't completed the
navigator orientation so in this slide and that slide prior to that
promoting your services, just felt like it was important point to make
that when you are out there promoting your services, knowing that what
you're doing as navigators if you are at a job fair or -- you are
promoting the One-stop Career Center. When you are talking to your
partners and your staff then you're really promoting what you as a
navigator really do. Building the capacity of the One-Stop.
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Yes. Excellent point. The ideal being just to build on what Miranda just
said to know what you're doing, to purposely know what you're doing
prior to do it, will make you much more effective.
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Thanks for letting me interject, Chip, sorry about that.
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No. That's good interjection. When you are at a networking opportunity,
when you meet people, when you have those opportunities, use time to
gather information from them. This is sort of a sketch of what you want
to do. Keep in mind that if you have any disinclination to want to
network because you don't feel like you are a people person. You're the
kind of person who considers themselves introverted. That they don't
like parties. That networking can be done by the most introverted person
and it can be done well. If you always keep in mind, people love to talk
about themselves, that takes the spotlight off you and puts it more or
less on them. That's easy to do. The same thing is true Len you are
trying to establish employer relations. Same principles. That by asking
them a series of questions, getting people to talk about themselves,
there's more people -- if you get them to talk about themselves, you
just -- you're gold. You'll get a lot of valuable information and it's
easy to do. What you want from them, what you want to get, what are
their concerns about their business or organization? Whether it's lack
of resources or lack of staff or lack of employers. What are their unmet
needs. Think in terms of the solutions that you could provide that
overlap with their needs. Also, too, think of the solutions they might
have that might fit some of your needs. It's important to go in to these
networks opportunities in mind. What are you looking for? What
capacities are you lacking? Is it possible in this networking
opportunity that you might run in to somebody that might be able to add
to your resources? Or if you're looking again, if you're looking to
increase your resource, how can other organizations meet -- how can you
meet the needs of other organizations? It's really a two way street.
Meeting their needs and having you meet their needs. At the intersection
of that is where true partnerships develop. You have to know your
organization's capacity, what you're willing to give, what you're
prepare to give as an organization. What you need as an organization.
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This is Miranda again. This dove tails so well with what we have in the
DPN checklist which navigators start out with as their role as
navigators where we ask them to go on the listening tour. Give them
suggestions on things to ask and really putting themselves in the
listening mode to help create those relationships. This womens so well.
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I totally agree. That's so important, especially if you are new. I've
seen a lot of people that are reluctant. They don't feel that they're
good at it. They don't feel that they're salespeople. It has nothing to
do with that it. Has more to do with listening and analyzing. If you are
a good listener, I would say that all of you probably are, and you're
good at asking key questions, you can maximize networking opportunities
because you can get information from people quickly. Be in a position
that you can say, this is a good resource partner. This is somebody that
we can do business with or this is something that needs us or somebody
that we need. So you don't have to be a salesperson. It's more important
as Miranda said, its' more important to listen and analyze what you've
listened to. You need their act information because you want to follow
through with them.
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You don't want to be in a position where you've invested a good time
with somebody and only to walk away with not knowing how to contact
someone.
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Here are some competencies that you need to work on or to build as you
move forward in your job. The ability to identify productive marketing
opportunities and productive networking opportunities. Need to be able
to say, this is wort my time. Going to this event is worth my time.
Going to another event is not worth my time. It's not worth my time if I
go to a chamber of commerce meeting an all I do is just chat people up
or nothing ever results from that. Or going to a networking event that
has nothing to do really with your mission of your agency and you're not
likely to establish any good potential partners from that. You need to
be acutely aware of the mission and the strategic objectives, the
capacities and the needs of your organization. These are -- when you
have internal meetings, these are good questions to ask especially if
you are new. If you are new and working with somebody that might be in a
position to mentor you, a good place to start is start asking questions
around the mission and strategic objectives. What capacities do we have?
What resources can we bring to the table and what do we need in terms of
resources? The ability to communicate and navigators that I talked to
when I was doing surveys that was never an issue. I think everyone
seemed to have exemplary communication skills and the ability to market
and sell. But let me clarify this before people freak out an say I
didn't get in this business to do marketing or sales. Whether you did or
didn't, these are important competencies because you have to be able to
market your programs, your resources through other agencies and the
value of your organization. You have to be able to market that in the
community to increase your visibility. And sell, means simply to
convince people that what you offer is valuable. To convince potential
partners that what you bring to the table is a value to them and can
enhance their work. So whether you acknowledge it or not, every day, in
this business, you are doing some some extent you are doing marketing
and you are doing selling. My advice is to go on the web and look at how
to be an evaluative marketer. How to be an effective -- how to be
effective at selling and apply those to the work that you do. Realizing
you are not a used car salesman and you are not selling real estate or
anything like that. But you are trying to increase the visibility of
your organization by marketing and you are trying to convince people
that your resources are a value to them.
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Chip, this is Miranda again. We just did two Veterans Administrations of
the overview of the DP navigator website. On DP navigator on the FAQ,
one of the frequently asked questions is how do you market the One-stop
Career Center as your role as a navigator. There's great information
there for you too when you are doing that research that chip was just
advising. I'd encourage people to check that out. It's got very specific
steps and resources on that very question.
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Yeah. Excellent. I would dare to say that most of the things I'm going
to talk about that, Miranda and DJ and Laura have resources somewhere
that can help you improve your work and improve your effectiveness. That
there's really an impressive resource library out there at your
disposal. So just to wrap up the competencies. Clearly the ability to
know who you are and to be able to communicate who you are, and finally,
when you are a networking opportunity, the ability to know who you are
and communicate who you are and who you represent is critical. Your
exposure to people is sometimes short. You might meet somebody who you
identify quickly as somebody who's a potential resource partner. You
mason a few minutes to convince them that it's in their best interest to
develop some type of relationship with you. So that's the importance of
having an elevator pitch, which I'm sure most of you have heard about.
Elements of an effective elevator pitch in slide 14.
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So obviously, it should be short, relatively short. 30 to 60 seconds.
Should be concise. Kills a story and has a -- con size. Tells a story.
Has a hook. Gives somebody a compelling reason to ask you more questions
or get contact information or take the next step with you.
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At the bomb Tom of the page there's a -- bottom of the page there's a
resource site that kind of walk you through how to draft a killer
elevator speech. Miranda and I were talking about this the other day
when we were going through the preparation for this and I refer to it as
the mother test. I thymier ran da referred to it as [ Indiscernible ] My
mother-in-law.
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My husband is an architect. How easy is that?
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That's what we were saying. We're in professions where we don't have a
one word title that would adequately sum up what we do. We're not
architects, plumbers, attorneys, we're not engineers. Most of us have
some complex job title that to somebody outside the organization would
not make sense. If I came up to somebody and said I'm with the technical
assistance and Continuing Education center. If I said nothing more than
that they would walk away with not having a clue with what I do. This is
an example of what my elevator speech is keeping in high frying to sense
my mother for 30 years could not say exactly what I do even though may
job has been essentially in this field. But I throw this at you for a
couple reasons. I'll read it and discuss some of the critical elements
of it. I'm the director of a program that provides training an
consultation to state agencies and private non-profits who's primary
mission is to find employment for people with disabilities. We work
primarily in the southeast but are part of a national network of similar
programs. So what I did in this relatively short period of time said I'm
a director of a program. Why is that critical because it might stay at
some level making a decision level capacity that might be important to
whom ever I was talking to. I'm a director of a program. We do training
and consul dating to state agencies and pry mat non-profits who's
primary role is to find employment for people with disabilities. We work
primarily in the southeast which is our area of coverage. If they are
outside the area they may not be interested. If but also we're fat of a
network that we have access to resources that have resources on the
national level. What we're hoping the hook is that somebody has an
interest, one, similar interest in finding employment for people with
disabilities. And that they would wok u walk away with some initial
knowledge of what my program does and how it could be a benefit to them.
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So I'll go back one slide. The elevator speech, keep it short keep it
concise.
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Looking at your network, at the end of the month, of the year, quarter
or whatever, you're looking at your network, analyzing it. These are
some of the things that you might want to evaluate. Kind of look at it
-- well, kind of look at it as you look art your network of friends in a
way. But your ideal network should be individuals or organizations that
know what you do. Know what your mission is. They can meet your
organizational needs. You can meet their organizational needs. And being
a part of their network, being in their network allows you to expand
their network further, using people that they network with.
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How do you sustain yournetwork if you evaluate it? I have a great
network ofresources. There are people that I can count on. They really
add to the work we do and they help me out a lot. So how do you keep
that going? This is sort of, again, like evaluating your network of
friends. One, you want to keep in touch. Frequency of contact probably
should be preportional to the value of that net work member to you or
your organization. You probably hopefully, keep in greater contact than
people who you might consider lesser friends. Acknowledge the value of
each network member. Acknowledge it publicly. Acknowledge it to them.
Express that wow, I really appreciate knowing you appreciate what you've
done for the last year for whatever period of time. Acknowledge the
contributions of your network outside the network, which everybody
appreciates acknowledgment. Everybody appreciates the fact that you
appreciate it. These are just some keys -- some tips on helping you
sustain your network.
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Some Miranda, this is probably a good time to stop for a second to take
questions.
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I'll advice even on how to do that. You can see on the right hand side
of the screen, I need to take the controls away from you Chip. I'll give
them back, I promise.
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Over here on the right hand side of your screen, you can see there's a
chat function and aQ&A function. If you would like and if you are synced
up you can give you questions over the phone line. If way you do that --
the way you do that is raise your hand. There's a little hand icon on
the right hand side. If you raise your hand, I can unmute your line, you
can ask Chip your question or make your comment. The other things I want
to note for screen readers and accessing us by the 146866 number, you
can send me an email. I'll be checking my email an I can relay your
question that way for those that are screen reader users. This is the
can we possibly stump Chip time period here, which I doubt that could
happen. Organizational psychology Chip. You have a big background on
this. I have a few questions for you while we're waiting for people to
type up theirs. Build up the courage to ask the question. If you have a
question, there are other people who have the question too. So please
don't be shy.
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As you were going through the information, just on the reus slide, slide
17 when you are talking about sustaining those networks. I couldn't help
but think about establishing those interagency -- aligned with your
commission and who you should have a high degree of contact with. Do you
have any thoughts on that? I know that a lot of these folks in your
network maybe wouldn't be appropriate for your inner agency committee,
but maybe have similar missions and alignment and come up with great
measurable outcomes as a result with working together on such a committee.
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Sew what's your advice there? I think I'm following you there?
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That would be something in terms of inviting people to be partners on an
inner agency committee. Or where you could advise additional partners,
if you don't have an -- already working with, that would really be a
great thing to look to to start off with. In which case, that leads to
another question that I have while I'm waiting for people to raise their
hands. What kind of goals are good for new partnership? If you were to
establish an -- are some good connection with, what kind of goals would
be good for a brand new partnership? What kind of guidelines would you
want to be thinking for the very first items to have in terms of
measurable outcomes?
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Actually, you're giving away the next segment.
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I'm sorry. I'm ahead of my time.
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Let me make a connection here. One of the goals that you want to think
about in terms of networking, one of the reasons that you want to
network is to look for potential partners. As Miranda, you just said,
some of the criteria is organizations who's mission and vision is really
closely aligned with you. Those are natural partners. Those are the
people that you obviously want in your network. So that is an ex.place
to start. -- excellent place to start. But it's not limit to that as
we're discuss further. As a new navigator, one of the first activities
networking activities, is really to strategically identify those
organizations that are closely aligned with your mission. I think that's
an excellent point. Go out and find those people and bring them in to
your network. Establish relationships with them because that's where you
want to start. Those are natural partnerships just waiting to be developed.
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I know we're going to be getting in to that in the next section. It
doesn't look like we have any more questions here. I can imagine people
are still processing the information. One other quick basic question
that I had for you. You kind of covered this but if you could summarize
it a little bit. You talked in the beginning what percentage of time
should navigators be spending -- is there a way to gauge that? Do you
have a magic formula for us?
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I would say it varies. You can say, 100% of the time that the meetings I
go to that the networking events that I go to lead to productivity help.
Me meet my out comes or help our One-Stop meet our outcomes. I would say
that's time well spent. If it's a majority of your time, then it's
probably justifiable. You sort of get -- you have to look at other
aspects of your job and other possibilities but certainly, no one can
argue that you spending time that results in positive outcomes for you
and your organization is truly time well spent. So, I think it would be
hard to establish a percentage of it. The key is to evaluate the time
you do spend. Is it worthwhile or is it not? I've seen a lot of people
who on the surface, appear to be high Lynetteworked. That -- highly
networked. They appear to be going to a lot of events but that doesn't
necessarily be more effective in their job. The reason is it is because
they're not strategic. That their networks have not results in expansion
of resources that are availability to them to help make their
organization and job more effective and certainly hasn't led to any
development of any development of potential partnerships which make
everyone more effective.
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Thank you Chip for laying that out so clearly. Actually, we do have one
comment in the chat function, which I think leads us in to our next
section. Is requesting that we talk about the difference in similarities
between partnerships and lab ration. Am I right that's what we're moving
in to next?
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Yes. Okay. That's a good question. Let me get into that and I will make
it a point to address that at the end. Well, actually, I'll start add
Decembering it at the beginning. A collaboration and collaboration is
people coming together and sharing resources to meet a common commission
or vision or objective, but the key difference is, through this
collaboration, there's the responsibility for the achievement of a
specified goal. That may seem like a minor point, but it's a point that
I'm going to continue to pound on that. A partnership is a collaboration
with mutual importancability forachieving a specified goal. You might
bring some people -- finding employment for people with disabilities. So
you bring all these collaboration partners together. What makes this a
true partnership is you would say, we are going to identify the
population that we're going to work with and of that population we
expect to get jobs for whatever percentage that -- this is our
population that we're working with. Say that's 100 people, that our goal
is to get 80% of those people jobs. And, at the end of whatever period
you want to evaluate, if you've gotten 85% of those people, you could
say this partnership was successful. We exceeded our goal.
Congratulations to everyone. Everyone gets equal credit. And keep up the
good work. But if you only got 40 people a job, well, we didn't succeed
as a partnership. What do we need to do differently? What lessons did we
learn? How do we change? That's the key difference. When you call
someone a part near, the question to ask yours is this person
accountable as me in achieving a goal? If not, then by at least my
definition, they're not really a partner. You collaborate with them. You
share resources. But they're not as equallyaccountable as you are to
accomplish a specified goal. I hope that answers Kristen's question. If
it doesn't, let me know.
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So here's what partners look like. They have shared vision. They have
shared objectives. This sort of gets back to Miranda's point earlier
about having aloned vision and objectives. They have shared resources.
They share in the decision making and accountable for results.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So what makes a partnership effective? Not only do they have a shared
vision but they have trust. There's clear communication. The most
important things I think are there's clear and quick decision making.
What you don't want to do by creating a partnership, you don't want to
create another bureaucracy that gets hung up in making decisions. An
effective partnership is decisions are made quickly. Communication is
clear. And that all partner haves the ability to anticipate and manage
change as circumstances change, the partnership can move along with it.
There's a lot of groups that we would now define as crab are tire groups
that get together -- laboratory lab are -- events have changed all
around them. They haven't changed. Their effectiveness is men mallized
by all of that, by not being able to change as the environment changes.
To add new partners or remove partners as circumstances change. Add
partners that enhance your effectiveness and remove partners who
detractor don't add to your effectiveness.
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In a way, it's like establishing sort of a business partnership. Only
your bottom line is important to society. People who can be productive
within that partnership and be accountable, those are the ones that you
want to keep. The ones that don't you subtract. Those are the ones that
you want to consider dropping.
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So how do you do that diplomatically? Especially if it's a partner that
-- but they're not contributing but do you see what I'm saying?
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Yeah. It's almost like you're psychic.
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Sorry.
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Par near ship value. -- partnership value. Be able to understand what
each partner brings to the table and what each partner stands to again
by being a part of this. -- gain by being a part of this. You have to be
able to assess that. By considering -- if you consider adding partners,
then you have to ask, how will that partnership with this person create
additional value? And to answer Miranda's question, if somebody does not
create additional value, and are only part of this group because they
think it makes them look good but they don't really add anything, I
think it's -- we'll talk about this more toward the end -- that it's
holding everyone accountable for results. That people will do what they
say they will do. Result also occur as a result of that. So the high
road here is having a way of being able to assess everyone's
contribution. The way you do that is by having a set of agreed upon
roles and responsibilities. Making sure that's clear and we'll talk
about that in a moment. If it's clear someone is not living up to they
said they would do, that they're not adding value, sort of building a
case for saying your participation isn't working. We suggest it's not
good use of your time or our time for you to continue to be involved.
Granted, all of that is easier said than done. A lot of people are
uncomfortable with that. Having a the data to back you up make those
decisions and judgments easier.
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There is also that accountability as everyone else is pulling their
weight, it would incentivize the partner that is maybe riding the coat
tails, to contribute if you had a way of showing what the efforts and
contribution of all the partners were. You're not quite on board, what
are you going to do?
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Yeah. I think that's --
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Then they wouldn't have to be dropped.
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That's a great point. Probably the first thought shouldn't be to drop
them but what's the plan to make them more effective? If you are
evaluating the work of this partnership and evaluating even's
contribution and some organization's clearly lacking. I think every
opportunity to help them step up especially if they have the resources
that you need, that should be made. I think it's obvious, some people
don't contribute. But to keep them part of the partnership creates in a
lot of ways minimally, just taking up space and -- but Maximally it
might create a toxic environment. That their lack of effort or
contribution might negatively influence others.
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Does that answer your question Miranda?
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Yes. One bad apple.
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Yeah. It's important to be able to identify and correct. So what are the
benefits of partners? Obviously you're leveraging the strength and
sources of other organizations. Sharing responsibility so you don't have
to assume the full load. Again, in this day and in this environment,
that the more help you can get, the more resources you can access, the
more effective you're going to be. Also a way for you to personally and
for your organization to gain competencies. It's like you are adding a
new skill set or potentially adding a new skill set to the work that you
do. You're bringing in people who might have an expertise in areas that
you don't. That you can learn. That you can grow. That your organization
can learn and grow. Vice versa, that you would provide the same thing
for other partners.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You dramatically increase the potential for innovation. Again, you are
bringing in people maybe with a different perspective. Same mission as
you but a different perspective on things. You bring the power of a lot
of people being creative and innovative and then you increase by -- by
doing that by being innovative by increasing your competency, increasing
your competency sets, by -- innovation calls for people to change in
some way. To be competent in areas that they weren't before. To have
competency sets they didn't have. The competency sets in these case are
competencies of the entire partnership without being esoteric. When you
innovate you increase the competency of the entire partnership. When
that happens when you are innovative, when you improve, when you
increase your effectiveness, you probe have got to increase your
organizational visibility because people are going to recognize your
work, your contributions, your part in all this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which get to the whole idea to the professional development of
navigators, of you navigators that are out there and whether you are
going to continue being navigator for years -- focus strategically in
terms of the networks and the partnerships that you are building and the
measurability outcomes can be phenom mall.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah. I totally agree. You can look at this as Miranda just said as
career development. Look at it somewhat selfishly, although I think it's
wise in these days. The more exposure you have to different people, to
different -- people with different ideas, that increases your competency
and value in the marketplace and the effectiveness in your own job.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Your organization and you. It's not like either is mute yulely exclusive.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's a great point. I couldn't agree more.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a look at the competencies you'll need. You need to know the needs
of your consumers. You need to know also -- this bullet isn't on there
but it should be -- the needs of your organization and relationship to
your consumers. Do you have the resources to meet the needs? You need to
have a knowledge of who potential partners are out there. Who's mission
and vision is aloned with us, or who has resources that we could use
whether their mission or vision aligned with ours or not. The ability to
negotiate. The ability to negotiate performance measures. The ability to
negotiate decision making processes. The ability to quickly cut to the
chase. To negotiate through bureaucracies and make decisions quickly.
The ability to develop performance measures that have meaning to people
who have a vested interest in what you do. The ability to share decision
making. As always, the ability to communicate.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk about some of the barriers. As we talk about barriers to
establishing partnerships, we present these not to discourage people
from doing this, but you've all run into this. It acinose have
strategies to deal with these barriers. Different levels of interest. If
you have people who are potential partners but not really as interested
and committed to what you do, especially committed to outcomes, they're
going be less effective as partners. Different levels of resource
commitment. Sometimes that's okay. Sometimes that's good. Sometimes it's
not so good and people are less likely to partner if they don't think
they contributed much or don't have much to gain or they just have
limited resources. Lack of role clarity. That gets back to the whole
roles and responsibilities part. If that's not clear, having effective
partnerships is going to be really difficult because people aren't going
to know what their position and what their roll in this whole
partnership -- role in this whole partnership is. Different levels of
community vizzability. Different levels of power.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Talk about some strategies for a second. Lack of time and interest.
Compelling reasons, lack of compelling reasons. There might not be clear
rules in a potential partnership. Might be interpersonal issues. There's
N a lot of cases, history, of politicses going back and a lack of shared
value. You can deal with those in a lot of ways. One, by really being
clear on why you are establishing that partnership. What it takes to
become a partner in this partnership. Have those ground rules clear from
the beginning so people know what their time commitment's going to be.
What they stand to gain. What they can possibly contribute and make
decisions on whether it's worth their time and effort to be involved. If
that's not clear from the beginning, then people might become involved
and be disaonlied that -- be less productive and be counter
productiontive. In terms of the interpersonal issues, the history and
the politics. It gets back to being clear why everyone's together have
clear roles and responsibilities and having clear outcomes. It doesn't
matter what's in the past if people got along or didn't get along,
you're bringing people together. They're clear about what their role is.
They're clear about the outcomes and expectations are. It's really an
objective way of dealing with all of that. So clarity from the beginning
can eliminate a lot of people who shouldn't be part of your partnership.
Then clarity about where you're heading and who's accountable for what
can just sort of obviate the personal issues makes them irrelevant. Need
to accomplish these goals and this -- I know these are complex issues.
We can spend a lot of time talks about it including the history and
thepolitics and everything else. Probably can do a whole Webinar on that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
If you're looking to determine whether you're ready to partner if you
ear even ready to make a commitment to partner, here is what you need to
look at. Again, the needs of your customers and your organizations. What
your organization can commit, especially in terms of your time and the
cost, the resources involved. That's key. Don't commit to a partnership,
don't commit to being involved in you don't have the time and your
organization does haven't the resources. That doesn't make you look good
or your organization. Then determine how the partnership will effect
your organization. Will it increase your effectiveness or increase your
visibility? Will it increase or decrease your customers?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Is that good or bad? Before you engage in partnerships, before you
become involved, you have to take these things in to consideration. See
whether you're ready to commit. If you're not, then step back. Don't be
involved. Sort of look at what you might have to change, either within
your job or within your organization. Go back and strategically ready if
you are ready to partner. If you meet all these criteria, then go in and
do great things. Quick words on formalizing partnerships.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You definitely want to structure the decision making process so it's
clear. You want all resources on the table so everyone knows what they
can access. Again determine roles and responsibilities. Develop an
action plan. It doesn't have to be a long document. Should have over all
goals objectives and actions. Determine what the outcome measures are
and then determine evaluate a process to evaluate this. All of this
actually can be done simply and easily. It doesn't require a great deal
of discussion. My suggestion would be for the first couple of times you
meet, you might want to bring somebody from the outside to help
facilitate you through this. These are the kinds of discussions you want
to have early. It's time well spent to be clear on all of these things.
How decision also be made. How resources will be used. Roles,
responsibilities, outcomes, how we evaluate whether we're effective or not.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
How do you evaluate? You have to have clear measures of effectiveness.
Mutually agree on the evaluation strategy and discuss results and be
prepare today make changes as a result of that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Less sons learned, what would we -- lessons learned what would bedo
effective? How do we let people know we did great things?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Key steps in grows partnerships. Monitor your results. Make sure that
you as this new partnership are aware of what's being done. You can
measure it. You can learn from it. You can communicate from it and you
can innovate from it. You can grow as a partnership.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Ways of sustaining. Again, communicate, which is a theme throughout.
Make sure communication is easy and is facilitates your work. Recognize
the work of everybody who's a partner. Reward, if you can. Even if it's
a heightened recognition, but make a big deal out of it. Publicize your
work. Make sure that your work, your effectiveness is known in your
community.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
All of this is motivation for people to continue. They have pride of
ownership. They fell recognized and they feel like they're doing good
and people recognize that.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Communication. Why is it important? It does speak decision making. It
lessens the silo effect. People are more to communicate. Fosters mute
yule understanding and trust.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Another good point to stop and ask for questions. I know we have about
15 minutes left, right?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Why I. We do.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
F you have a question. -- if you have a question, submit it via the chat
box or the Q&A box or you can raise your hand and we'll unmute your line
and you can ask Chip your question that way. If you're a screen reader
user, shoot me an email if you have a question.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I don't see any questions at this time. We might want to -- we have a
number of additional slides we want to be able to get through. I can
just hear people processing all of this information. I'd love to get to
some of the comments about the partnerships that they're engaged in --
but I wonder if that might be best at the end Chip?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
We can do that. We'll talk about the results accountability quickly and
we'll get the questions.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
One of the disadvantages of Webinars, the advantage is that you can
present information to a lot of people who are spread out all over the
country as you all are. The disadvantages are that there's not the time,
really, or the ability to apply this to your situation and have
discussions on how this might relate to what you are going through as
navigators.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, actually, we have a couple questions. So people were typing their
questions and I jumped the gun on that. We have a question, what do you
do when your performance measures compete with your mandated partners?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Wow. That's an excellent question. Do you remember the bullet the
ability to negotiate? That's a couple of questions to that. -- couple of
potential answers to that question. It's a great question. If somebody
is a mandated partner, you have no choice but to work with them. I'm
assuming that you are required by law to have a partnership with them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Do you think that it might be really investigating those performance
measures and finding out if it actually a conflict or just a perception
of a conflict? There have been times that there have been perceptions on
the part of agency staff that there was a conflict because they didn't
really understand the different mission and measures by which the other
organization was -- that they were using. So it could even just be an
educational piece. I'm not sure if that's the case here. Maybe you have
done that investigation Darren, but I've seen that happen and I know
that that's been part of the role as navigators look in to and find out
if there's a con to diction there or if they line up better than you
think. Chip, have you seen that or have any other suggestions?
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Well, actually, I've seen and been involved in situations where
performance measures for one organization don't necessarily conflict,
but one organization may get credit for an outcome if a person works for
one day. An organization might get credit if only that person works for
60 days or longer.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
That's the same -- that's actually the example I was thinking of. It was
specifically the One-Stops I worked in the vocational rehabilitation
felt that they were under the impression that jobseekers went through
WIA training, or other work force center training, that that person just
needed to be hired and they continue to count it as a successful outcome
when that wasn't the case. When we provided more information, not just
get a job but maintain that job, have that potentially be on a career
path with the opportunity for promotion and raises and increases and
what have you. So sustainable there. That really debunking that myth
defused a lot of animosity even. Or just tention. A confusion or
competition between the two.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah. I think that's a really good example because of that. The
perception is that while maybe we don't have to find a high quality job,
maybe that needs to be negotiated. But I think that's where skill and
communication and negotiation and truly understanding what are behind
each agency's performance messages as Miranda said, is key Coming to
some agreement as to why we are partners. That might mean -- obviously,
organizations can change their own outcome measures but there's got to
be common ground where people can agree, this is why we exist. Agree on
a performance measure. I'm not saying Darren that's easy, but it does
require a good deal of discussion, negotiation, and understanding. Be
willing to reach some type of workable compromise.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Getting at our larger mission? If you have a shared mission to help
people with disabilities get off of benefits and move off of
unemployment. Where you can find your common ground and really focus on
that and try to address anything that gets in the way in terms of how we
reach that higher ground together.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Exactly. It may be a matter of determining different roles for people
who represent agencies with different expectations. Understanding
specifically what their role is and understanding what your role is.
Understanding what you bring to the table and what they can bring to the
table. Again, that's part of the negotiation process. Again, the
emphasize, I'm not saying this is easy. If it were easy, we'd see real
credible true partnerships all over the place. The fact is we don't and
that's one of the reasons. But I think, we can overcome that by again,
understanding what everyone brings to the table by understanding what
their specific role and responsibility is. Maybe that has little or no
connection to -- well I won't say to their organization's outcome,
because it should, but maybe it enhances what their organization outcome
would normally be. That's what you want to do. You want to enhance
people's productivity. You don't want to detract. You don't want to be
in a situation where one partner potentially brings down the performance
of other partners. That's a tough one, but I think it can be overcome
again as Miranda said with greater understanding of each organization
and the ability to negotiate and find the common ground. Great question.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
You said thank you. -- he said thank you. Hopefully we helped to address
that. That was a great question, definitely, Dar ran.
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Putting you through your paces chip.
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That's another example where you might want to have -- when this issue
comes up at the beginning where you might want to have a facilitator
come in and help with that negotiation, help facilitate that discussion.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Which was another question from someone who said you suggested bringing
in an outsider for the first couple of meetings. Wanted to know who you
would suggest.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
I would suggest someone who's familiar with the work of the partners.
Clearly has the ability to facilitate but doesn't really have a vested
interest or as closely aloned with any partner with the group. --
aligned with partner with the group.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Someone who's respected by members.
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Who you bring in should be agreed upon esomebodily if there's any
history. -- especially if there's history. Not everyone can be a good
facilitator, but if you know of a good facilitator, someone who has
facilitation processes can work you all pretty quickly, can work
partners quickly to get to where they need to be.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
It definitely could be someone that's brought in. A lot of times we have
seen that as a role where the navigator has -- comfort level in
approaching that, we've had navigators who've had certificates in
conflict management and organizational psychology backgrounds and what
have you. It might be that one of your fellow navigators in your project
have expertise in that. So feel free if you have that skill set, but
also tap in to it if it's out of your comfort zone.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
Just a plug for technical assistance and Continuing Education centers.
There's one in every region and there's 10 in them in the U.S. we cover
the southeast, but there's one that's responsible for whatever area
you're in. TACE centers are usually staffed by people who have knowledge
of One-stop Career Centers. They have knowledge of VR programs. But
don't have a vested interest in any organization and are likely to be
impartial. Hopefully have strong facilitation skills.
------------------------------------------------------------------------

------------------------------------------------------------------------
Okay. I think we're ready to move onto the last part here.
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I know we have just four minutes left. I want to just present what I
think is the lynch pin of all of this. What makes it all work is the
notion of accountability. It's the one notion that allows people to take
the high road. It's the one notion that I think is more and more --
going to be Aponte of emphasis, has been for a while because resources
are lacking. Resources are scarce. People want to know that resources
are put to good use and people want to know that the money that they
spend on taxes or the money that they contribute is accomplishing what
they intend for it to accomplish. So I'm introducing the population --
being accountability for a quality of life that you want in the
community. Looking at what those conditions look like, how can we
measure that in who are the partners? What will we do? How can we do
better? How will we know if we're doing better and how can we
communicate this? This is basically -- it's looking at your community
and asking your community what's important. Employment is usually an
aspect that's important in every community so what does employment look
like? Understanding what it looks like. Does that mean wages at a
certain level? Wedges with benefits. [ Indiscernible ] Self-sufficient
and not on government programs. Setting up measures around that.
Determining who our key partners in reaching those those objectives.
Understanding how we can do better. We know what we're doing as well. It
is -- the whole notion of accountability as I switch slides here. That
basically says, we bring people together. What will we do? How l well
will we do it? What will we do? Will mean a number of customers that we
serve. The activities we'll do. What per -- what percentage improved
self-sufficiency. What the the satisfaction of the people that we came
in contact with our work? It's -- understanding what's important to the
community and bringing partners together to achieve that. Being able to
measure that and being able to report on that. Then evaluate your own
work. So -- and it truly does separate collaboration from partnership,
the whole notion of accountability. Without accountability, we're just
collaborating with no clear means of evaluating for effective -- if
we're effective or not. We want to have results that are important to
the community and that's the whole point of results accountability that
community says yes, these are the results I expect that are important to
the community. This group of partners is achieving them.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
So I think I'll stop it there, Miranda. I think the rest is fluff.
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[ LAUGHTER ]
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We have two minutes left if anyone wants to get in a last question.
Although, I think, we've clearly covered a lot of ground in this
discussion from networking to collaborations to partnerships. Knowing
that a lot -- that you navigators out there in the field , that you're
doing this. Hopefully this information is helpful and useful to you. We
actually do have a post training survey when you log off of the Webinar
when it ends in a minute. If you'd give us your feedback, we'd love to
hear your comments, if this is information you'll be able to use F so
how? Please feel free to email Chip, his contact information is on the
next slide. Hopefully everyone also has my email address as well. The
only difference is M Kennedy. Other than that, Chip and I have the same
email address. I don't see that anyone is sending any other questions
in. I think we must have done a fairly good job of answering people's
questions if they had them as they came up. Or if everyone is
processing, feel free to follow up with us. We'd love to hear the types
of work you are doing in your areas, the partnerships that you're
establishing. Especially the comes. -- outcomes. You can spend a lot of
time in collaboration and that can look really good, but what are the
outcomes of that? Are you having true partnerships? Hopefully today's
presentation will give you a really good guide and resources and talking
points to take to your local investment boards, your staff, your
partners, Interagency Committees that are in place right now that you
can take some of this information to them, consider it when you are
working with those folks. When you are networking in the community. One
thing I want to let everyone know, this Webinar is going to be archived
on the DPNavigator.net training site. I'm going to take the ball back
from you Chip. I'm going to for those that are still with us, I'm going
to do a file transfer here and share with them the Power Point. That
will allow people to download it onto their desktop off of the Webinar
platform in front of them. You see that on your screen in front of you.
Click on partnerships NDI11. Click on that. Click on download. You can
save the Power Point directly there. Chip, do you have any last comments
you'd like to leave our navigators with?
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Just a quick summary that it all starts with the results and works back
wards from there. The results lead to strategies to achieve those
results and so part of that strategy is obvious Lynetteworking and
partner -- obviously networks and partnership. If you can link -- you
will have accomplished a lot.
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Great. Thank you so much Chip for sharing your expertise with us. These
great strategies that we can go out there and use immediately. Thank you
to all the navigators on the line for all the hard work you are doing
out there in your communities. Hope you found this information helpful.
We'd like to wish you all a happy Thanksgiving. We're all thankful for
our navigators.
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Bye everyone.
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Bye everyone.
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[ Event Concluded ]
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