The Nimble Collaboration - Fine-Tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success

Let's face it, the collaboration process can be a pain in the neck. The Nimble Collaboration: Fine-Tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success, shows collaborations how to become leaner, more responsive, more flexible, and ultimately, more productive. In their bestselling book, Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey, Michael Winer and Karen Ray describe how to form a successful collaboration. In The Nimble Collaboration, Ray guides existing partnerships into the next stage: becoming more effective. Part I presents the "three Rs" of nimble collaboration: results that are clearly defined, relationships that are deft, and a structure that is resilient. Readers will learn how to determine, describe, and evaluate the specific results everyone wants to achieve-and keep them at the heart of each step they take. The book shows readers how to build trust, reinforce roles, and avoid turf issues and hidden agendas. Part II walks through real-life applications in two typical collaborations: service integration collaborations, and complex problem-solving collaborations. Detailed case studies demonstrate nimbleness in action and give collaborations concrete problem-solving ideas. Throughout the book are samples, examples, and how-tos based on the author's many years of experience consulting with real people in real collaborations across the United States. A special section explains how to write the various documents that bind partners together on paper, including a memo of agreement and a formal governance agreement. Collaborations that involve government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, community-building groups, nonprofits, law enforcement, education, health, housing, arts, social services, business, foundation?you name it?will find hands-on help for making their collaboration satisfying and productive.

About the author

KAREN RAY is president of Karen Ray Associates, a consulting firm that special-izes in training and organization development for government, community, and nonprofit agencies. She holds a master’s degree in applied behavioral sciences from Whitworth College, Spokane, Washington, with a specialty in organization and hu-man development. 
From 1977 to 1983 Karen was executive director of a literacy-focused agency man-dated to collaborate by state and federal funders. Her consulting practice began when she decided to combine this collaborative experience with her training expertise to problem-solve with agencies involved in joint ventures. Collaboration is now the theme of her work with organizations in many states. Karen trains others in collaboration workshops and provides consulting services to ongoing collaborations. 
Based on research conducted by the Wilder Foundation and on personal experience, Karen coauthored Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey with Michael Winer in 1994. This award-winning book guides nonprofit staff through partnership ventures. 
Karen Ray may be contacted at [e-mail].

Summary

How to make your collaboration more responsive, more flexible, and more productive
Working in collaboration is a must for many organizations, but collaborations are naturally cumbersome. Often, meetings are unproductive. Decisions are made over and over again. Tasks take forever to complete. Accountability shifts. Resources are wasted. Unresolved conflicts lurk below the surface. 
In their best-selling, Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey, Michael Winer and Karen Ray describe how to form a successful collaboration. In The Nimble Collaboration: Fine-Tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success, Karen Ray guides existing partnerships into the next stage: becoming more effective.
• Part I presents the “three Rs” of nimble collaboration: results that are clearly defined, relationships that are deft, and a structure that is resilient. You’ll learn how to determine, describe, seek, and evaluate the specific results everyone wants to achieve—and keep them at the heart of each step you take. You’ll find out how to build trust, reinforce roles, and avoid turf issues and hidden agendas. You’ll discover ten principles of resilience that make any collaboration more supple and sustainable. 
• Part II walks you through real-life applications in two typical collaborations: service integration collaborations, and complex problem-solving collaborations. Detailed case studies demonstrate nimbleness in action. Whatever collaboration you’re in, ideas in these stories can help you solve a problem you’re experiencing.
Throughout this book, you’ll find samples, examples, and how-tos based on the author’s many years of experience consulting with real people in real collaborations across the United States. A special section explains how to write the various documents that bind partners together on paper, including a memo of agreement and a formal governance agreement.
If you’re already working in a nonprofit collaboration that involves government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, community-building groups, nonprofits, law enforcement, education, health, housing, arts, social services, business, foundations—you name it—this book is for you.

Product details

• Authors: Karen Louise Ray
• Publisher: Ingram Publishers Services
• Languages: English
• Product format: Paperback / Softback
• Released: 31.10.2002
• EAN: 9780940069282
• ISBN: 978-0-940069-28-2
• No. of pages: 136
• Dimensions: 213 mm x 279 mm x 10 mm
• Weight: 363 g
• Subjects: Social sciences, law, business > Business > Management; BUSINESS & ECONOMICS / Management, Management & management techniques, Non-profitmaking organizations, Management and management techniques