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Effective collaborations

We can help you develop and sustain effective collaborations, including support with design, management and evaluation.

Whether you need support to run an improvement network, develop place-based collaboration or build a social movement – we have a range of engaging, powerful and fun approaches that can shift collaboration from frustrating and inefficient to productive and effective partnerships that deliver improvement.

Our approach

Collaboration is about creating value together. For it to be meaningful, collaboration needs to be planned and conducted with rigour.

We looked at the evidence base and existing high-performing collaborations. While the purpose and activities vary widely, high-performing collaborations consistently share a set of eight characteristics.

We use these characteristics and a diagnostic tool to guide organisations and individuals to better understand their collaboration’s strengths and opportunities. This shows them what they can do to collaborate more effectively and create more value.

Download our report on the eight characteristics of effective collaborations

8 characteristics of effective collaboration: 1. Purpose. 2. Committed partners. 3. Trust. 4. Leaders who span boundaries 5. Communication. 6. Measurement. 7. Governance 8. Skills

Our services

Developing, sustaining and measuring collaboration is not easy, but we can support you to create and maintain meaningful and effective collaborations.

Our services are broadly split into three areas.

  • Scoping and design: from early explorations for stakeholders considering whether and how to start collaborating to co-designing and developing a formal network. We can support all aspects of the process to ensure that your collaboration has a clear purpose and is set up to meet the needs, scale and ambitions of partners.
  • Support: we support collaborations and networks at various stages of maturity, offering bespoke solutions based on the context and needs of the network. This can incorporate event support, leadership coaching, engagement and evaluation.
  • Impact measurement: we help leaders to reflect on progress, opportunity areas and the key learnings. We also offer ways to measure the health of a collaboration. This includes using a range of research methodologies to evaluate the extent to which collaborations are meeting their purpose and assess levels of engagement across the partnership.

Our experience

We have supported networks across health and care to develop, sustain and measure their collaboration. These include:

  • Impact on Urban Health: We worked with Impact on Urban Health to design, launch and support a network that facilitated relationship building, learning and sharing, to improve children’s health. Members of the network and colleagues from Impact on Urban Health consistently reported finding the network to be a valuable use of time that would increase the impact of the programme overall.
  • ImproveCareNow: ImproveCareNow is a learning network of more than 100 hospitals and clinics dedicated to improving care, cost and outcomes for children with inflammatory bowel disease. Working in partnership with Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, Kaleidoscope provided a range of services to support ImproveCareNow. This included facilitating workshops and digital events, quality improvement coaching, and measurement development and prioritisation.

We have also:

What our clients say

“Kaleidoscope used a rigorous approach to develop a comprehensive case study of the National Children and Young People’s Diabetes Network and showcase its learnings. They used an effective blend of interviews and workshops to enable network leaders to reflect on the network’s progress and evaluate its achievements.”

Oliver Smithson, Programme Manager, The Health Foundation

 

“We’ve all been involved in collaborations which haven’t worked. Kaleidoscope has helped the Association of Groups develop in a way that has avoided the pitfalls and achieved the benefits of systematically working together. Kaleidoscope has enabled us to have workshops and events that are interactive, insightful, and even a little bit fun.”

Sir David Sloman, when Chief Executive, Royal Free London NHS Foundation Trust

 

“Working with Kaleidoscope has really helped generate a helpful and healthy balance between free form discussion, structured conversation and decision making. They created an environment where everyone is able to contribute equally and openly, which has been critical to our ability to work together effectively.”

Amanda Pritchard, when Chief Executive, Guy’s and St Thomas’ NHS Foundation Trust

Could we help you?

Can we help with your collaboration and network needs? Get in touch to talk about the options.