From silos to systems: navigating strategy in a connected world

As a father of three, I’ve found myself immersed in the world of child and tween entertainment as my sons introduce me to countless characters, from the Avengers to Zelda. While this has been predominantly entertaining, two examples of partnerships have stuck with me, offering potential lessons about strategic planning with partners.

The first is Lego. Two of my sons love Lego, especially those based on their favourite computer games or TV shows (Minecraft is the current flavour of the month).

What impresses me is how Lego has created such successful partnerships with a wide range of franchises.

By carefully aligning its brand with the partners and maintaining a high standard of quality, Lego shows what can be achieved by strategic planning and collaborating with diverse partners.

Cautionary tale

On the other hand, there’s the cautionary tale of The Emoji Movie. Despite brand recognition and corporate partnerships, the movie was heavily criticised for its lack of originality, excessive product placement, and poor storytelling, receiving a miserable 6% on the Tomatometer rating.

The lesson is that strategic partnerships alone aren’t enough to guarantee success – careful planning is needed to ensure the vision and quality of the collaboration are strong and the desired outcomes are achieved.

These contrasting examples of partnership success and failure in the entertainment world mirror the challenges and opportunities we face in healthcare.

Problems of planning with partners

As we explored in our recent strategy clinic, traditional approaches to strategy are being challenged by the rise of partnerships and system-wide thinking; and many NHS organisations struggle with how to actually plan strategically with partners to create value together.

People attending the event ranked these challenges from most to least problematic:

So what needs to change? From our work at Kaleidoscope, we often see the need to go back to the basic question of why are you even bothering to collaborate at all?

Collaboration is never – and should never – be an end in itself. It’s a means to achieve something that working in a different way wouldn’t be able to achieve.

We’ve developed a framework at Kaleidoscope for understanding the four distinct ways collaborations can create value:

• Shared voice: amplifying the voices of partners
• Shared delivery: developing, testing and implementing new products or services together
• Aligned plans: coordinating activities to avoid duplication and complement each other’s efforts
• Shared learning: enabling the transfer of best practices and avoiding repetition of mistakes

Ruthless with priorities

Clarity on what type(s) of value you’re trying to create with a partnership is crucial, as it fundamentally shapes how you collaborate. It might well be that you realise collaboration isn’t the answer at all.

As my colleague Rich Taunt recently wrote, it may be tempting to join every partnership going, but the reality is that any organisation’s capacity to collaborate effectively is finite.

To avoid spreading ourselves too thin, we need to be ruthless with priorities, focusing our collaborative efforts where they can create the most impact. That means being willing to say no (kindly) to some partnership opportunities. It also means investing in building our organisational capacity to be a great partner – honing the skills, mindsets and processes that enable successful collaboration.

As one attendee reflected, “We have to start from the belief that we can be stronger, better, more coherent and drive better outcomes by working together. If we don’t believe this, then why partner?”

These insights were complemented by the practical experience shared by Ann Hepworth from Barking, Havering and Redbridge University Hospitals NHS Trust.

Patience and persistence

Drawing on her frontline experience, Ann shed light on the real-world challenges of developing strategy within broader collaboratives and systems.

She shared some of the tensions in developing strategy as part of broader collaboratives and systems and the significant time investment required to build meaningful relationships across organisational boundaries. Ann’s perspective underscored the importance of patience and persistence in collaborative strategy development.

This strategy clinic event reinforced that while partnership strategy is challenging, it’s also an opportunity. In the words of one of the attendees, when done well, it leads to “better outcomes when both sides of the partnership come together to create the strategy because of more diversity of thought and skills, and both parties feel more ownership.”

As we continue to navigate this new world of interconnected strategies, it is clear that the future of effective healthcare strategy lies not in isolation, but in collaboration.

Whether we’re talking about superheroes, emojis, or health systems, the ability to plan and collaborate effectively is what separates the goodies from the dark side.

Join us for our next strategy clinic on 19 July, where we’ll be exploring how strategy can help us prioritise. We look forward to continuing this crucial conversation with you.