Leading successful partnerships

The Q community is driven by enabling collaboration and improvement in practice and we rely on partnerships to make that happen. Our approach to partnership working is grounded in both academic research and our experience working with national and regional partners across the UK and Ireland.

We have published Leading successful partnerships, a guide to support health and care leaders. This focuses on getting the essentials right in four areas:

1. Clear and common goals
2. Transparent and equitable power distribution
3. Adequate resourcing
4. Positive culture and strong relationships.

For the purposes of this guide, a partnership is a relationship between two or more organisations working together to achieve a shared vision and goal. It includes joint ownership and shared responsibility for the success of the work. 

Partnerships, in contrast to other organisational relationships, are underpinned by equity of contribution from partners. This can come from a mixture of sources, such as sharing resources, decision-making responsibilities, and risk bearing.

This short video provides an introduction to the guide and how to use it.

This guide will be particularly useful for senior leaders partnering with organisations to collaborate and solve health and care challenges and to support the uptake of innovation and improvement.

This guide draws on research and practical experience from Q and the Innovation Unit, and highlights the need for shared vision, values, goals, roles, and responsibilities.

If you found this guide useful, why not find out more about applying to join our community with improvement expertise across the UK and Ireland. Visit our membership page.