Thoughts of a CEO April 2022

I’m thinking a lot about collaboration at the moment. Collaboration is hard to get right, but absolutely brilliant when you do. I half remember an article I read somewhere and somewhen about collaboration: The Red Shirts Co and the Blue Shirts Co agree to collaborate, to achieve more together than they could individually. At the first meeting, the Red Shirts arrive and hand out red shirts for everyone to wear, and the Blue Shirts turn up with blue shirts for everyone to wear, each assuming that collaboration meant doing things their way. The moral of the story was that everyone should probably be wearing purple shirts. I’m not sure I agree. Collaboration doesn’t mean abandoning your own values, identify, principles and ways of working, but it does mean bringing in what each partner does well, and amplifying each other in a kind of positive feedback loop, where the whole is greater than the sum of the parts AND you get to wear whatever coloured shirt you like. Don’t get me wrong – it can be incredibly hard work, not to mention occasionally frustrating, but it can also be invigorating and eye-opening too. Either way, the outcomes are worth it.

There are many, many, fantastic collaborative activities going on in Surrey, and I’m very pleased to be part of some of them; from working together to develop and implement the Surrey VCSE Alliance, to working with SCC partners to help get Household Support Grants to people in urgent need, to making an introduction or two to charities that can then go on and help each other out.

I’ll finish off by reminding you that the Surrey Charities Forum is one way that you can meet and work with like minded peers from across Surrey, once a month, online. We cover a lot of topics of interest to charities and non-charity partners, and the agenda is set by you. To find out more, drop Amanda an email ([email protected]) and give us a try – we don’t bite, honest.