Finding momentum in our work lives is important for various reasons – it can build a sense of comradery, purpose, flow – a work life that is predictable, reliable and with a clear system that you know how to navigate.
In partnership, finding momentum might manifest as the referral process working smoothly, having clarity of roles, purposeful communication, or clear investment and connection from both partners in the work that you’re doing.
And yet, momentum in partnership can be both hard to build and easily disrupted. This can happen for various reasons – perhaps there has been turnover in staff, a champion of the partnership has moved on, or you might feel that there is a discrepancy in buy in between you and your partner. Scenarios like this (just to name a few) can make it hard to achieve the client outcomes you’re collectively working toward.
Resilient partnerships – partnerships that can sustain themselves and maintain momentum throughout change, whatever that change might be – require partners to get on the same page about how you will collectively respond to the changes you may have observed or might encounter in the future. Because change in partnership is a constant, and so momentum is something that can be monitored and responded to frequently, not just when things go wrong or feel stalled.
One way you can go about this is by creating a change strategy for your partnership. Health Justice Australia’s Managing change in your partnership resource provides a template for developing an HJP change strategy in four different scenarios: translating, trying something new, deepening engagement and scaling back or winding up. These contain statements to help you and your partner co-create your change strategy together – what this looks like will be specific and unique to the context of your partnership and the community your partnership is there to help.
Feel free to use this resource in the way that suits you and your partner the best – you can add other questions or skip sections that aren’t relevant – whatever helps you and your partner find the motivation to sit down and co-create your change strategy together, so that you can build and maintain momentum in partnership.
