PM Partner update

Update from the PM Partner project

The big news, of course, in the last week is the publication of the Local Government White Paper. I've provided links here though I'm sure you've already downloaded a copy. Also on the News page - I've provided some links to LAA and LSP publications that were released the same day.

New comments have been added on the Adding Value page - outlining some of the danger zones in working together. New links and new information have also been added on the Acronyms and Abbreviations page and the Data page.

We really need more feedback to the online survey (Click here to take survey ) So far it's largely been positive - but there were some negative ratings on being able to find things on the website. And we're going to try to do something about it. So please, please do take the time to fill out the survey - it doesn't take long! Promise. And it can really help shape this and other future projects.

Adrian Barker and I also had a chat with someone today who is potentially interested in using the PM Partner site for some very exciting partnership developments. If this pans out - I'll update more later.

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Transforming public services

Topics: improvement, collaborating, web 2.0, blogs, wikis

Will new technology support transformational change in the public sector? I don't know, but I do think that it will change the way that we work - and that some of that will definitely be for the better.

My personal experience of using the collaborative website PM Partner - a wiki - and this blog has been really positive. It has really helped me to organise my thoughts, my notes and the things I read in a more constructive way.

Demos is looking at whether new technology - sometimes described as the Web 2.0 approach - will be supporting transformational change in the public sector. And they're doing it in a Web 2.0 kinda way. Simon Parker writes:

Ever wanted to help write a Demos report? Me and Niamh are editing a collection called The Collaborative State, which is full of references to how blogs and wikis are going to transform the way the public sector works. So we thought we'd see if they can also transform the way we work. Click here to be transported to our new project wiki, where we'll publish some of the essays and case studies over the next few months.

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Friday funday: twinned

The lighter side of local government

Destination Timbuktu

What do you know about Timbuktu? Thirty-four per cent of people think it's a mythical place. And several towns in Wales want to twin with it.

Cardiff, Aberystwyth and Hay-on-Wye have all been nominated as potential partners for the city in the West African country of Mali.

Photographer Stuart Redler started the search for a new UK twin with Timbuktu after visiting the city. He said:

"I thought it would be fun to have a sign on the outside of your town saying 'Twinned with Timbuktu' and if it prompts people to go there that would be great. Everything you hear about Africa is so negative but Timbuktu is such a great place. It would be nice for people to be able to go there rather than Germany or France or somewhere like that."

But your name's on all our road signs

Does Manteo sound like a real place? Well, it is - but unfortunately it's the twin that Bideford forgot according to the Mail on Sunday.

Residents of Manteo, in the state of North Carolina, insisted they have been twinned with the North Devon town for two decades.

But a search of Bideford town hall archives has not revealed a single record of the arrangement. Manteo resident David Riley, who presented Devon officials with a commemorative clock from his town has now returned home to investigate the mix-up.

Bideford town clerk George McLauchlan said yesterday: "He seemed like a nice guy and gave me a clock. It was a very nice clock. He said he was very proud to be twinned with us and offered a sincere thanks on behalf of the town's population for representing them in the UK."

"I said thank you but had to let him down gently. It seemed even more cruel not to."

He added: "He seemed a little puzzled and said our name was on all their road signs."

Photo by Luis Lebron.

Manteo is on historic Roanoke Island on North Carolina's Outer Banks. I used to holiday in that area as a child. It's truly beautiful, lovely beaches and welcoming hospitality. You could do worse for a twin.

Twin registry

Curious about who your town is twinned with? Look no further than the Local Government International Bureau (LGIB) registry of twinning. Or find out more about the benefits of twindom.

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And in other partnership news

Yes the local government white paper came out yesterday - and there's loads of stuff on partnership and partnership performance. But there were a couple of other partnership related items that also came out yesterday. In particular:

Local Strategic Partnerships: Shaping their future - an analysis of responses
This report outlines the findings of the questionnaire included in the Local Strategic Partnerships: Shaping their future consultation document. The analysis was conducted by Ipsos MORI Social Research Institute for Communities and Local Government.

Local Area Agreements Research: Round 2 negotiations and early progress in Round 1 (link to a pdf file)
This report explores the negotiation of second round local area agreements and early progress in implementing first round agreements. Research was carried out in 12 of the 21 pilots, six of the 66 round two areas, each of the nine regional government offices and across central government departments

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Local Government White Paper

It's out and on the Department for Communities and Local Government website. More later. (posted at noon 26 October)

UPDATE: The Local Government Association has issued its response (link to a pdf file). It's useful not only to get the official LGA line on the White Paper, but also because it's a pretty handy summary of the 236 pages of government policy. See also the LGA's White Paper website.

Further update (30 October 2006): See what the IDeA is doing around White Paper themes.

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PM Partner update

The PM Partner update - a collaborative website about better performing partnerships

More comments on the help please page - and it's probably worth taking another look at the Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue upload on that page. They would like comments on their partnership working framework by the end of this month.

Also further additions to the acronyms and abbreviations page. Also I've added links to the Assessing your partnership resource, the CDRP and case studies pages.

In the News section- Chris Calvert from The Wildlife Trusts provides a fun link to a game they developed to help people think about sustainable development and urban green spaces.

If you haven't received an email about taking a survey about this website - please tell us what you think about PM Partner Click here to take survey

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New on Knowledge: transformational partnerships

New on IDeA Knowledge

Transforming the delivery of services through partnerships: learning activities

The 'Transforming the delivery of services through partnerships' theme highlights how the beacons have developed partnerships to deliver more effective services. Each of the seven services is different, as is each of the partnerships but the net effect is a better and more cost effective service.

Each beacon council will be hosting open days. These will give you an insight into why they got beacon status and how you can learn from them. Open days and events scheduled so far are:

Anglia Revenues Partnerships open day (1 Nov)
London Borough of Sutton open day ( 9 Nov)
Bristol City Council open day (14 Nov)
Pendle Borough Council open day (22 Nov)
London Borough of Southwark open day (28 Feb 2007)

Book your place online

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A "reprint" of a Times article by our very own Andrew Cozens on how PCT and local government are working together to improve public health.

Local Government is rediscovering its responsibilities for public health

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Partnership news - quick hits

Topics: partnerships, parish councils, shared services partnerships, customer service, children, adoption


Parish councils and partnerships
Lewes District Council and the Sussex Association of Local Councils met to support partnership working on their shared objectives.

Councillor Elizabeth Lee, Lewes District Council Lead Member for the Community, said: “The Conference was fundamental in providing a sound basis for future co-operation. Its success is a tribute to the delegates’ commitment to working closely and to making partnerships have an impact on the wellbeing of our local communities."

Staffordshire connects
The Staffordshire Connects partnership held its Beacon Open Day this month and brought together practitioners from around the country. A highlight of the event was a film designed to:

...showcase how it had made capital savings of £1.8m by investing in systems together and was saving more than £400,000 a year by maintaining and developing those systems jointly. The DVD also revealed that annual efficiency savings of more than £750,000 were expected to arise across the partnership, once its Customer Relationship Management (CRM) system had been fully implemented – enabling 80 per cent of customer enquiries to be dealt with at first time of asking

The partnership is made up with the 10 councils in Staffordshire and has its own website. The site includes partnership papers (e.g. business case, communication protocols) for anyone interested in how they've done it.

You can also find out more about the IDeA Beacon scheme here.

Adopting best practice

Three neighbouring Councils have worked together to launch a new website to attract more people willing to adopt children. Partners in Adoption, the adoption consortium for the London Borough of Havering, Thurrock and Southend Councils, have launched a new website at www.partners-in-adoption.co.uk

The site looks pretty good - and has absolutely loads of information about the adoption process in easy to understand language.

In support to the site, Partners in Adoption will be hosting an Adoption Open Evening to be held at the Orsett Hall Hotel from 6.30pm on Wednesday 25 October. Anyone interested in adoption is invited to attend.

The website isn't fully populated yet, but has a place for adoption stories. That could be a really powerful way of showing prospective parents what adoption is about. Here's a US site that features adoption stories - as well as profiles of children wanting to be adopted (something I'm not sure would happen in the UK).

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e-democracy goes international

Mary Reid, the Mayor of Royal Borough of Kingston upon Thames - has posted about a new centre of excellence for local e-democracy in her blog.

ICELE launched at last!

The International Centre of Excellence for Local e-Democracy (ICELE) was officially launched this week.

One of the great things about internet technology is that we really can pick up on best practice at the furthest distance without additional cost or delay.



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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government

Boo!
The first place I ever lived in England was Sheffield. I arrived there almost exactly ten years ago (I don't remember the exact date but it was October). Back then there was very little in the way of Halloween celebrations, which was kinda sad for me because it's probably my favourite holiday. I didn't know about the local customs of Bonfire Night and "penny for the guy" - and I thought that all the children, lying on bundles of rags on the pavement, begging for pennies were actually beggars. There seemed to be a kid on every street corner - or more - competing for begging space, and I was pretty shocked about the level of child poverty in Sheffield. When I expressed my concerns, my then fiance (now husband) - a Brit - near about laughed his head off at my expense.

How times have changed. Sheffield City Council is embracing the Halloween fun with a pumpkin patch and a Fright Night in front of Town Hall and in the nearby Winter Gardens. The money raised from the pumpkin patch will go to the Lord Mayor's charities - some pretty worthy causes. This is the fourth year of Halloween fun and is apparently Britain's biggest Halloween fun.

Last year this monster event celebrating things that go bump in the night attracted more than 28,000 revellers, many kitted out in spooky fancy dress. This year’s event promises to be bigger then ever before with even more chills and thrills, plus a number of spooky surprises to watch out for! The fiendish fun will take place at locations across the City Centre with loads of ghostly goings on including: a fiendish funfair, macabre street theatre, fancy dress catwalk, fire-spinning, and market stalls

And I don't care what anyone says about Americanisation - Halloween is a fun holiday and anyone who turns their nose up at good fun is a glummery old fuss-budget who will be turned into a pumpkin at midnight.

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Partnership and performance policy

Topics: partnerships, performance management, targets, PSAs, LAAs, policy

Phil Woolas gave an interesting speech about local government and partnership policy the other day. Not a departure, or even a shifting of emphasis - but it does underscore the Government's committment to partnership working and the idea of double devolution

...we put in place a pretty heavy-handed top-down performance regime. Local government responded and began to improve its performance in many ways - not least in delivering better quality services and in managing its performance.
...
now we need to move on, to a new devolutionary era. In this era, the focus is on place - not on individual players and providers. It is on the positive difference you are making for your area - not on the detail of how you and your partners might be doing it.

Local government must be the place shaper and place maker. That means working across the whole landscape, not just being confined to silos of service delivery or particular spheres of influence.

He then goes on to describe some interesting practice in Local Area Agreements (LAAs) and other ways of pooling budgets and working together.

------

Over at the Treasury, Ed Balls has made some pronouncements about a leaner, meaner system of targets. In its own way, it's quite an interesting speech.

In 1998 we set over 600 performance targets for departments - our first attempt systematically to articulate the Government’s goals. And, not surprisingly for a first attempt, we did not get it all right

What he says they didn't get right was not enough consultation with front line staff and too much emphasis on inputs and processes. Result: micro-management from the centre. But they've learned from all that.

We also learnt the importance of a relentless focus on delivery. Setting a target is not an end in itself.

They're also promising more emphasis on outcomes, greater attempts at joint-working and boundary crossing, a process of target setting that will involve those who actually manage and do the delivery, and a much, much greater emphasis on customer and citizen satisfaction.

But these are PSAs (public service agreements) that affect all of Whitehall - how will this trickle down to local government?

Ruth Kelly will soon publish the Local Government White Paper, which touches on many of these important issues in relation to local services. So we have been working very closely with colleagues in DCLG and across government to ensure our approach fits with and complements the proposals she will outline on local performance management.

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As I said, I don't think any of this is a big surprise. The Government has been signalling this way for a while. But I still think it will be a really big challenge (or maybe opportunity) when local government and its partners really are held jointly accountable for area outcomes - and there are no process rules to either bind or blame.

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The user experience

Topics: mental health, social services, substance abuse, customer experience, users

I noticed a couple of interesting articles in the Society Guardian today on the user voice. In fact today's edition is all about the users of mental health services some of whom formed Society Guardian's editorial board this week.

One interesting article was about the user experience in the blogosphere. That is blogs from the perspectives of users. I blogged a little while ago about the power of stories - well, "user blogs" might be about the power of a chronicle and a place where others to go to know that they are not alone in their experiences.


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Friday funday

The lighter side of local government


Public Private Partnership?

In Alamosa, Colorado the town council raised funds by auctioning off the rights to paint the fire hydrants. Flickr user Zelda Go Wild has documented some of them in a Flickr photo set.

I've been to Alamosa - and it's not a place I particularly wanted to visit. My car broke down when visiting the Great Sand Dunes National Park and Preserve (breathtaking, by the way) and we had to get it fixed in Alamosa. Folks there were pretty friendly though and the town's views are spectacular across a wild and windswept landscape. (Via SLV Dweller)


Reputation management or do they wear shoes?

Yesterday I attended a talk on the Local Government Association's Reputation Project. It's all good, sensible stuff - and another way that local government is supporting itself in improvement (though perhaps they could take a bit more advantage of Web 2.0 concepts though there was an acknowledgement of the power of good story-telling).

It struck me as funny that the same week I heard that talk - I read this story about reputation management in Louisville, Kentucky. They're not just trying to change the image of the city government, but of the whole city.

People familiar with the metro area see it as a large, fast-paced city that has become a hot spot for business and recreation, said Matt Schulte, president of the brand research and strategy group Horizon InSight, a division of Louisville’s Horizon Research International.

The problem is that 89 percent of outsiders say they don’t really know enough about Louisville to form a realistic view, he said, so they automatically envision pictures of the “Old South” and ask questions such as, “Do they wear shoes?”

...snip...

To replace stereotypes, the region must put forward a more positive, urban view, but it “needs to be grounded in reality,” Schulte said. “We’re not going to be the next New York or Las Vegas.”

Hmm. Now, I come from the South - so I understand this - but I have to wonder how succesful they're going to be when Southerners do love to cling to some of their more iconoclastic traditions. For example, electing a dog named Goofy as mayor in the picturesque town of Rabbit Hash - not too many miles up the road from bustling, metropolitan Louisville. And I also wonder when I see the city government's list of 16 reasons to love Louisville that includes both some really cool attractions (the waterfront development, Mohammed Ali Center, the Kentucky Derby) as well as some things that might only be of interest to the local government anoraks - such as the combined city and county governance structure.

(Both stories via Governing's blog)

Now that's long service

Jack Chase may be the UK's longest serving and oldest parish councillor. He's just turned 100 and he's served almost 80 years on the parish council.

Mr Chase says his biggest achievement was overseeing the start of work on the
village's sea wall in the 1930s

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PM Partner update

PM Partner update

I'm still going to do some round-ups from the PM Partner site, even though we've finished the programme of topics. So long as people are still using the site, it's worth rounding up contributions.

Check out new request on the "Help Please" page. Breaking up is hard to do, but what's the best way to end a partnership sensitively and tactfully. I'm not aware off the top of my head of any specific guidance (other than having a clearly stated purpose at the beginning which can help make it more clear when the partnership is over).

New links have been added on the LSP page, providing pointers to other useful resources. And Adrian continues to add to the list of acronyms and abbreviations.




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Hello lurkers

Topics: online communities, blogging, engagement, PM Partner

David Wilcox posts on participation rates in online communities -

There have been a number of articles referencing Jakob Nielson's recent
Alertbox on Participation Inequality: Lurkers vs. Contributors in Internet Communities. (TalkDigger digs up 50-odd references.) He sites a familiar ratio of readers to contributors to participants:

In most online communities, 90% of users are lurkers who never contribute, 9% of users contribute a little, and 1% of users account for almost all the action.

At the beginning of the PM Partner project, I think I boasted optimistically that we would beat that ratio. I don't think we have. I'm currently developing an online survey for our community participants to assess what kind of participation ratio we had on PM Partner over the last couple of months.

In one sense, the participation rate over a couple month period is probably not that important. If we've built up a good resource that people can use and add to as needed - then we've achieved a lot. If we've made the beginnings of facilitating a community who can support each other as they face challenges in partnerships and performance.

David argues that this "participation inequality" is neither good nor bad. It just is. Some people are natually a little more comfortable with the format and the communication itself.

Neilsen thinks there are some disadvantages (listed in this post) and he also includes some ways to overcome "participation inequality".

I think one disadvantage to particpation inequality - particularly for people such as myself who work on the public pound - is that it can be quite difficult to convince that others that our work has value when only a few people are "participating". (And this is also part of the reason that I'll be conducting a survey - to really test the value of what we've done so far and the approach).

The IDeA is starting to go down the road of more collaborative approaches and online communities of practice - and the concept of participation inequality is one that we're aware of and live with. How we deal with exactly is an approach we'll probably develop over time.

You can check out the new IDeA Communities of Practice platform here at

www.communities.idea.gov.uk



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Partnership quick hits

Topics: education, partnerships, procurement, shared services, community engagement

A round-up of noteworthy links on partnerships

• Southwark Schools Learning Partnership gets Ministerial praise from Alan Johnson
• Cornwall sponsors an Oscar-style ceremony of prime partnership progress

Cornwall’s outstanding success in bringing people and groups together to improve the quality of life in the county will be celebrated at this year’s Cornwall Partnership Awards ceremony at the Atlantic Hotel in Newquay on Wednesday, October 11th.

The county’s Partnership “Oscars” ceremony, ... highlights partnerships which have brought Cornwall’s people together, provided leadership, helped others or enabled people to help themselves.

• Adur and Worthing councils take steps to have one workforce to promote better, more efficient services to their residents.
• Portsmouth gets ministerial praise for its community involvement. Much of this through partnership.
• Shared services partnership between Northumberland and Durham could save both a packet.

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novel collaboration

In my prevous post, I mentioned the IDeA publication The Man in the Caravan. Charles Leadbeater wrote it.

He's working on something else really cool, now. A book on collaboration, and he's taking a collaborative approach.

As I was researching and writing We-think over the past eighteen months and more, it became increasingly evident that I could not write a book about collaborative creativity in a traditional way. My argument is that creativity is invariably collaborative and that opportunities for largely self-organising creative collaboration are going up the whole time. Seems odd then not to apply that thinking to the book itself.

You can check out We-think here. This is a great idea, but it is a halfway between a traditional non-fiction book and a real collaborative project. And the comments I read so far were kinda negative because of that. But that's part of what you have to go through in the process of collaboration! (sometimes).

Via David Wilcox's Designing for a Civil Society.

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The power of stories

Topics: best practice, policy, evidence-based policy, CVS

Last week I blogged about a workshop/seminar I attended at the NCVO on social networking. It was a great event - but Steve Bridger who was also there just posted about it and covered an aspect I hadn't mentioned. And that's the web as increasing accountability, but also as a way to get your point across.

We can all agree, I think, that the web has empowered individuals and invited more scrutiny into the work of organisations.

Charities are not immune from this evolution but they do have a secret weapon: compelling stories.

Some fifteen years ago, I frequently travelled around the UK for Oxfam talking to often quite large groups of the charity’s dedicated supporters about ‘third world debt’ and ’structural adjustment’. Inevitably, I weaved in human stories from the ‘field’ to help illustrate the impact of these reforms on those living in poverty, the intended beneficiaries of Oxfam’s projects.

Intrinsic to good storytelling is the conversation that it generates. Dialogue always (or nearly always!) followed my ‘debt’ workshops.

Blogs and social media provide the best tool set yet to continue the conversation.

I don't think that it's just charities or community organisations that can use compelling stories. No, I think local government can and must do so, too. At the IDeA, one of our most powerful publications has been The Man in the Caravan, which isn't a bunch of bureaucratic mumbo-jumbo but instead is real stories about real people and how changing what we do in local government has made a real and positive difference in their lives.

This change story advocacy is important for a variety of reasons.

1. It shares good practice among practioners in a human and understandable way
2. It demonstrates to Government the importance of empowered local government
3. It shows users and citizens what is possible in their locality - they can use this as a way to access or request services or as a way to hold their local council accountable if services are delivered in the same old, untailored, inefficient way.

In my work, I'd love to have more of these stories, but they are notoriously difficult to gather and sometimes to articulate. And I agree with Steve Bridger on this 100% (so I'll quote him again).

Blogs and social media provide the best tool set yet to continue the conversation.

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PM Partner update

Update from the PM Partner project

6 October
Northamptonshire Fire and Rescue have added their draft partnership framework here and looking for comments before the end of October. This would be a great place to share your views and comments on drafts. I hope you'll help them out.

I've added a new resource to the Voluntary and Community Sector page on navigating public sector procurement requirements. There are new comments on the adding value page - are you really adding value if you get a warm glow from doing things together that you would have done separately?

5 October
New resources have been added to the Project and Programme management page - in particular - a cut down version of Prince 2 which can be used for partnership projects. There's also more on the future of PM Partner page.

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Networking and volunteering

Topics: CVS, third sector, blogging, social networking

I attended a roundtable yesterday at the National Council for Voluntary Organisations on the Community and Voluntary Sectors and ICT supported social networking. Whew...that's a bit of a mouthful. Basically, it's about how IT can help charities get more from their existing relationships between supporters, staff and recipients or create new relationships.

It was great to meet other people - like David Wilcox, whose blog I was familiar with already. And I met other bloggers too, like Nick Booth and Steve Bridger and Molly Webb from Demos. We were all there because we're committed to using new communications tools - like blogs and wikis to support greater interaction, communication and collaboration. Very few of us are really all that technical (I'm certainly not), but we all see these tools as a big opportunity to work in a more open, social and accountable way. And there were a lot of other people there all doing some really interesting work. David Wilcox has started a community site for us to share some of our thoughts in this area at www.mediablends.net

It's part of a project called ICT Foresight and there's alreading some interesting findings - including a publication called campaign and consultation: in the age of participatory media. Although about the voluntary sector, there are some interesting statistics about how much new media tools are used already. There are some case studies which highlight how organisations can engage with users - not just for consultation but for education campaigns and maybe even decision-making. We're not there yet, but these are the signs of participative democracy and co-production online.

online volunteering
As part of the day we also attend and Economic and Social Research Council sponsored seminar on 'ICT, Social Capital and Voluntary Action'. Jayne Craven gave a really interesting presentation on online volunteering (and has some great resources online, too). It really opened my eyes to the way that we need to promote online social networking between public sector professionals. We need to treat online collaboration the same way that we treat participation in benchmarking, speaking at conferences, etc - the things we're aready doing to share information with either altruistic goals in mind or as some kind of way of improving our own professional karma.

In essence, that's what community of practices (like that for Partnerships and Performance Management - PM Partner) are supposed to do. They're a way to share learning with a wider community. But they don't yet have the cache of speaking at a conference. I'm sure that my online activities have helped to share more information about performance management than my conference speaking has - but I'm not sure how much recognition there is for that.

_____

BTW- here's David Wilcox's take on yesterday's events on his mediablends blog and Molly Webb's, too.


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Let me entertain you

I spent the whole of yesterday speaking - it seemed like. First I spent a while speaking to a contingent of Japanese district council employees from the precinct of Fukuoka. They wanted to know all about Best Value. I don't speak to foreign delegations that often, but perhaps 3 or 4 times a year. They're never quite the same and it's usually what they want to know is different than what they've implied in their email request. Most people say they want to know about Best Value - but then it turns out they really want to know about CPA or Local Area Agreements - or maybe something else entirely. So what I do is take along a slide pack with around 30 or 40 slides covering a whole range of improvement initiatives. I then spend part of the time asking what people would really like to hear about.

But the good people from Fukuoka really did want to know about Best Value - and I did my best to answer their 20 questions (quite literally - they were on a piece of paper - in Japanese). For example "which services have improved the most through Best Value?" Answers on a postcard please.

---

After that I spent the evening at the London Borough of __________, talking with councillors (scrutiny councillors in particular) about their role in performance management. Like a number of London boroughs, _______ has quite a few new councillors after the May elections- and they were eager to see how performance management might help them in their roles. One councillor, though, was less than keen - and a less than generous commentator might say that she even heckled me.

This councillor was down on performance management and didn't believe that it was worth the the time and effort and was quite vocal about it. But the funny thing was, she actually had a pretty good grasp of performance management - what individual indicators can be used for and what their limitations are. I said so, and while I'm not sure it made much of an impression on her - I think her fellow councillors took notice. It's important to realise that performance indicators can't tell you everything - they're only an indication, after all. Councillors must challenge and ask for more information. Councillors also have a responsibility - as anyone on a corporate board would - that officers have the right tools to support improvement and accountbality. Robust performance management won't do that on its own, but it can be an effective tool.


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PM Partner update

Update from the PM Partner project

Adrian has been compiling a glossary of acronyms. Very helpful in the jargon-rich environment of partnerships. Adrian's also added a new link to the CDRP page, a new study has come out around reducing crime in pathfinder neighbourhoods. (And if you don't know what a CDRP is - then you know exactly where you can look.)

I've been updating the partnership killers page - this was one of the first things we looked at in the PM Partner project and now I've linked to some of the resources we've developed on this site.

There's been a comment added about the future of PM Partner - please share your thoughts as well. Has it been useful? What could be done to make it better? On a personal note, I find it really useful as a place to store snippets of information about partnerships that I might otherwise not ever find again.... Adrian's taken this a step further and created his own index - what a smashing idea.

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