This unit focuses on the partnership's internal environment; that is, its own inner workings. Its intent is twofold: to enable the teams to establish a platform for a long-range planning process, and to give them some "tools" to use in that process. It describes how partnerships can use the tools to analyze and assess their partnerships effectiveness.
This workshop aids participants in gaining an understanding of the strengths and weaknesses (needs) of their partnership. This understanding will facilitate the partnership's ATOD abuse planning efforts. If partnerships do not examine their strengths and needs, their planning efforts may be hampered or blocked. Issues related to roles, procedures, structure, decision making, and power have a direct effect on member recruitment, participation, retention, and coordination of task and planning outcomes.
Santa Clara County Health Department. (1990). Evaluation: A symposium. Proceedings of conference, 24-26 June, 1990. Bureau of Drug Abuse Services, Santa Clara County Health Department.
Bryson, J. M. (1988). An effective strategic planning approach for public and nonprofit organizations. In Strategic planning for public and nonprofit organizations, ed. J.M. Bryson. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 46-70.
Have members break into 2-person teams, and introduce themselves without words. Individuals may use visuals, props, pictures, signs, gestures, or anything nonverbal. Each person should take approximately 2 minutes to introduce him/herself.
Have members spend a few minutes checking out the accuracy of their communications. Were their nonverbal cues perceived accurately?
B. Icebreaker Option 2
Have members break into groups of 6-8 persons.
Ask them to spend a few minutes getting to know each other.
C. Explain that the focus of this workshop is the partnership itself. Participants will go through some exercises that use certain tools they may find helpful in analyzing the internal environment of the partnership.
Trainer Note: The PEP Manual is the most complex tool to review and is given the most time during the session. It also has more supporting information than do Responsibility Charting and Clarity in Coalitions, the other 2 tools to be discussed in the workshop.
A. The Partnership Evaluation Process is an self-assessment tool developed specifically for CSAP partnerships to use in assessing the "atmosphere" within the partnerships. Results may be used to build a stronger team.
B. PEP can be applied to a partnership in a number of flexible ways:
To assess the governing board, member organizations, or committees;
To assess the full membership of a participating organization;
To assess the same group (e.g., a committee) repeatedly over time; and
C. PEP may also be used by selecting partially, i.e., by selecting just one question or one group of questions from the complete questionnaire.
D. PEP measures (HO-1)
The openness of the partnership;
Members' views of leader support, team spirit, task focus, order and organization, and leader control;
Members' skills; and
Barriers to, and benefits of, participation in the partnership.
Trainer Note: It is useful to write all the measures on newsprint beside the number of the graph for that measure. For example: 1-member openness; 2-leader support; 3-team spirit; 4-task focus; 5-order and organization; 6-leader control; 7-10-member skills; 11-barriers; and 12-benefits/importance.
E. PEP components (HO-2)
A questionnaire;
Blank graphs for tallying results, with complete instructions for their use;
Instructions for interpreting each graph; and
Suggestions for making any desired changes as a result of the assessment.
Transition
Explain that the group will now conduct an analysis of one part of the PEP questionnaire. After the analysis, the entire PEP Manual will be reviewed.
A. Using Graph #1 (PEP Manual, page 6) walk participants through the sample. Review what the measure is, how to complete the graphs, how to interpret the graphs, and what activities are suggested for change.
Trainer Note: This walk-through prepares the participants for the exercise they will engage in following the walk-through. Inform them that the sample is based on a respondent group of 41. An option is to have them complete the profile themselves and review the training groups' perceptions of what this measure reveals about their own partnership.
B. Refer to HO-3. Explain that it is a tallied summary of a fictional sample response to questions 2-6 of the PEP Profile (PEP Manual, page 3) from a fictional partnership. In this sample, there were a total of 35 respondents (HO-3, page 1: Summary of Responses).
Trainer Note: You might want to transfer the entire summary to newsprint so that all participants can work from it.
C. Divide participants into 5 groups. Ask each group to take one set of the blank graphs from HO-3, pages 2-6. Assign each group one of the categories on the questionnaire (e.g., leader support, team spirit). It is all right if there are only one or two participants in a group. The objective is to complete all 5 graphs quickly (HO-3, page 2: Leader Support Graph).
D. Review the procedure outlined in the PEP Manual for completing the graph. Tell participants to add "need a lot less" and "need a little less" for the "need less" column, and to add "need a lot more" and "need a little more" for the "need more" column. Have participants transfer their results to newsprint for the report out.
E. If the scale on the left-hand side of the graph is not applicable to the number of people who completed the questionnaire, show participants how they can change the graph (e.g., scale can be converted to 1-25, or to count "by 5s," or to run 4, 8, 12, 16.) The only rule is consistency throughout the scale.
F. After participants have completed the graph, let each group (or person) report on the results and make 2 or 3 suggestions for achieving desired changes. The suggestions may be taken from the PEP Manual or may be original thoughts of the participants. Examples:
Graph 2: Do an activity that will have them learn about each others' style; focus group to study their process (HO-3, page 3: Team Spirit Graph).
Graph 3: Build in time for team building; structure new member introductions; have members form subgroups (HO-3, page 4: Task Focus Graph).
Graph 4: Send out agenda ahead of time; have smaller types of projects; delegate responsibility; change leadership (HO-3, page 5: Order and Organization Graph).
Graph 5: Move to an open process of more discussion (HO-3, page 6: Leader Control Graph).
G. Now provide a summary analysis of the sample findings from the fictional partnership.
Content Points
Findings. Opinions were relatively even on the subject of leader support, although a few more people responded to the "need less" categories than to the other 2 categories. The group clearly identified a need for more team spirit and greater task focus. They felt that there was an overabundance of order, organization, and leader control.
Analysis. One might interpret the sample partnership as being highly controlled by its leadership and very efficient in terms of operating. However, the results indicate that most members of the group perceive neither a team spirit nor a focus on concrete activities. This problem may be due to a failure to involve all of the partnership members. Some people may not perceive themselves as part of the team, even though the leaders may insist that they are carrying out many activities, and people are enthusiastic. The message is reinforced by the somewhat negative response to leader support, which may indicate that the partnership is equating leader support to leader control.
Potential Actions. For this partnership, decreasing leader control might be the most important objective. The suggestions for increasing or decreasing leader support should be weighed in relations to the leader control issues. Order and organization might be reduced in favor of greater participation. Even though tasks may be under way, perhaps more people should be involved. Team spirit definitely needs to be increased.
Note that many of the PEP principles may be "second nature" to some professionals. However, PEP is designed to be self-administered by persons with a broad range of experience and expertise. Therefore, it explains basic principles, and is purposely worded simply.
Emphasize that successful partnerships include people at all levels of the community. PEP may be particularly helpful in involving members of grassroots organizations.
B. If time is limited, it is probably most important to review Graphs 11 and 12, which are slightly more complicated than the others.
C. Stress interpretation of the findings. For example, on Graph 11, you will want to compare the relative frequency of responses across the graph to see which barriers affect most of your members. Corrections should address the greatest problems first. On Graph 12, you will want to see which benefits are most important to people.
D. Reemphasize the situations in which PEP may be used.
Trainer Note: This tool does not define the roles identified or determine how broadly responsibilities are to be defined. These roles may or may not be appropriate for the partnerships. What is important is that members see their roles as important to the structure of the partnership. The "Analysis of Responsibility Chart" worksheet could be used to process the results of the charting/coding of responsibilities.
Directions
A. Explain that the purpose of responsibility charting is to develop or clarify mutual understanding among partnership members with respect to tasks and decision-making activities within the partnership. It can be used to address issues that arise from using the PEP self-assessment. (Responsibility Chart Codes, PN-1, PN-2, HO-4-6).
B. Responsibility charting is used to illustrate and document the broad responsibilities each person has in the partnership and to clarify each person's level of participation. For each responsibility, members identify the appropriate code, depending on how the partnership is structured (PN-2: Responsibility Chart, HO-4: Responsibility Charting, HO-5: Responsibility Chart, and HO-6: Analysis of Your Responsibility Chart)
C. Solicit questions.
D. Brainstorm with the group how this tool may be helpful in the partnership planning process.
Trainer Note: There are no instructions for completing
Directions
A. Explain that the purpose of this activity is to examine how clear the partnership's purpose, structure, and operations are to its members (HO-7: Partnership Assessment: Clarity in Coalitions).
B. Tell participants to rate the clarity of their partnership's purpose, structure, and operations by writing a number on a scale from 1 (very unclear) to 7 (very clear) after each question listed on HO-7. Have members record their responses on the worksheet. Depending on the group dynamics, the trainer can tally the answers by asking the group to pass in the sheets or by asking participants to call out their responses to each question (HO-7 other than those in the Trainer Manual).
C. Add all responses together for each question and divide by the number of people completing the form.
D. Display the averages on newsprint. Ask participants what such averages would indicate about a partnership.
E. Ask participants how they might use this instrument in their own partnerships.
Trainer Note: The "definitions" of each area are in the form of questions, which are not always worded in complete sentences and which may not be the best question or only question to ask to illustrate the measure.
Note that this tool ties into measures examined in the PEP Manual and responsibility charting.
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