Partnership building takes time, patience, and consistency. By employing Adaptive Leadership principles, you can focus your attention on partners who most closely align with your goals. 

What is Adaptive Leadership?

Adaptive Leadership is a practical approach introduced by Harvard professors, Marty Linsky and Ronald Heifetz that goes beyond addressing and solving complex challenges to anticipating and understanding their root causes.¹

This approach can be particularly helpful for chronic disease self-management education, or CDSME, program leaders in anticipating and understanding the root causes of complex challenges. For example, wanting to ensure that their partner organizations who agree to implement CDSME programs truly value the program and will commit the time to adequately promote classes, make reminder calls, and enter data in a timely manner.

The drivers of Adaptive Leadership

The Adaptive Leadership approach focuses on three key drivers that shape how an organization learns, improves, and moves forward:

1. Previous vs. expendable
2. Experimentation and smart risks
3. Disciplined assessment

Sometimes we must consider what’s worth keeping and what we need to let go of. That’s the key marker of the previous vs. expendable organizational driver.¹ This may come into play if you have a partner organization you’ve been working with for a long time, but they are no longer performing the way you need them to.

It can be challenging to say “so long” to that relationship. Yet if you’re investing too much time in trying to “make them successful” it’s likely time to move on.

Consider this example from a 2023 grantee, The Rural Health Network of South Central New York. One of their partner organizations was struggling to meet their agreed upon objectives, which had a direct impact on their success. After thoughtful consideration, the grantee decided to shift their focus and funding support to a different community partner who was more committed to the success of the grantee leading to higher participant numbers. This Adaptive Leadership example shows how considering what’s worth keeping and what you can stop investing your time and energy in can improve your organization’s outcomes, including making a greater, positive impact.

The second driver, experimentation and smart risks, focuses on creativity and innovation. Additionally, leaders actively plan for inevitable mistakes.¹ 

Delta Health Alliance, a 2023 CDSME grantee serving residents in rural Mississippi, has leaned into experimentation and taking smart risks to help them succeed. To meet their participant goals, they focused on creative recruitment locations such as at community resource fairs and in grocery stores. Additionally, they partnered with the Alpha Kappa Alpha sorority who is well known in their community and hosts a variety of events giving Delta Health better access to potential participants.

And finally, the disciplined assessment driver ensures that teams pause to reflect on what they tried, what they learned, and what needs to change next. This happens when a new practice is integrated into the organization, and leaders are assessing the impact of that change. Here, adaptive leaders focus not only on monitoring and reporting outcomes to funders or those in authority, but sharing findings with the entire team, and working collaboratively with team members to make needed improvements regardless of role or title.¹

Despite having significant experience implementing chronic disease programs, the University of Texas Medical Branch, a 2023 grantee, experienced significant challenges recruiting and retaining participants in their ACL-funded CDSME programs through their traditional approaches. As a result, their leadership team focused on testing new strategies to find those that worked best, including promoting their programs in a community newsletter provided at local senior centers, as well as implementing Session Zero.

They also found that integrating evidence-based programs into clinical practice (e.g., family medicine, geriatrics, cardiology)—by making information readily available to patients, ensuring staff were trained to refer patients, and offering self-enrollment options—led to increased participant enrollment and retention.

Strategies for outreach coordination and collaboration

Establishing new partnerships involves coordination and collaboration. You will likely be more successful when engaging face-to-face.¹ It can also be helpful to identify a “champion” at the potential partner organization who can keep the momentum going.² Focusing your message on key issues impacting the organization or community can help build trust.

There are several strategies you can use to enhance collaboration:

• Bringing Meaning to Participants—Consider the pain points of your potential partners and participants then think about what they will get out of the program. Highlight those aspects in partner discussions and promotional materials your partner organizations can use to help potential participants see the direct value the program will have for them.
• Reduce the Burden of Participating—Whether it’s providing a detailed outline of what the partner organization is expected to do or ensuring the organization has the tools necessary to support common participant questions or challenges. By actively addressing these needs, you can ensure a streamlined partnership and exchange of information.
• Use Multiple Communication Challenges—Consider different ways to share and receive data from your partner organizations. Think about providing two ways your partner can give participant data to you, offer several options for communication like one-on-one email correspondence, partner meetings scheduled at a regular cadence, quarterly newsletters or “office hours.” Each partner organization will likely have a preferred method of communication and knowing this can help ensure effective collaboration.
• Avoid a “Cookie Cutter” Approach—The concept of person-centered care can also apply to partnerships. Each partner will have unique desired outcomes, challenges, and abilities. The more targeted your approach can take these aspects into consideration, the more successful you will be.

Consider non-traditional partners

Most organizations have a list of “go to” partners. These may be organizations they’ve worked with for many years or ones that are easily accessible due to geography or personal connections.  It can be tempting to focus on the same partners repeatedly; however, with a little creativity you may be surprised to find dependable partnerships with non-traditional organizations. Below you will find a list of some non-traditional partners that may be worth exploring:

• Libraries
• Faith-based organizations/communities
• Retail spaces like malls or specific stores
• Senior housing and villages
• Community centers
• Parks and recreation departments
• Fitness studios
• Health care settings (primary care or specialist offices, hospitals, community health centers)
• Pharmacies
• Emergency Management Organizations (Fire departments, EMS, etc.)
• State, local, tribal and U.S. territorial health departments
• Correctional facilities
• Local restaurants
• State and local trade organizations
• Local schools (high schools or community colleges)

Thinking outside the box and engaging with non-traditional partners can lead to greater success, especially for programs focusing on harder-to-reach populations.

NCOA resources

• Building Relationships to Engage Older Adults in Chronic Disease Self-Management Education Programs: Examples from the Community
• Developing Partnerships with the Disability Community
• How to Promote and Expand Evidence-Based Programs in Rural Communities
• Navigating Challenges in Starting New Evidence-Based Programs
• NCOA Partnership Assessment Tool
• Strategic Partnerships

Additional resources to build success

• Engaging Business Leaders in Public Health Partnerships
• The Practice of Adaptive Leadership: Tools and Tactics for Changing Your Organization and the World

This project was supported by the Administration for Community Living (ACL), U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) as part of a financial assistance award totaling $10,000,000 with 100 percent funding by ACL/HHS.  The contents are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily represent the official views of, nor an endorsement, by ACL/HHS or the U.S. Government.

Sources

1. Western Governors University. What is Adaptive Leadership? Jan. 15, 2021. Found on the internet at https://www.wgu.edu/blog/what-adaptive-leadership2101.html

2. Abdolra Shanghaghi, et al, Approaches to Recruiting ‘Hard-to-Reach' Populations into Research: A Review of the Literature. Health Promotion Perspectives. Oct. 6, 2011. Found on the internet at https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC3963617/pdf/hpp-1-86.pdf