AMT Public

“What skills would help you sustain your organisation better?”

We asked this question of delegates attending the Regional Market Towns Awards Showcase events in June and July 2010.  The ‘wordle’ above illustrates the strength of the responses grouped by categories.  Below is a little more detail about the type of points made for the top 5 of these categories.

1. teamwork-and-commitment
An enormous number of comments from all regions came under this broad theme of sustaining the teamwork and commitment of partnership members.  Examples of points made included:

• Not act as an individual
• Understand what all partners around the table do, what they can offer and sharing experience (each other’s agenda)
• Understanding each other’s constraints
• Flexibility, adaptability, mutual respect
• Co-ordinating different skills
• Fun/motivation
• Clear understanding of what individuals will add and get out of the partnership

2. leadership-and-vision

• Leadership & clear vision/common aims
• Vision, drive & motivation
• Dynamism
• Creativity, imagination, confidence & determination
• Leadership skills

3. business-skills-and-planning

• Business & action planning
• Financial understanding
• Generating income/ enterprise
• Asset management

4. fundraising

• Bid writing
• Capital available but not revenue
• Resourcing

5. communications-and-marketing

• Better communication/marketing
• Communication and PR

Negotiating skills
Interestingly, although there were not repeated mentions, the need for negotiating skills and diplomacy came up in every region.

Analysis and conclusions

Partnership development
It is clear from this feedback that partnerships consider it crucial to develop both the personal skills and business skills needed to remain strong partnerships capable of moving forward.  It is therefore no surprise that training in the areas of Leadership / Chairmanship alongside Team Development is going to be ever more important.

The Market Towns Academy already offers a broad range of skills training in these areas such as Module 6 (Leadership) and Module 7 (Chairmanship), while Module 8 covers the mix of people / identifying roles and the running of the partnership.

The subjects covered within these modules can easily be developed further to include specific areas such as Negotiation Skills (already touched on within the Leadership Module) identified by the delegates.  These range from understanding of individuals’ roles and motivations to creativity and confidence building.

Partnership business
Alongside the need for personal development skills, the other main areas identified by delegates relate to the running of their partnerships as a business.  This covers a range of skills from Business Planning to Managing Finances.

The Academy already covers most of the elements required to run a successful partnership as a business.  This year we have run a number of events related to these business aspects such as Finding Funding and Employment Law, and are now organising training events on Dealing with the Media and Capital Projects.

Other areas identified include Financial Understanding and Asset Management which the Academy already covers in its current programme.

Academy response and conclusion
The skills identified in this feedback are consistent with those AMT has identified through previous market research – that strong partnerships need ‘committed, skilled, passionate and hard working people who are both willing to lead and be led’.

What stands out is the broad range of skills required both from the partnership itself and from the Chair.

Courses for local clusters
Though the training needs identified are already covered by the Market Towns Academy training modules, we also need to work with partners to adapt the courses to meet the local needs of clusters of market towns.

Open courses
We will use this feedback to develop further 1-day ‘open’ courses based on skills that are in demand.  So as well as the current offering of Seeking and securing grant funding and The basics of employment law, the Academy will look to encourage partners to joint fund open courses in:

• Leadership
• Team Development
• Business Planning

By offering all 3 of these topics, partners will be able to cover all the subject areas identified at the Awards.

What next?

• Head to the Market Towns Academy for training events and tailormade programmes