What Real Public Sector Collaboration Looks Like in Practice
- truthaboutlocalgov
- Jan 5
- 6 min read
We talk a lot about collaboration in the public sector but too often in abstract terms. “We need to work together.” “We need whole‑system thinking.” “We need to break down silos.” These phrases look great in a strategy document and sound reassuring in a board paper, but they rarely tell us anything about what collaboration actually looks like in practice. They don’t describe the behaviours, the conversations, the compromises, or the shared risks that make collaboration real rather than rhetorical.
If we want to move from aspiration to delivery, we need a clearer, more honest picture of what genuine collaboration feels like on the ground. Not the polished version that appears in case studies, but the lived version the messy, iterative, human process that happens when organisations with different pressures, cultures, and accountabilities try to create something together. We need to understand how collaboration behaves when it’s working well, what it demands from leaders and teams, and what conditions allow it to take root rather than collapse under the weight of competing priorities.
This blog explores the practical, observable features of real collaboration the kind that shifts outcomes, unlocks capacity, and delivers change no single organisation could achieve alone. Not a slogan, not a workshop output, but a way of working that is felt in relationships, seen in decisions, and proven in results.
1. Collaboration Starts With a Shared Problem, Not a Shared Meeting
Real collaboration doesn’t begin with a workshop, a steering group, or a nicely formatted terms‑of‑reference document. It begins with a problem that is:
bigger than any single organisation
impossible to solve in isolation
experienced differently across the system
urgent enough to demand collective action
Homelessness, workforce shortages, digital exclusion, climate resilience these aren’t “departmental” issues. They don’t sit neatly in a directorate chart or align with a single budget line. They are system issues, shaped by interdependencies, behaviours, incentives, and pressures that no one organisation can fully control.
That’s why the most effective collaborations don’t start with a project plan. They start with a shared understanding of the problem. A clear, honest, collectively owned definition of what we’re actually trying to fix and why it matters. When partners align on the problem, the work becomes purposeful. When they don’t, collaboration becomes a series of polite meetings with no real traction.
2. Joint Accountability Replaces Parallel Effort
In most public sector “partnerships”, organisations still operate in parallel. They attend the same meetings, but they don’t share the same stakes. They keep:
separate budgets
separate KPIs
separate reporting lines
separate risks
This is cooperation. It is not collaboration.
Real collaboration looks and feels very different. It requires:
shared outcomes
shared risks
shared rewards
shared decision‑making
When collaboration is genuine, success and failure are collective. If one partner falls behind, the whole system feels the impact. If one partner makes a breakthrough, the whole system benefits. That interdependence is what creates momentum and what stops collaboration from becoming a talking shop.
This is why the most successful cross‑government programmes build joint accountability frameworks from day one. They hard‑wire shared responsibility into the governance, the metrics, the funding, and the culture. Without that, collaboration remains optional and optional collaboration rarely survives first contact with real‑world pressures.
3. Data Flows Across Boundaries, Not Upwards
One of the clearest signs that collaboration is real not performative is how data moves through the system.
In a siloed environment, data travels vertically. Teams report upwards, departments consolidate, and the centre receives a neatly packaged narrative that often hides as much as it reveals. Information becomes a performance, not a shared asset.
In a collaborative environment, data moves horizontally. It flows between partners, in real time, in a way that supports shared understanding rather than organisational defensiveness. This looks like:
shared dashboards
interoperable systems
common data standards
joint analysis teams
collective insight, not competing narratives
When partners are looking at the same picture the same trends, the same risks, the same lived experience decisions become faster, clearer, and more aligned. Collaboration accelerates when no one is working from outdated spreadsheets or selective interpretations of the truth.
4. Collaboration Is Resourced, Not “Fitted In”
A collaboration without resources is just a conversation and the public sector is already full of conversations that never turn into delivery.
Real collaboration is funded, staffed, and structured. It has:
pooled budgets
dedicated staff
shared programme management
clear governance
time protected for joint work
When collaboration is treated as something to “fit in around the day job”, it collapses under the weight of organisational priorities. When it is treated as a programme in its own right with investment, accountability, and capacity it becomes a vehicle for real change.
The most successful cross‑sector programmes recognise this early. They don’t rely on goodwill or spare capacity. They resource collaboration as a strategic activity, not a voluntary extra, because they understand that system change doesn’t happen on evenings and weekends.
5. Teams Are Blended, Not Borrowed
Many partnerships still rely on secondments, task‑and‑finish groups, or borrowed capacity from overstretched services. These approaches can help in the short term, but they rarely create the depth of trust, shared identity, or continuity needed for real system change.
Genuine collaboration builds blended teams groups that are:
multidisciplinary
cross‑departmental
co‑located (physically or digitally)
jointly led
accountable to shared outcomes
These teams don’t turn up to meetings as representatives of their home organisations. They operate as a single unit with a shared mission, shared language, and shared accountability. Their loyalty is to the work, not the organisational badge on their email signature. That’s what allows them to move faster, challenge assumptions, and design solutions that reflect the whole system rather than one slice of it.
6. The Centre Sets Standards, Not Solutions
Effective collaboration needs a strong centre but strength doesn’t mean control. It means clarity, consistency, and the ability to create the conditions in which collaboration can thrive.
The centre’s role is to:
set standards
enforce interoperability
convene partners
remove barriers
provide shared infrastructure
What the centre doesn’t do is dictate local solutions. When the centre tries to design for everyone, it ends up designing for no one. Local partners understand their communities, their pressures, and their opportunities. They are the ones who innovate, adapt, and deliver.
Collaboration works best when the centre provides the scaffolding the rules, the platforms, the guardrails and local partners build the structure. It’s a balance: enough central strength to ensure coherence, but enough local freedom to ensure relevance.
7. Trust Is Built Through Delivery, Not Declarations
Trust is the currency of collaboration but it’s not created by vision statements, glossy partnership agreements, or well‑intentioned away‑days. Those things can set the tone, but they don’t build the confidence partners need to take risks together.
Trust grows through what people do, not what they say. It’s built through:
transparency
shared learning
honest conversations
small wins delivered together
consistency over time
Every time partners follow through on a commitment, share something openly, or solve a problem together, trust deepens. Every time they hide information, delay decisions, or retreat into organisational defensiveness, trust erodes.
The most collaborative systems don’t spend much time talking about trust. They demonstrate it in their behaviours, their decisions, and their willingness to be accountable to one another. Trust becomes the by‑product of delivery, not the precondition for it.
8. Collaboration Feels Different
When collaboration is real, you can feel it. It has a different energy lighter, faster, more purposeful. People describe:
faster decisions
fewer duplicated meetings
clearer priorities
less friction
more creativity
a sense of shared purpose
It feels like momentum, not maintenance. Work moves forward instead of circling. Conversations become more honest. Barriers feel smaller. People stop asking “Who owns this?” and start asking “What’s the best way to solve it?”
Real collaboration doesn’t just change outcomes it changes the experience of working in the system. It feels like progress.
So What Does This Mean for Leaders?
If you want real collaboration not the performative kind, not the meeting‑heavy kind, not the “we should work together more” kind start by asking yourself:
Are we sharing a problem or just sharing a room?
Are we jointly accountable or just jointly present?
Are we pooling resources or just pooling opinions?
Are we sharing data or just sharing updates?
Are we building blended teams or just borrowing staff?
Because collaboration isn’t a mindset. It isn’t a value you write on a wall or a behaviour you list in a competency framework. Collaboration is a structure a set of conditions, incentives, and ways of working that make partnership the default, not the exception. When the structure is right, collaboration stops being heroic. It becomes normal. Predictable. Repeatable. It becomes the way the system works, not the thing we try to bolt on when the stakes get high.
And that’s when collaboration stops being a slogan and starts becoming a capability.
