“This booklet … has been designed as a practical guide to help users navigate the challenges of dealing with different organisational cultures when working in cross-sector partnerships. Differences in organisational and professional cultures are a common source of misunderstanding in international collaboration: They can reduce the efficiency and the impact of cross-sector partnerships and can generate risk. The Navigator outlines a number of key issues for consideration and proposes some achievable actions that can be taken both to make it easier to deal with different cultures and to make your own organisational culture more partnership-friendly.

The Navigator is intended for strategic and operational staff in any organisation for which working in partnership is integral to the achievement of its strategic mission. This will include policy-makers, senior managers, partnership specialists, human resources staff, and operational field staff. It assumes that working in cross-sector partnership is of considerable importance to the organisation. It also assumes that the individuals or teams using this Navigator will have some role and capacity as agents of change — actors in an organisation who might, at some level, be able to instigate, lead or catalyse change. Such change-agents may be working independently or in collaboration with an external consultant. In either case the Navigator is designed to identify potential problems and to suggest routes to possible solutions. …

There are six main chapters in the Navigator. They cover the following areas:

• The paradox of partnership and the necessity of balancing flexibility with core values
• The importance of going beyond stereotypes and developing cultural awareness
• The characteristics of a partnership-friendly culture
• The role of leadership in establishing cultural norms and behaviour
• The need for effective learning processes to be embedded in organisational systems
• The place of targeted training and development in building partnership skills”