26 LANCASHIRE BUSINESS DAY
Dave Walker
David Dunwell
Helen Binns
John Harrison Continued from Page 25
Every individual in this room has their own core skills and things that they’re excellent at and it’s about working with them and sharing that. If everyone did, that’s when the economy would flourish most.
We work with colleges, we work with in the third sector, there’s lots of partnership working. We’re big believers in it.
ZK: You have to understand that it is a shared vision and collaboration isn’t just for the good times but also the difficult times and the challenges. It also comes down to basic human interaction, learning to understand and collaborate with people on that basic level.
You will not get anywhere and you will not initiate change unless you collaborate on that human level. You have to take people with you.
WL: For us, collaboration is working with businesses. I always think if you sell correctly that is a collaboration because it’s benefiting both people. It goes both ways.
RH: It’s about culture, because it doesn’t always work if you’re collaborating with people who don’t have your vision or don’t want the same things out of it.
We’ve all seen in business where people want to collaborate because they want to get into your clients or want to sell something to them. There is nothing wrong with that, but it has got to be mutually beneficial and a mutual feel- good fit.
When it comes to people working together to achieve a positive end result, it is vital that hearts and minds are aligned. If they are not, go find someone who is aligned
with that journey. When you get that right and you get the right energy, then collaboration can achieve greater than the sum of its parts.
JH: It’s about that shared interest. We benefit if the UK economy and the SME sector are strong, so we’re not just there to give you a loan or to get a current account.
It’s having a broad network and genuinely wanting to introduce you to people with a shared interest who can help your business.
Where we see collaboration done really well and having the most impact is where there’s long-term commitment and that shared vision. That real long-term commitment can bring big change and big results.
TS: There’s collaboration wherever you look and yes, we work well with other professional services for deals. But also, that relationship between us and our clients has evolved over the years, away from the hierarchy of solicitor and client. It’s much more of an even collaboration.
One thing that we don’t do particularly well in the sector is collaborate with other law firms. The sector is still quite old-fashioned in its approach. It is ripe for change.
SM: Hospitality as a sector suffered massively and has come out of the pandemic in a very different place. Only yesterday we were posing the question how we, as a venue and employer, could work collaboratively with other hotels and venues in the area.
We need to have conversations with each other. Staff move around.
It’s a very different environment. It’s all about training and skills.
Along with other founding members we’ve just launched a North Lancashire Hospitality Network where venues can speak to each other and there’s support.
It’s about bringing in and keeping business in Lancashire, so it’s really important to be collaborative and share best practice.
Back in the day you’d turn business down before giving it to your rival. There’s enough business for us all.
What examples do you have of collaboration and how should we measure its success?
DW: Everybody around this table must be aware that the National Cyber Force (NCF) is moving to Samlesbury.
A Lancashire Cyber Partnership been launched where a number of organisations have come together to ensure that that’s a successful move, and it’s got some really ambitious targets and objectives.
It certainly looks like it’s moving in the right direction. But we have to also be really careful when we collaborate that we don’t miss some really important elements.
NCF is talking about generating 1,000 jobs a year for the next five years, which is wonderful, but where is that workforce going to come from? There is a national skills gap, let alone locally, and we’re competing against some digital powerhouses.
We’re holding our own in Lancashire, we’ve got fantastic digital hubs, but there is a challenge around that collaboration piece to make sure that we don’t miss some key areas.
Neil Burrows
Rob Hallam
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