What’s an organization to do in this world of ours, except prepare for change? Only, what if the services a community needs rely not on a single organization but a collection of them? How do you help a whole group respond, especially in rapidly-changing circumstances? At the Primary Care Coalition, we’re confident the answer lies in a strong backbone.
Consider the role your spine plays in your body. It is the core structure for both stability and motion, as well as the central pathway for messages to and from different sectors. A healthy backbone, in other words, is an instrument of both communication and alignment.
At PCC, we are structured for support. That is the core of what we do. We help patients, we support providers, we build systems. The actual services we provide are often hidden behind the language of program administration and leveraged resources, but what they really mean is that we excel at making things work better, together.
Crucially, in this extended backbone metaphor, there is no requirement for all parts of the body to have the same motion or strategy. An elbow and a femur move differently by design, but an aligned body helps keep their actions balanced. That backbone balancing can even amplify impact: learning to coordinate hip drive with arm motion can deliver a more powerful swing.
None of the impact reflected in our recent FY24 Annual Report would be possible from a single organization. It’s the blending of expertise across professional and cultural and funding lanes that creates an extra-strength, super-powered, Montgomery County model of a safety net. As times get increasingly chaotic and finances increasingly tight, we will all have to think harder about the best way to leverage strengths toward a greater whole.
As our Chief Operating Officer Hillery Tsumba says, “When resources are constrained, people tend to consolidate power and meet fewer needs. But that is when it is more important than ever to give up power for a shared goal and try to go further by stretching resources to do more.”
We will have to be not just boldly creative but bravely collaborative to turn a do-more-with-less atmosphere into a climate of innovation. But it can be done.
Here are some key considerations on our minds for making collaboration work in challenging times:
Consider the role your spine plays in your body. It is the core structure for both stability and motion, as well as the central pathway for messages to and from different sectors. A healthy backbone, in other words, is an instrument of both communication and alignment.
At PCC, we are structured for support. That is the core of what we do. We help patients, we support providers, we build systems. The actual services we provide are often hidden behind the language of program administration and leveraged resources, but what they really mean is that we excel at making things work better, together.
Crucially, in this extended backbone metaphor, there is no requirement for all parts of the body to have the same motion or strategy. An elbow and a femur move differently by design, but an aligned body helps keep their actions balanced. That backbone balancing can even amplify impact: learning to coordinate hip drive with arm motion can deliver a more powerful swing.
None of the impact reflected in our recent FY24 Annual Report would be possible from a single organization. It’s the blending of expertise across professional and cultural and funding lanes that creates an extra-strength, super-powered, Montgomery County model of a safety net. As times get increasingly chaotic and finances increasingly tight, we will all have to think harder about the best way to leverage strengths toward a greater whole.
As our Chief Operating Officer Hillery Tsumba says, “When resources are constrained, people tend to consolidate power and meet fewer needs. But that is when it is more important than ever to give up power for a shared goal and try to go further by stretching resources to do more.”
We will have to be not just boldly creative but bravely collaborative to turn a do-more-with-less atmosphere into a climate of innovation. But it can be done.
Here are some key considerations on our minds for making collaboration work in challenging times:
Know your organizational superpowers and find partners who can round out your Justice League. That requires a clear-eyed look at what you bring to the table—and what you can’t. For example, data points that may seem like a standard ask to one partner may be completely at odds with another partner’s operating ethos. Saying no is fair, and offering clarity about why opens the door for shared problem solving.
Acknowledging your bottom line is admitting vulnerability; it can also be essential to moving a partnership model forward. That said, it may be helpful to offer more than one scenario of resources versus deliverables, since your actual bottom line—and your partner’s—will likely depend on multiple factors in the final scope.
Similarly, saying no to a particular model of program design does not have to mean saying no to all collaboration. You can remain in conversation even if the scope of a particular proposal is a bad fit—so long as you’re clear about what doesn’t work for your organization and what factors a future collaboration would need to address.
These are the kinds of hard conversations that turn feel-good statements about collaborative intent into forward motion. They’re also conversations that backbone organizations like PCC are well-positioned to lead, transforming our common values into a shared operational clarity. A strong backbone can be the difference between an impulse for action and a movement for good.
These are the kinds of hard conversations that turn feel-good statements about collaborative intent into forward motion. They’re also conversations that backbone organizations like PCC are well-positioned to lead, transforming our common values into a shared operational clarity. A strong backbone can be the difference between an impulse for action and a movement for good.
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