Creating a shared vision for the service

Having a shared vision is about building shared understanding across commissioning and delivery partners to guide the work. It's something that you can build into the contract to help formalise the fundamental purpose of the partnership.

A good vision in a relational contract is:

• Visible and simple. People know about it, and can use it to describe what they're doing.
• Co-designed, and actively used. Stakeholders across the partnership have joined in to form it, and use it to help people understand the work.
• Aspirational, and speaks to user needs. It describes what will be different for service users as a result of your work.

• Start with what the commissioning organisation does, and understanding what its red lines are
• Spend time thinking who you need in the workshop and the roles you want them to play, in terms of mindset and perspective on the service and how it is commissioned
• Gather the insight and data you have about the service
• Ask yourself what is the problem we are trying to solve, and how we will know when we are
• Watch out for ambition and aspiration clouding what is realistic and achievable
• Use the process of creating the vision to surface tensions and build shared understanding and alignment. Consider using a design crit approach to enable people to feed in constructively.
• Try different approaches for bringing user needs and the voice of lived experience into the process. For example, you could use Crazy 8s to enable different people to contribute their ideas and participate in co-design.
• Work radically openly - create public spaces for conversation and idea building
• Remember that having clear outcomes and aims will enable you to build a useful vision

Here are 4 vision setting workshop formats you could use:

1. Liberating structures Nine Whys
2. Atlassian's Vision creation workshop
3. Co-Op's Vision and goals workshop
4. GOV.UK's Vision setting workshop

• Open market engagement which is inclusive and transparent
• Paying for people's time to participate in co-design and feedback sessions
• Bilateral discussions with a range of suppliers

Inviting people to co-design sessions which look and feel 'performative', rather than genuine. Facilitating effective co-design is a skill which, when done well, navigates participants' expectations of the level of input or influence that is possible, and helps everyone bring their expertise and experience into the room.

Working openly will help you mitigate a common

perceived risk from potential suppliers that participation in early shaping will either exclude them from the process later on, or create an unfair advantage.

See Crown Commercial Services advice on early market engagement here: https://www.crowncommercial.gov.uk/news/how-to-carry-out-early-market-engagement-successfully-procurement-essentials