Enhancing community resilience requires targeted, coordinated action that recognises the interconnected nature of economic, social, and environmental systems. Such interventions are often beyond the ambit of any single organisation or sector. Building resilience requires collaboration across business, government, civil society, and academic sectors.

Having at least an initial definition of the partnership objective helps in identifying who to bring to the table. That said, identifying and committing to a focus for the partnership necessarily involves all of the partners - so there is generally some iteration between identifying the right partnership objective and the right participants.

While there are a variety of role-players that might be involved, the most relevant partners are those that are best placed to help achieve the particular objective(s) of the partnership. The important thing is to bring together a set of partners whose resources and capabilities best complement each other - like pieces of a puzzle. These contributions need to be clearly identified and committed in a partnering agreement.

There may be a temptation to involve many partners to access diverse resources and to be inclusive, but this would also increase the complexity of the partnership. Our case studies suggest that it helps to keep resilience-building partnerships relatively small and focused.

It is also important to recognise that the negotiations involved in developing and adapting a partnering agreement are often tricky. Business, government, civil society, and academic role-players bring different ways of thinking and doing to the table, so it may take some time for their representatives to get to know and trust each other. This process is helped along by three practices of successful collaborators described in the Embedding Project's Guide on Leadership for Effective Partnering.

Let's take a look at how the case study companies identified their key partners.

Santam managers realised that numerous organizations are involved in addressing local risk factors, such as land cover and drainage systems. But the single most important organization at the local level is the district municipality's Disaster Risk Management (DRM) agency, which has a statutory responsibility to reduce risks (e.g., through flood mapping and preventing inappropriate building in flood areas), as well as managing disaster response. However, these agencies often struggle to live up to their responsibilities, given financial and human resource constraints. Santam managers realised that the Eden District DRM agency should be the main partner in their quest to reduce disaster risks in the area. They agreed on a Memorandum of Understanding that outlined the objectives and partners' responsibilities in the partnership, though they recognized that things may change over time.

Woolworths managers learnt that various government agencies, as well as farmers, their associations, and NGOs, are involved in attempts to reduce invasive alien vegetation, but they often fail to keep pace with the spreading plants. Fortunately, WWF-SA and their local partners were already putting efforts in place to better coordinate the diverse role-players. Woolworths identified WWF-SA and their local network as key partners that they wanted to support to achieve their shared objective. This was facilitated by the fact that Woolworths already had an overarching partnership with WWF-SA to address environmental issues in key supply chains.

Nedbank managers might have worked with a multitude of stakeholders to support local community development in Magaliesburg. Instead, they recognised the benefits of working with Ranyaka, a community development organization that focused on fostering local initiatives for community development. Ranyaka had a conceptual approach, experience, and existing networks in the local community that might be leveraged by Nedbank's support.

AngloGold Ashanti managers engaged in a consultative process involving the local district municipality, land-owners, and others to develop a shared vision for how to develop community land through maize cultivation. They also realised that additional agricultural skills would be necessary, as well as a guaranteed customer for the maize - they therefore involved SAB Miller (which later became part of AB InBev), as they could provide an offtake commitment and they also had an existing program to support emerging farmers.