Michael Schluter and John Ashcroft delivered the Strategy Unit’s monthly seminar on Tuesday 3 March. (The Strategy Unit is based in the Cabinet Office but reports to the Prime Minister who takes final decisions about the Unit’s work.) About 50 civil servants from a wide range of departments attended the session on ‘influencing, developing and assessing relationships’. This looked at the importance of relationships in delivering public services, how policy influences those relationships, and the potential applications of the Foundation’s relationship assessment methodology. This was a tremendous opportunity to explore how the Foundation’s work can influence policymaking. The question and answer session looked in more detail at how our approach to assessing relationships could be used in better policy design, reforming institutions as well as in improved organisational management.The material presented is available from the Strategy Unit’s website (archived following the 2010 general election). Click here for the presentation and here for the handout.