Clarity, Unity & Adaptability

Collaborating to disrupt the inequitable status quo of our civic systems is demanding, difficult work that is made easier if the partners involved are clear, united and adapt.

Clarity

Without a clear purpose, collaborations devolve quickly into coBLABoration. Specificity often contributes to clarity. For example, a collaborative with a purpose of fostering a thriving neighborhood isn’t as clear as one that says its purpose is to foster a neighborhood where residents can safely walk to school, worship and work.

Each time partners gather to work on their collaboration they should begin by reviewing their shared purpose. The collaboration’s shared purpose may need to evolve over time based on shifting context and a deeper understanding of what it will take to disrupt the status quo.

As I noted in my last blog post, the great systems thinker Donella Meadows taught us that we can transform a system simply by altering its purpose (Page 16 of her Leverage Points paper). Most civic systems – such as the food security system, housing system, education system etc. –have evolved over time without an explicitly stated purpose. By giving our collaborations a clear purpose, we improve our chances of disrupting the system’s status quo and, ultimately, of giving the system an explicit purpose.

In addition to being clear in purpose, collaborations should be clear in the process they use to make decisions and to take actions. Civic collaborations engage individuals, institutions, organizations and many more. How the diverse players come together to make collective decisions is critical to success. Partners need to be clear about these foundational questions: How do we decide? How do we decide how to decide? Ideally partners feel they shaped and participated in the decision-making process.

Clarity is not a synonym for certainty. We can be clear about our purpose and process, but we should not even try to be certain about what we will do or what will result from what we do. The “what” of collaboration, as well as the outcomes, emerge over time. We can be clear that we will learn from what emerges and apply those lessons to our future work (see Adaptability below), but we cannot be certain of our outcomes. Too many leaders want certainty, when they should strive for clarity and, as the writer and disruptor Harold Jarche says, embrace ambiguity.

One way to be clearer about the purpose of the collaboration is to identify who carries the burden for our inability to create a more equitable status quo. For example, if our neighborhood is unsafe for pedestrians, then it is residents, especially children, who carry that burden in the form of injuries and the inability to access resources. Understanding that burden can unite players to disrupt the inequitable status quo. 

Unity

That a child carries the burden for our inability to create a safe neighborhood should be a force for unity. Of course, in a high performing community no child carries such a burden.

Uniting diverse stakeholders – especially those with power over key elements of a civic system –is both challenging and required. It is very easy for individuals and organizations to say they want to collaborate. This is “head nod unity.” We nod our heads in agreement that we don’t want children to die walking across the street in their neighborhood. “Action unity” is when individuals and organizations alter their own policies, practices and beliefs to achieve the shared purpose. Years ago, a colleague observed that the only time she’d seen collaborations really work is when leaders refuse to tolerate the inequitable status quo. If we truly refuse to tolerate the status quo, we won’t just nod our heads. We will act in ways that disrupt that status quo and encourage others to do the same. Such actions build and sustain unity. Collaboration guru Adam Kahane, in his book Power and Love, argues that we need to act out of love, not power, because love drives us to unity.

To help build and sustain unity, the partners in a collaboration should agree on what is expected of themselves as partners. For example, partners should agree in advance that they will work to make changes in their own behaviors to achieve the shared purpose. Setting high, clear expectations early may force some partners to leave the table, but it will build unity.

Adaptability

Context within complex systems changes constantly; often driven by forces far beyond anyone’s control. As the context (the interrelated conditions within the system) changes, so must the partners. Indeed, the context within a system changes much faster and with greater disruptive power within a system than it generally does within any of the organizations or institutions that makeup the system.

Context can change for all sorts of reasons – a new mayor may be elected and put a higher priority on safe neighborhoods. A key community organizer could move out of the neighborhood. New federal policies could alter funding streams.

A shift in the partners’ shared understanding of what is happening within the system also changes the context within the system. For example, partners may assume that lowering the speed limit on neighborhood streets may improve pedestrian safety. But data analysis and experimentation may disprove this assumption, which then should alter the partners’ strategy.

Changes in context require collaborations to adapt. Failure to adapt can mean the partners are working on the wrong issues, or even issues that no longer exist. Adaptability is a byproduct of what Peter Senge calls a learning culture. While Senge’s five disciplines of a learning culture were written in the context of an organization, they are relevant to a cross-sector collaboration.

Team learning, one of the five disciplines, is dependent on feedback. Feedback within complex civic system comes in many forms. We can measure outputs and outcomes to gain feedback. We can measure attitudes and perceptions. Because the context is always changing, we need to find ways to gather and process feedback both quickly and consistently. Learning too late that the context changed is the equivalent of closing the proverbial barn door after the horses have departed.

This is why systems thinker David Peter Stroh, and author of Systems Thinking for Social Change, emphasizes the importance of making evaluation of a collaboration’s efforts an “ongoing activity” not a one-time event at the end of a year or a grant cycle.

Acting on what we learn is adaptability. Leaders accustomed to rigid strategic plans struggle in complex civic system because change – in the form of new learnings – comes too fast. Agile design concepts, including the Agile Canvas and Strategic Doing – can be helpful tools for partners to adapt to the rapidly changing environment of collaboration.

Collaborations united behind a clear purpose and prepared to adapt as they learn are those that will disrupt the inequitable status quo of our civic systems.