Emergent Collaboratives Endure
Collaborations that emerge and evolve have a better chance of enduring than those that are announced.
Emergent collaboratives begin with informal conversations among people who are asking new, compelling questions and are eager to listen deeply to the answers that emerge. One of those questions goes something like, “Why, despite all of our best efforts, are we still disappointed by the outcomes in our community?”
Collaborations that are announced with fanfare usually begin with someone using their power to advocate for a “big idea.” The “big idea” is the solution to a problem or opportunity. Often, the idea is based on a “best practice” from elsewhere or the recommendation of a “world-class” consultant/expert/researcher.
About 15 years ago, I joined a large group of excited guests as community leaders proudly announced a collaborative to drive innovation and commercialization efforts among a handful of leading institutions. Those institutions committed to a new wave of collaborations and the champions celebrated their ability to raise $50 million to support the big idea. I shared their enthusiasm. A sense of accomplishment filled the air.
Several months later the effort hired a very smart, experienced scientist and innovator to lead the collaborative. But within a few years, one of the primary funders of the effort observed that all he had to show for the collaborative was “a pile of receipts.”
In contrast, I work with an emerging, evolving collaborative that started about seven years ago not with fanfare, but with a community leader (who also had some power) asking a question: “What could we do together in our community to improve health outcomes?” She asked the question of experts from elsewhere, as well as with those with experience and expertise in her community. Based on what she heard, she invited others to join her at a table to keep exploring that question. After months of learning and getting to know each other, the members committed to working together. They hired a talented network weaver with no experience in the health space, to support their collaborative. Today, the effort is driving change across two counties and bringing new players to the table on a regular basis.
The evolving collaborative has generated new relationships, more engagement by community-based players and meaningful change, including greater access to healthy food, safer streets and more accessible parks and green spaces.
While the collaborative communicates often, it does so without any fanfare or self-congratulations.
Those are just two examples of dozens that I’ve watched unfold. As is the case with all “rules of thumb,” there are exceptions. The funders collaborative that I worked with for nine years was announced with much fanfare, including a story in the New York Times, and it continues to do great work 20 years later. And I’ve supported plenty of emerging efforts that never gained the traction they needed to evolve to the point where they were sustainable. (Perhaps they never gained traction because of the poor quality of support I provided.)
But in general, collaboratives that are announced don’t live up to their hype. As one former foundation head observed: “Our community is good at launching collaboratives.” Launching collaboratives is relatively easy, launching them well is another matter. There is a lot of preparation that goes into launching a collaborative. Here are three tips for any would-be launcher of a collaborative:
· Build trust with and among the anticipated members of the collaborative. Having a lot of money is no substitute for having a lot of trust. The institutions involved in the commercialization collaborative were lured to the table by the promise of money, but they didn’t trust each other. Rather they saw each other as competitors for that funding. Collaboration moves at the speed of trust.
· Ask questions, don’t have the answers. If there’s a pre-determined solution, there isn’t a need for collaboration. There’s just a need to order people to work on the solution. As Adam Kahane emphasizes in his book Facilitating Breakthrough, the first two questions a facilitator helps members of a collective effort explore are:
o How do we see our situation?
o How do we define success?
Exploring and answering these questions are critical steps to building a resilient collaborative.
· Facilitation expertise is more valuable than content expertise. Most of the people sitting at a collaborative table consider themselves experts on the issue, adding another expert to the table doesn’t necessarily create a healthier dynamic. Adding an expert in facilitation can help the experts learn how to work better together.
When it comes to collaborative efforts, how we work together is just important as what we work on together. And if we don’t first get the how right, it’s tough to get the what right. Learning to get the how right is an emergent, evolving process. It cannot be announced.
