Many clients come to me saying “we want to create this strategy and we want to do it collaboratively so that everyone owns the actions and everyone will be committed to implementation”.

It’s a great aspiration, because we know the alternative tends to be another orphaned strategy gathering dust on a shelf, beside its orphaned sister strategies.

But having watched clients grapple with the task, I have learned more about the challenges of creating a strategy that everyone owns.  I have also drawn some conclusions about what works, so here is my key insight into creating a strategy together.

Focus on the how rather than the what

A typical strategy would comprise, among other things, a list of agreed actions, projects or deliverables.  For example, in catchment planning those actions could be about naturalising storm drains, fencing waterways, limiting fertiliser use, etc.  In other words, there is lots of detail about what we will do under this strategy, what actions are to be done by whom and by when.

But isn’t that exactly what those orphaned strategies are full of?  The problem isn’t a lack of actions, it’s a lack of ACTION.

I see all my clients struggling with this.  Everyone wants to focus on solutions, which at face value makes a lot of sense.  After all, ‘fixing the river’ is what we all care about isn’t it?  But in focussing on the solutions it is so easy to ignore the single most important element of any collaborative strategy, which is how are we going to work together differently to create an agreed way forward and to implement actions we identify?  By focussing on the what, we ignore the how, and condemn our brilliant strategy to the orphanage.

What does the how look like?

There is no single right way to do this, but here are some questions that a meaningful collaborative strategy might address:

  • How can we be most creative together?
  • How can we ensure our diversity is a strength rather than a weakness?
  • How do we manage the power differential between us?
  • How do we build consensus around ideas?
  • How do we work together given our different priorities, even different world views?
  • How can we acknowledge and deliver what our constituents need, while creating something new together?
  • How do we make decisions together?
  • To what extent are we comfortable with experimentation and uncertainty?

You get the picture.  These are How questions that will form the basis of a very different conversation and a very different strategy.  Note, we aren’t asking how we will work together today, we are asking how we will work together for the foreseeable future as we collaborate to improve the catchment.

When co-creating strategy it is the conversation that is important, listening to each other, struggling with the how question together, building relationships that will build our commitment to each other and to a shared goal.

A collaborative strategy lays out a process, relationships and governance that all are committed to by which you will together identify problems and solve them as you go.  Remember, it is how, not what that matters.