Are you finding fingerprints on your collaboration?
To help people collaborate on hard problems my 'Bible' is the Power of Co collaborative pathway. Among other things it suggests that authentic collaboration requires that people get their fingerprints on the process. This means working together to design the collaborative process including governance and decision-making. Without co-designing this we risk doing collaboration 'to' our stakeholders rather than 'with' them.
How do we co-design? Here are three examples from my own practice.
Co-designing a working group
When working with community members on a difficult policy problem we struggled to apply a set of criteria to a number of potential options. It was difficult, taxing work but I wanted people to own the decisions so I pushed them hard. After struggling for the evening someone piped up and said "This is too hard. I think we need a working group to take this forward" at which point I celebrated discretely. I had wanted this approach but felt it important not to impose the process on the affected community. But with this widely supported suggestion the community had made a great call on process. Right then and there I called for nominations and before the night was over we had ourselves a working group that everyone owned and that proved essential over many months of hard work. Because the community's fingerprints were on the process they had more trust in the outcomes.
Managing an angry meeting
I was asked by a local government client to facilitate a public meeting focussed on a contentious urban development proposal. Everyone knew there would be fireworks and Council was looking to me to somehow stop people being angry at them. Having never discovered that magic trick I did the next best thing and asked for contact details for some key community leaders and activists. I rang them and introduced myself and explained my dilemma as the facilitator of next week's meeting, i.e. I expected people to be passionate and at the same time I wanted to ensure the meeting was as useful as possible for everyone. I asked for their advice on the agenda and how best to manage the meeting. We talked it over and I got some helpful suggestions. When the meeting kicked off I was able to publicly thank people for their input and advice and with the agenda I was able to demonstrate that I had listened, that they had in fact help me design the session. Importantly this reduced the sense that I was there to 'control the crowd' and it definitely helped us have a more useful meeting.
Getting out of the steamroller
I was asked by a government client to help design and run a collaborative workshop where departmental staff wanted to work with two organisations who had received grant funding. The aim was to work together to polish their project plans and evaluation frameworks. Seemed like a great bit of collaboration. Then in the interest of co-designing the session I set up a couple of meetings with the two recipient organisations to get their input on the day. As it turns out, in both cases the very thought of "another workshop!" was anathema. Logistically it was very challenging for them both and they felt unclear about why it was necessary. With that strong feedback we were then able to redesign the approach so that the workshops weren't needed. Had we not invited them in to the co-design question, the department, with the best collaborative intention, might have 'invited' them to a workshop in a way that risked them feeling like being run over by the collaboration steam roller. With co-design we got a great process that suited everyone.
Three stories of co-design, each quite different. The key is to ensure their fingerprints are on the process and to look for opportunities to make that possible. Good luck!
For much more on co-designing governance and decision-making, take a look at our book The Power of Co. The smart leader's guide to collaborative governance. Available on Kindle.
Five top tips from our Fabulous Facilitators
I’m excited to share the top tips from participants in our recently-completed Fabulous Facilitation program. If you run meetings at work or spend time in front of the room running workshops, these tips came from people just like you.
From May through to July an enthusiastic group of people from across Australia came together for an hour a week as part of our Fabulous Facilitation program to learn and reflect on aspects of meeting and workshop leadership. In our first session they shared their facilitation challenges, which included things like:
- How to manage online and hybrid sessions in a way that keeps people engaged (no more blank screens and subtle sounds of typing in the background)?
- How to deal with power dynamics, when some people in the meeting have more power and ‘voice’ than others?
- How to deal with emotion in the room?
- How to ensure we get to outcomes in our meetings?
Sound familiar? I’ve certainly grappled with each of these in my time.
Having co-designed our learning program in session one, over the remaining sessions we explored these and other issues using frameworks that I have found useful. We also drew heavily on the experience of participants, who had lots of insights to share.
At the end of our six-week program these fabulous facilitators shared their top tips and takeaways. These five resonated strongly with me:
- When planning a meeting, consider relational as well as rational objectives. In other words, think about how you want people to feel as well as what outcome you are seeking.
- Design your sessions with participants. Seek to get their fingerprints on the process, the agenda and desired outcomes. This often means co-design conversations in the lead-up to your meeting.
- In on-line meetings liberal use of breakout rooms, whiteboards, polls and other tools can keep people actively engaged. Music helps too. As a bonus, these processes help to manage power differentials by democratising inputs.
- Emotion in meetings is ok and often constructive. Denying participants the right to bring their emotional selves to difficult conversations can make disengagement and distrust more likely.
- As a meeting leader/facilitator it’s ok to have an opinion and even to express it, as long as you stay curious about other opinions and other perspectives and model that curiosity and open-mindedness.
There you have it. Five hot tips from our fabulous facilitators. If you’d like to know more about what it takes to run meetings and workshops please be in touch. And if you would like to participate in a future program you can register your interest here.
Am I Getting My Ducks in a Row, or Collaborating?
When we are worried about how our stakeholders will react, the urge to get the ducks in a row can become irresistible. But of course the more we try to manage out risks before talking to our stakeholders, the more it can look like we are doing this project to them, rather than with them. And anger grows. We are giving energy to the very thing we seek to avoid.
This dynamic can be quite paralysing.
How do you recognise when you are lining up the ducks, rather than engaging authentically? Can you see yourself here?
I am lining up my ducks when I seek… |
When authentic collaboration requires… |
| Complete clarity and agreement as well as sign-off on structure, process, rules, governance .... | Stepping into messiness
Early conversations, before we know what this is about or how we will work together on it Adequate agreement initially on the problem or the way forward |
| Really clear and agreed objectives, goals, measures and milestones | Building a shared understanding of the problem or situation and the desired destination
A willingness to take the next step despite not knowing Ongoing reflection on what is and isn’t working |
| Control of both the process and outcome | Making decisions together (doing ‘with’ not ‘to’) to grow commitment and ownership
Learning together by doing together Shared accountability and agency through co-define, co-design and co-creation |
| A plan to manage difficult relationships and diverse opinions | Exploring and investing in relationships and trust among collaborators
Listening to, acknowledging and valuing the diversity of views |
| Approvals and sign-offs by the powers that be | The courage to try something new together
Tacit agreement from the boss to proceed |
| To put off getting started until I’m more confident | Acknowledging that uncertainty is unavoidable and the right time to start is right now |
| To manage out all the risks | Living with some uncertainty and risk. Putting them on the table and managing them together |
Perhaps rather than get our ducks in a row we can find ways to let them go where they will, showing us the way to more authentic collaboration.
Three things I've learned about commitment to collaborate
I was recently at a wedding and as always enjoyed that critical moment when the bride and groom say “I do”, each making a public commitment to their lifelong partnership.
And of course, this reminded me of the commitment required to collaborate authentically
Commitment to collaborate is one of the five elements of our Power of Co collaborative pathway. In the original version of the Power of Co it is step number one.
In our later iteration, Commitment to Collaborate lies at the centre of the cycle.
However we want to illustrate it, there is no doubt that the commitment to work together, much like the commitment to a marriage, is a critical success factor of any authentic collaboration. I’ve been thinking about it a bit lately and want to share a couple of things I’ve learned about commitment to collaborate.
Who needs to commit to collaborate?
In the ideal universe, everyone is up for this collaboration thing. But of course we can’t click our fingers and make people commit. In reality there is only one person whose commitment we have control over, and that is ourselves. So this is a great place to start. Who needs to be committed to this collaboration? We do. If we believe in this and really want to bring people in to help us make decisions, we stand a good chance of success. With our collaborative mindset we are likely to act collaboratively, and it’s hard to go wrong from there. Furthermore, our authentic collaboration will help others to make their own commitment.
Bottom line? Are you committed to collaboration and how is this driving your collaborative actions?
How much commitment is enough?
I used to believe that successful collaboration required everyone to be fully committed from the get-go but over time I’ve come to see it differently. In my experience it’s unrealistic to think that all parties, whether external or internal stakeholders and decision-makers, will simply sign up to this new way of working together. I’ve learned that commitment isn’t all or nothing and that it grows over time. In practice this means I now worry less about getting strong commitment from everyone at the outset. Instead I seek to get into doing collaboration as quickly and usefully as I can, confident in the knowledge that success breeds success. The experience of good collaboration builds everyone’s confidence in the process and each other and our collective commitment grows.
Bottom line? Build commitment by doing collaboration, rather than expecting everyone to be enthusiastic supporters at the outset.
When should we be focussed on commitment to collaborate?
The answer to this lies in our evolution of the Power of Co, from a linear framework with commitment at the start to a more cyclic framework with commitment at the heart. The difference reflects our realisation that we should always be seeking to build everyone’s investment in and commitment to working together. In other words, at every step in our journey it is useful to ask ourselves “how can we do this in a way that strengthens our collective commitment to this process”.
Bottom line?: Keep asking the question – how do we strengthen our commitment to this process today?”
Embarking on a collaborative process is not like getting married, but it does require a commitment to work together. And like a marriage, it helps to re-commit every day. How committed are you?
How I survived my angriest public meeting
So there I was, in front of the stage, microphone in hand in a village community hall, attempting to manage the angriest public meeting I’ve ever been involved in. Everyone knew it would be angry, including the local media who were there with TV cameras to capture every juicy moment.
But being a clever facilitator I had planned ahead and had my strategies in place for managing just such a situation. The first one was to give everyone an opportunity to express what was on their mind. So…
“On your seats you found post it notes and a pen. To get us started you might like to write down your key issues and post them on the wall here, to capture your concerns…”
The reactions ranged from unpleasant to unprintable and it was very clear that they were going to do no such thing.
Smiling nervously at the camera in my face I soldiered on. Not to worry. Plan B then.
“Let’s go straight to the presentation then, to show you what works are being planned for the local road…..”
More abuse and invitations to stick things in uncomfortable places.
Camera man leaps up again. He’s loving it. Pans across angry crowd. Swivels and tightens on my increasingly sweaty visage. “What’s this bloke gonna do now” he’s thinking…. As was I. In that moment, I had no Plan C.
So I went rogue.
“Ok, so what would you like to do? What feels most useful to you?”
It turns out that their local community committee had their own presentation to give and nothing was going to happen until it had been shared with the room. Up they came with USB stick and the meeting was theirs for the next 30 minutes.
And after that my client was able to share their presentation and we got into Q&As and discussion. And so on.
Those moments are the teaching moments aren’t they. As I drove home, a shaken shadow of my former self, I was able to reflect on what had happened and how I had managed to survive and get a discussion going. Three things I learned in that baptism of fire:
- Letting go of control, sharing how things should proceed. It feels terrifying but was in reality the thing that allowed us to make progress together.
- The more I tried to manage out the anger I was expecting and seeing, the more I exacerbated it. I was the problem.
- Being vulnerable, unsure and uncertain of how to proceed was not the end of the world. In fact, it allowed the meeting to take its own more useful direction.
I learned these lessons in the context of facilitating a public meeting. But have applied them in all collaborative situations since.
Collaboration often involves or evokes high emotions and it’s human nature to try to manage them out. But by sharing control, acknowledging how people are feeling and accepting vulnerability we are much more likely to connect and collaborate as humans.
That’s what I’d say to the camera should it ever be pointed in my face again.
Overcoming the toughest silos of all
Letting them into your silo is the easy bit. Letting them into your head and heart is harder.
In my work this year supporting groups to work together I’ve seen clients working hard to break down the silos and collaborate more effectively with others. I’ve been struck by the commitment shown by many to changing the way they work together. I’ve also been struck by some of the challenges.
Collaborating authentically and creatively with others means being vulnerable, and this is part of the challenge of working across silos. To genuinely let them in to my dilemmas and aspirations I have to let them into:
My head – so they can understand my thinking.
My team – so they can be a part of us, even if they don’t seem to fit.
My work plan - because we are doing this together.
My budget – if are working together on this then my budget is theirs.
My mistakes and uncertainties – because if I can’t be open and honest with them about what I know and don’t know, we aren’t really collaborating.
Silos are organisational but they are also emotional. Getting into the room together across your silos is necessary. Letting them into your head and heart is the thing that makes the difference. The good news is that you can take small steps, take some small risks while staying safe. You don't have to bare all in order to build your confidence to work together.
And best of all, you can get started today. Just try it!
You mean collaboration doesn't mean lots more work?!
“I’ve been thinking of collaboration as extra steps, as extra work. I’ve been adding things in and trying to do more. I know now that it’s really about my mindset, not about trying to fit more in”, said a participant in collaboration training this week.
It’s a profound realisation and I was thrilled to have it articulated so succinctly.
We often come to collaboration thinking it means lots of work, lots of talk, lots of meetings, lots of time and not all of it useful.
And sometimes that’s true. But it's not inevitable.
Most fundamentally, collaboration means changing the way we see our stakeholders and their place in the process, changing how we think about ourselves and our stakeholders. We can make this change in a moment, without adding so much as an email to our workload.
Looking at the world with a collaborative mindset is like donning a new pair of glasses. We don’t need to do anything differently to see the world differently through new glasses. But because we have a different view we will likely do different things.
So when you next get worried about collaboration and how much effort it takes, just reach for your new collaboration goggles and take a different look at the world. You will find that you can’t help but collaborate better, even without adding lots of new work.
Remember, collaboration really happens between our own ears, so think like a collaborator and get your projects moving today.
Less Planning, More Collaborating
Sometimes we can get a little paralysed by our urge to plan. I was recently working with a group responsible for coordinating works in partnership with others across a diverse and complex system. The client has a fabulous knack for creating “Playbooks” for action, describing in detail the approach for a range of tasks and projects. They are good planners and they do this important work well.
Detailed plans are invaluable when there is certainty around what needs doing and how it needs to be done. But I was invited to help them collaborate and in this realm there is less clarity and little certainty.
As I often do, I threw up a slide at one point listing some characteristics of a collaborative mindset. The one that seemed to jump out for my client was Less plan. More act. It sparked a discussion about what this means.
When thinking about how to collaborate with others it can be tempting to invest lots of time and energy in creating the collaboration plan. Yet while planning is good, I like to say that we can talk about talking to stakeholders, or we can talk to them. In other words, we can plan to engage or we can engage and when asked, I always encourage the latter.
Less planning, more doing. Less thinking about how to collaborate, and more getting started tomorrow. If you are uncertain how and why and what, then those are some good questions to get started with.
Of course, getting started when you don't have a clear and detailed playbook can be a little unsettling. This is why I get to this discussion in the context of the mindset. Doing things differently requires us to think differently. Authentic collaboration requires us to think more like collaborators and less like traditional project managers.
Are you thinking like a collaborator?
If you want to check the state of your collaborative mindset, take a look at our simple assessment tool.
Viva la Similarité!
Beneath the surface we share more than we initially see.
I was in Medina, Saudi Arabia with a free morning before heading to the airport and home so I Ubered into town to whichever museum was open earliest.
I soon found myself in front of a modern looking building touting a multi-media experience. Sounded fine. I paid my money, headed down the escalator and emerged into a high-tech journey through the Creation Story according to Islam.
The light and sound show took us on a journey across time. We watched the creation of the universe and the Earth and its people. We saw a parade of Prophets and Messengers and we learned how it all will end.
It was fascinating to see this age-old story through the eyes of a different culture. The most obvious aspect was how familiar it was to my Sunday schooled self. The cast of characters was very familiar, including Adam and Eve, Abraham, Moses, ‘our’ tribe who escaped the wicked Pharaoh across the parted sea, Noah and his ark, right through to Mary and Jesus.
I was amazed at the extent to which it was the same backstory that I grew up with, at least to that point. I was quite struck because in my time in Medina I had been attuned only to differences; Exotically-dressed people from all over the world visiting exotic looking mosques. The desert. The heat. The smells and tastes. Working with women wearing full Hijabs and Niqabs so I could see only their eyes. It was all so strange and so different!
And yet, scratch the surface and we share great swathes of our deepest and most powerful stories. To a large extent we are the children of the one story.
Isn’t it always the way? Whenever we are interacting with ‘others’ we are quick to spot differences and to make assumptions about them. Yet in every case we have more in common than we think. And a wonderful thing about effective collaboration is that it can reveal our commonality and from it grow something better than any of us can grow on our own.
Viva la difference! Or should that be, viva la similarité!?
Do you really know what problem you are trying to solve?
A perspective I couldn't see
I once worked with a client responsible for developing an innovative community facility in the inner city. It was on surplus Department of Education property and the key project partner was an NGO focussed on supporting education in young people. The vision for the centre was a place that could support a largely First Nations local community to thrive through education and out of school activities.
I struggled to get traction with the local community and couldn’t figure out why. Then someone talked to me about what was going on. We were dealing with First Nations people, on Department of Education land managed by a church-based NGO. I was told about the scars of the stolen generation and how religious and educational institutions may even to this day be seen by local communities through the lens of those experiences.
As a middle-class white guy from the comfortable ‘burbs I thought the project was about how to create a great facility. Turns out it was also about how to navigate history and its ongoing impacts.
Trust is the issue
Years later I worked with an organisation on a redesign of a critical workspace so that the parts of the business could work more effectively across their internal silos in an emergency situation. The project was ostensibly about how to physically improve the space. But over time it became clear that for many it was principally about how to survive long enough for the new ‘disruptive’ leader to move on and let us get back to BAU. It was about lack of trust and low commitment to change.
Why is this windfarm about gender politics?
And more recently I worked with an interesting small business with a global practice, in this case leading an international team on a renewable energy project in South Asia. The project appeared to be about how best to create a windfarm. But for my client, a small local team of capable women, their dilemma was also how to manage the cultural differences and gender politics across a team of mostly male technical specialists from several developing nations.
Context Dilemmas
Each of these experiences taught me something about the dilemmas we face when tackling projects. There is always a project or content dilemma and this is where we focus most, even all, of our energy. But that dilemma doesn’t exist in beautiful isolation. Rather it is nested in an often invisible or subconscious web of social, cultural, political, power dynamics and other stuff that is unavoidably part of any complex situation.
What to do with this?
If you are working with a diverse group of stakeholders on a challenging problem, you will also have context dilemmas that can make life hard for everyone. Best thing to do is make them visible. Between you, you can’t ‘fix’ them, but by explicitly incorporating them into your project dilemma you are better positioned to move ahead. The question becomes “given these context issues, how do we best deliver our project….”
What are your context dilemmas and how are you surfacing them? If you want to build some skills to work across content and context dilemmas, join our upcoming training program for collaborators.