Iconic relationships for iconic waterways
Can we have an iconic waterway without strong collaborative relationships?
Some years ago I was lucky enough to work with the team and stakeholders establishing what is now the Chain of Ponds project, a collaborative effort among diverse stakeholders from across government agencies, residents, local businesses, local councils etc. Together they were on a journey to improve the state of the Moonee Ponds Creek in Melbourne.
They had been meeting for some weeks to explore the Chain of Ponds ‘dilemma’ in all its complexity. They could see that the problems involved farming practices, urban drainage management, the behaviour of walkers, residents and local businesses, agency management practices and state and local planning decisions. Adding complexity were some poor relationships, confusing governance arrangements and unclear accountabilities.
As an important step in their collaborative journey the group spent time creating a shared sense of the direction, what we call a Light on the hill, designed to guide them in their solution-finding process. After lots of conversation and deliberation the group landed on “Moonee Ponds Creek is an iconic waterway” as their light on the hill and shared project destination.
I liked this shared direction, particularly because it was created and owned and understood by the group. They had grown this simple idea from their deliberations and for them it worked to inspire and get them moving together towards something they believed in. I see on the website that it still does (with some tweaks).
Yet in recent times I’ve come to understand that there could be more in this light on the hill. I’ve realised that to be most useful the shared direction can include important aspects of the relationships and other context around the water quality dilemmas. That’s because we can’t achieve an iconic waterway without also working on the system of relationships and interactions between the people and groups who hold the fate of the creek in their hands. If poor relationships persist, how can people work together differently? And if they can’t work together differently, how can they expect different outcomes for the creek?
Recently I’ve encouraged groups to add to their light on the hill some of the less obvious aspects such as good governance, high levels of trust between stakeholders, evidence-based decision-making or effective collaboration.
With these more relational aspects visible, groups are able to work towards a healthier collaborative effort as a critical part of working towards a healthier waterway. After all, an iconic waterway is going to depend upon iconic relationships. I’m sure the Chain of Ponds Collaboration understand this and I know they are working hard on their relationships. But I do wonder whether a more complete light on the hill could have made things clearer from the outset. It certainly helps me shift my focus.
We have been working on some new tools lately to help groups identify their shared light on the hill, including the more challenging relational aspects. Get in touch to find out more.
Shared Direction- “What does good look like?”
I was working with a client late last year in an alliance meeting and the discussion turned briefly to the quality of the relationships. There had been a history of poor relationships between the client and an alliance partner which was affecting project delivery, and the group was reviewing a list of activities they had developed to get the project working effectively.
While a lot of the emphasis was on the business activities like road maintenance, asset renewal, etc, the team had also identified some other key contextual issues they felt needed attention if the goal of improved performance was to be achieved.
These include smooth communication, improved trust, good relationships and inclusive culture.
One of the senior managers asked some useful questions that got the group thinking- “what does good look like?” and “how would you measure good?” in regard to improving the relationship.
It highlighted a bit of a shortcoming in the work the team had done in generating the improvement plan- the list of actions that was intended to get the project back on track.
While they had a solid picture of what improved performance would look like around the technical aspects of the project (eg road maintenance), and also had some tangible indicators to evaluate process, they were lacking similar rigour for the contextual issues, which were recognised as essential to sustaining the technical improvements.
It prompted them to spend time in thinking through the answers to the two questions for each of the contextual issues.
For example: They shared their perspectives on what a ‘good’ relationship might look like/ feel like/ sound like, and came up with a picture or “light on the hill” to guide their activities.
It now supports them as they work together by guiding their behaviour as they can ask a question like “is what I’m doing helping move us towards that intent?”
And they also developed some indicators around that picture of success- subjective measures to evaluate whether they were making progress in the right direction. One they experimented with was “scoring” a relationship checklist monthly.
The team now see that it is essential to be clear on what success looks like for both their technical or content challenges, as well as their contextual or social challenges, to be confident that the solutions that emerge will be resilient and sustainable. Ie the value of that “Light on the Hill”
Trusting the data in co-design
Revealing the hidden dilemmas when collaborating
I was working with a client a few years ago, and he was a bit stumped.
He was leading a team working on improving performance in the health system, and was facilitating a collaborative initiative between nurses and a number of health districts (hospitals) on the vexed question of staffing and resourcing. A big emerging issue was nurse ratios ie number of nurses to patients, and the task was to work out an acceptable level that the nurses union would support, the hospitals could afford, and was politically acceptable to the Minister.
As part of the work, his team had been trying to gather data from the health districts about the current situation, but they were struggling as the hospitals seemed unable to provide the data. He speculated on a number of technical reasons why they couldn’t get the job done, and was at his wits end as to how to proceed- “I’m out of tools in my toolkit” he said.
When he was prompted to asked some different questions ie why is it so hard to get the data?, he was able to tease out a new perspective (for him!)
He discovered that all the data was readily available, but wasn’t shared because of the lack of trust between the hospitals and his team, and the nurses union, and the Ministers staff.
The hospitals felt they would probably be disadvantaged with any solution, as had happened to them previously. They certainly didn’t feel safe to admit to that lack of trust, so the reasoning focused on the content- we don’t record that information, we can’t access those records, etc
My client’s work then shifted to building a new relationship with the hospital hierarchy to build sufficient confidence to share information that could help them tackle key issues together.
On reflection, my client recognised that they had been focused on the content aspects of the problem (ie the data), and learned new skills and thinking that enabled him to identify the less obvious contextual issues that were also critical to finding shared solutions.
Are you looking below the waterline?
When collaborating it pays to explore the hidden aspects of your complex project.
Have you heard of Lisa Blair? Last year she completed her second (!!) solo sailing venture around Antarctica, with the aim of raising awareness about climate change. You can learn about her amazing story here.
Watching Lisa’s journey I couldn't help but imagine what it would be like to sail the Southern Ocean. It’s dangerous isn’t it? After all, it’s cold down there! Has Lisa watched Titanic? Has someone told her about icebergs?
I have a thing about icebergs. As we know, most of their bulk sits below the waterline, their shape and scale and details unknown. And while I’ve never been near one, I feel I often encounter something similar when working with groups on complex problems.
Dilemmas in your content and your context
You see, when groups work together on challenging problems or projects, the problem seems visible and known. It’s the reason people come together in the first place, to deliver a project or fix the problem they can see. Yet I have learned that the bulk of the complexity usually sits invisibly below the surface. And as we all know, it’s the bit of the iceberg below the waterline that sinks the ship.
For example, on a big highway upgrade project I’ve been involved in, the visible problem is how to build the road. But poke around a little bit and it becomes clear that there is more going on. Watching the teams at work I can see that lying just under the surface are questions about lack of trust, competition, cultural differences, the need to be right and a reluctance to be seen to be wrong, to name a few. Each of these sharp angles can rip a hole in any collaboration.
Note that this is no criticism of the project teams. These types of human and relational issues are always present whenever people get together around a challenging project. My roading folks actually had the awareness to seek help to surface and deal with it. They recognised that their ‘content’ question – how do we build the road – exists in a context of social dilemmas that we might summarise as how do we work together in order to build the road?
Successful collaborators recognise both the content and the context, the visible and invisible elements of their project problem. By acknowledging the context elements and finding ways to work on them as they work on the content, great collaborators are able to make progress where other groups might founder.
Are you tackling your context as you work on your content? I will be discussing ways you can do this important work at our first collaboration workshop of the year. Register .
Just Try Stuff....
I was prompted by Stuart’s blog to dig a little deeper into one of the learnings from the pandemic.
“Just try stuff” was about recognising that a key characteristic of a complex situation like a pandemic is uncertainty about what to do, and about the only thing you can do is to try something and see what works.
We have seen that happening constantly through the last 18 months, both in responding to the health crisis, and also dealing with the social and economic consequences.
What has been interesting to me has been the shift from an initial belief that we knew what to do and could predict and plan actions, to a growing realisation in the value of trying a range of approaches, while keeping a close eye on the results, and then modifying quickly based on the results.
Now while it did seem a bit like they were “experimenting” on us, there is little doubt that keeping everyone as safe as they could while learning what worked has been a feature of the response worldwide.
And while our leaders have copped some criticism for their approaches- slow to respond, inconsistent, etc, perhaps they were being judged by conventional thinking that just doesn’t work when challenged by this level of unprecedented complexity.
The features I think we learned around action planning that we can take into our ongoing co-design activities include:
- feeling a bit uncertain is a characteristic of tackling complex situations
- it’s OK to be unsure what to try next
- letting go of the “right answer” is hard but appropriate
- multiple small and short “experiments” make much more sense when tackling complexity
- keeping the activities “safe to learn” is key to gaining support
- reviewing progress regularly against the goals provides confidence
- and not being afraid of ending something and trying something else based on the results
So while we still haven’t yet “solved” the pandemic, it has allowed our political, business, health and community leaders to see that “trying stuff” rather than always knowing what to do is a useful alternative approach in our complex and ever changing world.
7 Keys to Co-Design: Lessons from the Pandemic
As the end of lockdown arrives we have been looking back on the journey we have all been on since COVID crashed the party. I think this past 18 months have taught us a lot about collaboration and co-design. One thing that seems obvious is that our leaders, and indeed all of us, have been doing things differently lately. This pandemic has challenged us on many fronts, providing the impetus and the permission to think and act in more collaborative ways, to solve things together. We also hear from clients that something similar is happening in the workplace. There is a lot of change, a lot of complexity and high levels of uncertainty out there, making co-design more important than ever.
So what are the co-design lessons from the pandemic that can be applied in the workplace and beyond? You will have your own list, but here is ours:
- Get comfortable not knowing the answer. It seems there is always something we don't know, so accept uncertainty because it isn't going away.Learn to act, even when the right action isn't obvious.
- Expect the unexpected. When it's complex, there will always be surprises and our plans will always need to be flexible.
- Build relationships as well as structure. Strong relationships are the foundation of resilience in a changing world. Focus on relationships even more than the data or the process.High levels of trust make the tough times more manageable.
- Ask for help. Even the most capable leader won't have all the skills, knowledge and resilience to manage every situation. Ask for help to be more effective and to share the creativity, energy and accountability.
- Just try stuff. Don't wait for the answer to reveal itself as it often won't. Rather, test ideas and learn the way forward together.
- Do it 'with' people. Command and control quickly reaches its limits and any complex system will find ways around your 'rules'. Instead, move ahead collaboratively. Co-design the pathway out.
- Tap into the expertise of others. Your stakeholders are the system you are dealing with, so invite them in to help. Their knowledge and experience is an essential piece of the puzzle.
There are other lessons I’m sure. But if I can learn even these lessons and build them into my thinking and my ‘doing’, I feel certain I will be better prepared for the complex and ever-changing world we live in.
What has COVID taught you?
Accessing the Collaboration Gold
When I was a kid, my Dad used to take me exploring for gold near Tamworth. We all knew there was some gold in the local mountain streams, as both my Dad and uncle had been successful there for years, and the area has a long history of gold mining.
But as we got to the creek and started panning, I quickly realised that while I knew the gold was there, getting to it was something else. And try as I might, swirling and swirling the gravel in my pan, I was initially unsuccessful, while my Dad in short order was showing me the grains of gold in his pan.
So I painfully and slowly learned and practiced with the pan and my technique, and eventually success! - as something finally glittered in my pan.
I was reminded of my gold panning experiences recently when running a workshop for a client learning and practicing collaborative tools and techniques as part of implementing a collaborative way of working, and utilising our Power of Co system (PoC).
I've heard many times from clients that they saw the PoC as "gold", and then saw both them and myself frustrated by the apparent inability to get real collaborative change in the workplace. It seemed that while the pathway made absolute sense and gave them real confidence in collaborating, they really struggled with the "how", particularly letting go of longstanding practices that compromised the collaborative effort.
This was the catalyst for our development of a series of steps, activities, tools and techniques to provide a more detailed "how"- a bit like my Dad showing me how to use the pan, where to get the likely gravel, how much water to use, how to swirl effectively , etc.
So our realisation, like mine, was that knowing about the collaboration gold is only part of the story, and having access to the tools and techniques and learning is a critical element of success.
Have you the tools to access the gold?
The Heart of Collaboration
There is a lot of energy expended bringing people together to find solutions to complex problems, but getting diverse stakeholders in the room together is no guarantee of success. Why do some efforts to co-create solutions founder when others succeed? It often comes down to three important steps of collaborative work that can be overlooked or underdone, yet together these three steps form the heart of any authentic collaboration.
Where trust is low and scepticism is high, what is it that allows people to work together to find solutions? An absolutely critical piece in the puzzle is that everyone trusts the process. Many clients seek to address this issue by hiring an “independent facilitator” to manage the co-creation process. “You may not trust us but you will trust this person we are paying, right?” Wrong! “If I don’t trust you why would I trust your hired gun? And even if they are fabulous, why would I trust that you will listen to us or respect our views in this?”
Co-design
In order that all stakeholders trust the process we have learned how important it is that they get their fingerprints on it. In others words, we want them – and all of us in the collaboration – to own the process by which we will work together to co-create solutions. Successful collaborators design the conversation together, the data, the questions they will ask, agreeing the boundaries, identifying the stakeholders together. They discuss and own the decision-making process, the criteria, the options development etc. And all this great collaboration happens before they start to talk about solutions. So that when they get to that step in the process they are ready, committed, engaged and able to truly co-create together. Even if trust in the ‘who’ remains low, trust in the ‘how’ allows progress to be made.
Co-define
But where trust is low and the project, problem or situation is seen very differently by different stakeholders, invitations to help co-design the conversation are likely to be met with stony silence. “Why would I talk to you about collaborating when I believe that you are the problem?” What is it that makes the co-design step flourish? In our experience collaborators are much more likely to step into the process when they feel that the problem or project that brings them together is something they are a part of, they understand and feel is worth their precious time. Building a shared sense of the complex situation we face together and taking ownership for our own piece of that bigger problem is the magic of Co-defining. Only when we have all heard each other on the nature of the problem and found some agreement on aspects of it, can we productively move into co-designing and co-creating.
Commit to collaboration
So we come to the root question. What makes stepping in possible for those who don’t trust the system and don’t see the problem, or feel they already know what the solution is? This is the commitment question. It is both a pre-cursor to co-defining and co-designing and an integral part of each. It is about my/our commitment to collaborate with ‘them’ and ‘their’ commitment to working with us on this.
If we skip over the first three steps – Commitment, Co-definition and Co-design – and begin with Co-creating, how can we expect a high level of commitment? And in the absence of commitment, how can we do the difficult work together to find solutions to our complex problem?
There is a pathway to follow when collaborating and it begins well before we attempt to find solutions. In your work are you collaborating from the heart?
You can find more about the whole collaborative pathway on our website under
Three ways to take your contractual partnership from good to great
A client in the water infrastructure business recently approached me to talk about how the team can learn to work together with their contracted construction partners as they deliver a massive bit of infrastructure. They told me that the relationship between them and their delivery partner is good but that, in a competitive world where margins are slim, they would only deliver on budget if their partnership shifts "from good to great". They needed to shift their collaboration to a new level or risk their profit margin.
With the growth of alliance contracts and governments' preference for outsourcing service delivery to contractors, this is an increasingly common scenario. Yet while it is one thing to be a contractual partner, it is another thing altogether to develop the collaborative mindset and behaviours that make these contractual relationships hum. How does my client move from an 'us and them' mindset to a 'we' mindset, and do so in the high-pressure world of project delivery? It isn't easy, but here are three things I've learned:
- A partnering contract alone does not a partnership make. Behaviour and, most importantly, thinking has to shift in order to give the contractual aspiration a chance.
- A commitment to working on relationships and a process for doing so is critical. You can’t just focus on doing the content work better.
- To build collaborative muscles we need to go to the collaboration gym, so build in a way for practice, reflection and learning.
To support clients on their partnering and alliance journeys we have developed our unique and coaching process. We will be talking through key aspects of the approach in our . We hope to see you there so you can take your contractual partnerships from good to great.
The terrifying journey to co-design
When I was in high school I remember travelling to a school sports carnival in the city, an hour away to the north. The sports teacher drove us to the event in the school's hard-working minivan.
I live in the Illawarra on the NSW south coast. Returning home from the north requires the driver to leave the highlands and head down the notorious escarpment to the coastal plain. It is a long, steep decline and, as I learned that day, a potentially terrifying drive. On that particular day I had the misfortune to be in the front passenger seat. Normally this would be fine, but it quickly became abundantly clear that our sports teacher was a frustrated racing car driver. He piloted that van like his life depended on it, diving off the mountain and plunging at buttock-clenching speed down the Pass. I had a front row view of each and every near miss, grazed guard rail and hair-raising hair-pin bend. When we commenced that trip home I was a confident teenager in the prime of life. By the time we made it home I was a gibbering wreck. And the teacher? He was cool as a cucumber, unaware of the terror he'd inspired in me and others.
There are two long-term lessons I've carried with me from this (mis)adventure. First - never, ever get back in a van with my high school sports teacher. And second, having no control is a really scary position to be in. The thing is, I've been driving myself now for decades, and I've long realised that I too am a frustrated racing car driver. I often charge down the mountain, enjoying every near miss, grazed guard rail and hair-raising hair-pin. And at the bottom of the hill I'm not a gibbering wreck but a cool cucumber. As for my passengers? I'm not sure really. It isn't easy to talk to someone who seems to be curled up in a foetal position with the seatbelt clenched between their teeth and eyes out on stalks.
The difference is that as the driver I am in control. I have my hands on the wheel and I trust myself to get to the bottom of the hill safely. But as that schoolboy front seat passenger, I was along for the ride but my hands weren't on the wheel (they were mostly over my eyes as I recall). It was someone else's journey and I felt totally out of control. Not a nice feeling.
I've realised that this very same dynamic applies to problem-solving processes. If someone else is expecting me to participate in a process exclusively designed and run by them it can feel like plunging over the escarpment with a deranged teacher at the wheel. But when I am invited into co-designing the process I can feel more confident about how this is going to end. Getting my fingerprints on the process is like being at the wheel. If you want my buy-in then you'd better find a way to allow me some control not only of where we are going but how we plan to get there together. That is, don't just invite me in to work on the problem with you. Invite me in to help design how we are going to work on the problem together.
Our has a strong element of built into it for just this reason. Co-designing process is an integral part of the collaborative journey. So my advice is to let your collaborators share the driving. The more control they have over 'their' process, the more commitment, energy and innovation they will bring to the task of solving problems together. With co-design you will be able to conquer any mountain together.