Making Collaboration Work
In the world of sustainable enterprise, the tension between focusing on ‘mission’ (ie: do-gooding) and ‘business’ (ie: paying the bills) is extraordinary. Whether the enterprise is for-profit or non-profit, these challenges bring leaders to the brink of their capacity, and pit employees and board members against one another across unnecessarily stark lines.
Further complicating the picture is the question of partnerships and collaboration. Given the already uncertain organizational boundaries (how do we think about volunteers?), the intention of multple enterprises to share resources and align efforts to a common causes is a natural instinct. Sadly, the results of these collaborations are often below expectations, and cause more experienced leaders to shy away from new partnerships.
In an important paper on this subject (PDF), the dynamic husband-and-wife team of Tonya (Exec Director of Center for Social Innovation) and Mark Surman (Exec Director of Mozilla Foundation) have documented their experience in creating successful cross-organizational collaborations, which they call “constellations.”
The constellation model is borne out of seven years of cross-organizational collaboration on children’s health issues in Canada. The network of related organizations overcame many hurdles and refined the model in a pracitical, working environment.
As the social innovation and social enterprise communities expand and address adjacent and overlapping goals, adoption of concepts like this one are going to be key to achieving more change faster. We strongly recommend that anyone in the field review this paper not just once, but keep it handy for reference and guidance.