Collaboration — Concepts and Contradictions
By Alan Braithwaite, Co-Chair of the Catalyst 2030 group working on Disasters
The tagline of Catalyst 2030 is ‘Collaborating to achieve the SDGs’. The fuller text from the website says:
“We have a greater chance of achieving the 17 Global Goals outlined in the SDGs through social innovation initiatives that address the world’s most pressing problems. By collaborating, we can share ideas, improve access to information, deploy resources more effectively, and develop inclusive solutions that enhance people’s lives.
Since 2020, committed people and organisations have increasingly joined forces in meaningful collaboration. We invite you to engage with us in our social innovation initiatives and be part of our expanding community.”
These are words to capture Catalyst 2030, which has generated a number of collaborations and impacts — some unexpected while others brought disappointment. The reality of collaboration is a complex and multi-layered concept and practice. This article unpacks some academic analysis to explore the challenges and observes what makes for success and the pitfalls. It draws on the author’s extensive experience in supply chain management, providing valuable insights into effective collaboration among social innovators
The ultimate collaboration, team success
The ultimate collaboration is team sports. For example, in football (soccer), the players play for each other and pursue individual goals. At the professional level, the players can increase their individual value by how they play and perform within the team. The winger runs and barely looks up as he centres the ball, trusting their teammates to be there to complete the header and score the goal. This synergy illustrates a well-drilled and synchronised relationship built over years of practice and a deep understanding of each other’s actions and values. In the context of two long-standing organisations collaborating, it is crucial to acknowledge the inherent complexity involved.
Scoring is the key to success, and value creation depends on mutual dependency across the team, yet personal ambition remains strong. We all know the stellar sums that individual players are worth when on top of their game. So, there is a contradiction; it is commonly said that there is no ‘I’ in a team, but individual excellence is part of a successful team!
Defining success in collaborations
What does success look like in business or humanitarian collaborations? The Cambridge Dictionary defines collaboration as, “the situation of two or more people working together to create or achieve the same thing or project.”
Collaboration differs from partnership, which implies a mutual activity where the partners share in any profits or losses. This is unusual in humanitarian and social enterprises where profits are minimal and sharing losses is stressful.
Learning, earning, horizontal and vertical
This article focuses on collaboration (or cooperation) where the parties work together on information exchange, joint projects, or a shared supply chain.
The first axis of collaboration is the Learning to Earning continuum, which reflects the progression from gaining knowledge and skills to leveraging those insights for tangible benefits. In the Catalyst 2030 early years, collaboration centred more on learning than earning. Social entrepreneurs, at last, had a global network where they could connect, learn from others, gain moral support, and reputational leverage. It is brilliant that such a community has been created, and we will return to the importance of community later.
The second axis is horizontal or vertical collaboration. Horizontal collaboration is a peer-to-peer relationship where power dynamics are more or less equal and no coercive control is applied. Vertical collaboration, on the other hand, is where one party is dominant and can dictate the ground rules in the relationship based on controlling and distributing funds or dictating processes. The vertical approach is often ‘collaboration in name only’, regardless of people’s public statements; the dominant party controls the funds and sets the operational requirements. There will be occasions where the local knowledge and capacity of the subsidiary partner influence design and process. But even when that happens, the risk of the relationship transitioning to the control of the dominant party is high.
So far, Catalyst 2030 has primarily experienced horizontal collaboration, largely because there are as yet few ‘earning’ based collaborations. As the movement matures and collaborations start to attract funding, this risk will come into focus. That requires that we prepare to understand the behaviours and practices that will be appropriate to guide future practice. The ambition should be the {earning <-> horizontal} combination; this approach will be inclusive and creative.
Lack of equivalence in collaboration
Collaborative relationships often carry a range of expectations that can be neatly summed up as, “What can you do for me?” without the addition of “What can I do for you?” The reality of collaborations, even the horizontal ones, is that they are never symmetrical. This may be true of completely commercial and business collaborations, but applying this mindset to the work of social issues and entrepreneurial solutions presents a limited view of the sector. Here, the input and return experience tends to be unequal. The individual parties have to decide if their expected return justifies their input — time and money and also make a judgement as to whether the collaborator will meet your expectations. The point is to take time to manage expectations, make sure that good practices are being followed, and embrace the shared vision that unites social innovators.
Disasters relief collaboration
The Catalyst 2030 Disasters Collaboration has been working towards a systemic change of how disasters are managed; this covers readiness, response, and recovery. The vision is to mobilise local social entrepreneurs to be part of a new model to ‘Make Local Central’. The aim is that outcomes will be faster and more effective by empowering and equipping communities; they can increase their resilience and take control of responses to disasters when they occur. This is an ambitious collaboration touching on training, systems, networks, and processes. The collaboration has drawn from successful experience in India and has worked to establish a platform in East Africa.
With some funding support, people went on the road to meet and talk with communities about the approach. They were excited to find overwhelming buy-in to the concept and a great willingness to collaborate. The role of agriculture in building resilience and organising response emerged as a central theme to increasing sustainability and resilience. Better disaster relief practices not only increase community resilience but also improve livelihoods. The graphic tells the story of the vision.
Disasters relief process
The collaboration needs deeper funding to do the detailed work to develop the network and processes and complete the training and team building. However, the creation of a community has already enabled learning. There is now a vibrant WhatsApp group, which has become an informal method of information exchange and an agricultural marketplace. This unexpected result can be viewed as a horizontal <-> learning collaboration, with its development echoing the observation of Rosabeth Moss Kanter on the importance of communities in creating synergies. The transparency of the horizontal collaboration has created remarkable trust.
There is still work to do to reach the vision of ‘making local central’ but the platform of trust is a strong foundation. When funds are secured, the challenge will be to institutionalise the design without losing the local peer to peer value; to do that will require some supreme skills. Individual excellence will be the key.
Signposts for good practices
Rosabeth Moss Kanter (1994), the renowned American sociologist and Harvard Business School Professor, is a powerful reference point for understanding what good collaboration practice looks like. In a paper in the Harvard Business Review, she stated:
“Being a good partner has become a key corporate asset… In the global economy, a well-developed ability to create and sustain fruitful collaborations gives companies a significant competitive leg up.”.
Her book, “World Class — Thriving locally in a global economy,” (1997) examines how businesses and communities grow and thrive in the face of relentless corporate globalisation. Collaboration and partnerships are central to the discoveries in the research. Observation of specific successes shows that communities come together around sectors and business opportunities; businesses, innovators, companies, investors, and academics coalesce in a place, and their collective energy enables growth and prosperity. The growth of the medical devices sector in Boston was one of the examples. However, building these powerful communities takes time.
Kanter’s emphasis on collaboration is encapsulated in her concept of “The 8 I’s that make ‘We”. It is a delightful play on the idea of balancing self-interest with the collective good of ‘We’ in a true collaboration. There is indeed no ‘I’ in team; collaborations must meet all eight criteria to be successful.
Let’s focus on two key elements: Integrity and individual excellence.
The Coin Toss Honesty Experiment has been widely used to show that a significant proportion of the population may be less than truthful if they think they can get away with it. (4) In collaborations, this behaviour will inevitably be exposed to the detriment of the relationship and outcomes. The importance of integrity and high standards cannot be overstressed — trust is key.
Similarly, individual excellence ensures that each collaborator brings good skills and commitment with teams assembled that bring competence in every area.
In conclusion
Collaboration is at the heart of the Catalyst 2030 mission. The changes that are needed in the world cannot be achieved in isolation. While Catalyst 2030 has fostered building communities centred on learning and horizontal activity, the organisation is now evolving into the next stage. The Catalyst 2030 platform will attract investors and there will be a transition to earning relationships. As that happens, there will be an increasing need to deploy the good practices from Kanter’s list. The effort will be significant to put in place the building blocks to make it successful. That effort will be repaid many times over in the impact and success achieved by Catalyst 2030 collaborations.
Author:
Peer-reviewed & Edited by:
Peer-reviewed & Edited by:
Anonymous Social Entrepreneur reviewer
Sources:
Moss Kanter, R,(July-August, 1994). Collaborative Advantage, Harvard Business Review.
https://hbr.org/1994/07/collaborative-advantage-the-art-of-alliances
Moss Kanter, R. World Class: Thriving Locally in the Global Economy Paperback, Simon & Schuster, 1997
Reported at: Off The Record #6: A game to measure honesty | by Busara Center | The Busara Blog | Medium This game has been used in several previous experiments (e.g. Bucciol and Piovesan 2011; Fischbacher and Föllmi-Heusi 2013; Abeler, Becker and Falk 2014; Pascual-Ezama et al. 2015.
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Cite this Article APA
Braithwaite, A. (30 September, 2024). Collaboration — Concepts and Contradictions. Retrieved (month date year) from (https://catalyst2030.medium.com/collaboration-concepts-and-contradictions-1604d67aa413)
