1. The convener invites people to the table who are not able to participate fully or successfully.

Often we don’t think very much about who we need at a collaborative table. Conveners often use a stakeholder model and draw a wide boundary around who to invite. Not wanting to alienate anyone, everyone gets invited. Little thought goes into considering collaboration members’ ability to contribute with respect to resources, motivation, capacity (to free up staff) or whether the participating individuals hold the higher level skills needed to co-create a new organizational form.

Even worse, little thought goes into considering the differing perspectives of potential collaborative members or the duplication of the same perspective. Someone needs to ask whether members need to complement one another’s expertise and knowledge base, or is the collaboration to build a consensus for a change strategy and the participants will be those affected by the change?

2. Without any understanding of group process, the collaborative keeps the group open and allows people to come and go at will.

In order for collaboratives to start behaving like a group, they need to build relationships and learn about each other’s perspectives and needs. They need to feel a sense of belonging to be able to work through conflict and support each other in taking on difficult tasks. When new people arrive at every meeting, the group remains in the belonging or inclusion stage of group development. This leads to members of the collaborative feeling like they don’t know each other well enough to trust each other to deal with difficult issues. The group relationships remain at a superficial level, which is fine for networking, but not enough to transform knowledge into a plan for change.

3. Failure to decide on a decision-making process or stick to the one they have agreed to.

Groups often assume they have a decision-making process, but often it is not put into writing so that everybody can see what it is. As well, many collaborative groups operate with a form of consensus decision-making without spelling out the rules of consensus decision-making. Members begin to assume that unanimity (where everyone is in agreement) is consensus. When conflict breaks out, the group reverts to majority rules (a motion needs 50% of the votes plus one to pass) or figures out a way to stifle the conflict. The confusion over the basic governance building block may lead to disillusionment where members drop out.

4. Not investing the time and resources into creating a common vision and action plan.

A common vision finds and identifies the common ground for member organizations to work together. It builds commitment to the purpose and work by creating a sense of ownership.

The vision and action plan are key building blocks of the governance infrastructure that gives the collaboration direction and purpose, inspires and motivates people, creates guiding principles and sets standards, aligns the values of member organizations, and provides an anchor for all future discussions and decision-making for the collaboration. Most importantly, the vision becomes a touchstone for conflict resolution.

Why don’t people want a common vision? Often people feel that the time spent in preparation for action, primarily planning, is a waste of time and feels “slow” to them. In reality, such preparation enables “fast” activity during the execution phase. Planning and thoughtful preparation reduces the time and energy lost in figuring out things through trial and error, and brings role and task clarity to all the members and staff involved in executing projects and programs. Instead of investing the time needed to plan collaboratively, the collaborative continues to meet sometimes for years at a time, all the while going around in circles, trying to herd the members into some coordinated action.

5. Demand action too quickly!

The first research on collaboration suggested the need for small wins to keep people engaged in the process. So many collaboratives feel impelled to take on a small project before building the vision and the group’s capacity to collectively manage anything. These small projects are often a giveaway from the funder or taken on by the collaborative coordinator to establish some sense of accomplishment. The downside of this is that not enough cohesion is built to involve the collaboration members. Getting things done without member involvement sets up a norm that staff and a backroom clique get things done, not the people sitting around the table. This sets up the avoidance dynamic in group process.

The message everyone gets is that it is a waste of time to develop a good process and getting to know one another. This sense of urgency creates a group characterized by high anxiety and a culture of never having enough time. This is foolhardy in the long run as so much time gets invested in projects and programs that fall apart down the line because they do not have enough emotional capital in the bank to weather the storms.

6. Share information but fail to transform the collective knowledge of members into plans and action.

There are many collaborative tables where the members never take on any projects and make change. Instead, people come to monthly meetings and each member takes a turn to talk about their current projects. After the structured sharing, someone might raise questions like, “Why don’t we do something together?” but inevitably there is no forward movement. Yet everyone agrees to return to the same thing the next month. Obviously there is a payoff to the participants in this ongoing information sharing. Maybe small partnerships develop between members, but the large group does not attempt to use its collective resources to address social issues. Groups like these are really networks. There is a lot of value to each organization as the network provides them with up to date market research on what everyone else is doing. But they are not a collaborative of member organizations working together to make change. This is fine as long as no one expects more.

7. Feel that conflict is to be avoided.

Collaborative organizations are vehicles for conflict resolution. Their implicit purpose is to resolve conflict by naming it and working through it. When collaboratives try to come up with a new approach to a social issue, there is always the potential for conflict over who gets what, who does what, and who gets credit. Partner organizations often form or join partnerships with some degree of trepidation because they do not know how reliable or trustworthy other partners may be. Consequently, fear exists that one partner organization will capture the lion’s share of the benefits, or that others will default on their obligations or fail to play by the rules.

Conflict is normal in any human system, and in a collaborative one – working across horizontal boundaries and opening up new territory for products and services – conflict will surface and must not be avoided.

8. Failure to build enough of a governance structure.

Collaborative participants struggle with the need to build ongoing capacity and infrastructure for the collaborative while maintaining flexibility and accountability to their organizations of origin.

Many collaboratives have not consciously selected a decision-making process. This leads to the possibility of conflict over the lack of process. In fact, in my experience, collaboratives only develop infrastructure after they become mired in conflict and someone slows the process down enough to demand that they pay attention to building enough capacity to make decisions. But most collaboratives need a lot more governance in the form of basic policies that will expedite the members and staff from having to reinvent the wheel for every new opportunity. Policies that cover topics such as communications, fundraising, catchment areas, and referrals can often reduce the possibility of conflict and speed up projects or programs.

9. Don’t hold members accountable to contribute and take on some of the work.

Just because a collaborative has the potential to be democratic does not mean there is no need for control or accountability. With no accountability mechanism in place, people often feel like they don’t have to take action. If people know no one is going to follow up, they are less likely to do anything.

This dynamic often is about not asking for help. Instead of using traditional hierarchical managerial practices such as assigning and delegating work, collaboratives need to use a collaborative approach in developing work plans. When the group creates the plan several things happen: the plan is improved because there are more shared ideas; it is more realistic because it reflects each person’s reality; the team understands it because they all participated in creating it; and finally, and most importantly, they have ownership of it and will commit to making it happen. This sense of ownership drives people to want to fulfill their accountabilities. Since they helped define the accountability in the first place, they understand what is required and have confidence that they can be successful. Then the collaborative project manager is in a position to hold people to account.

10. Continue to assume that the skills needed to run traditional organizations will serve them well in a collaborative process.

Because of their potential for power sharing, collaboratives are a different kind of organization than those of our workplaces. Participating and leading in a collaborative requires different skills and leadership approaches. This is not always apparent to all members, and unless there is open and honest communication about expectations around leadership and participation, most people revert to what they know. In our society, employees and managers know best how to behave in hierarchical organizations, often where the boss is treated as a supreme ruler because of the coercive power and formal authority that come with the position of manager.

But in a collaborative, formed on a voluntary basis, where no one has coercive power and when everyone around the table is a volunteer, traditional leadership skills such providing direction and communicating expectations just alienates others. A different style that I call Lateral Leadership is needed.

Joan Roberts M.A. works with leaders who want to improve the effectiveness of their nonprofit organizations to meet emerging social challenges. Joan has over 20 years of experience training NPO leaders, managing projects, developing organizations and working with different levels of government. She is a former city councillor and runs her own consulting and training practice for clients in government and the non-profit sector. She released her book Alliances, Coalitions and Partnerships: Building Collaborative Organizations in 2004 and co-authored the Interagency Services Collaboration Project Report in 2008. Her new book about meeting the governance challenges of collaboratives will be available in 2009. She delivers teleclasses on building successful collaborations. For information on upcoming classes in late March and April 2009, consulting or knowledge products go to www.joanroberts.com.