For leaders new to collaborating for positive social change, sometimes, as the saying goes, their eyes are bigger than their stomach. That is, the energy motivating the collaboration sometimes stifles the agenda-setting and action processes of creating change.
This was the observation of three University of Minnesota professors who have worked with early- and mid-career professionals who collaborate across sectors. In their feature story, open for a limited time to non-subscribers, they propose teams design a “minimum viable benefit” (MVB), or “an actionable contribution to the larger challenge that a group can introduce and assess,” akin to how startups conceive of a minimum viable product.
The MVB process is a step-by-step guide to agenda setting and helps teams overcome common sticking points and challenges to collaboration. As the authors conclude, “independent of its success or failure, each MVB can generate resources—better information, a more compelling problem definition, partial successes—that can make successive efforts stronger. Social innovation requires such collaborative persistence.”
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