Partner with Purpose: Solving 21st-Century Business Problems Through Cross-Sector Collaboration
Steve Schmida
272 pages, Rivertowns Books, 2020
Climate change. Food security. Pandemics. Human trafficking. In the 21st century, businesses, governments, and NGOs are confronted with a wide range of “wicked problems,”—issues that are incredibly complex and multifaceted. To tackle these wicked 21st century problems, organizations need to collaborate across sectors at scale. By bringing together the very best of business, nonprofits, and government, cross-sector partnerships have the potential to deliver outsized impact on some of the world’s most pressing challenges.
The challenge is that building and managing successful cross-sector partnerships is really hard. In fact, a recent Hilton Foundation study found that fully 75 percent of cross-sector partnerships fail to meet partner expectations. Clearly, if cross-sector collaboration is going to fulfill its potential in solving the challenges of the 21st century, organizations—large and small—need to do a better job of it. While scholars such as Michael Porter and Howard Buffett have brilliantly articulated why working across sectors is so important, there is a lack of practical information, tools, and insights on how to build and manage cross-sector collaboration.
I wrote Partner with Purpose to help address this gap in our knowledge and understanding by providing some practical, brass-tacks advice and guidance on how to build and manage partnerships that deliver results. I want to make cross-sector collaboration more effective, more impactful, and, perhaps, even a bit fun. The goal of the book is to equip busy professionals with the knowledge, tools, and skills they need to find the right partners and develop partnerships that deliver lasting value—for business, society, and the environment. While I wrote Partner with Purpose primarily for a business audience, nonprofit and government leaders will also find it has useful lessons and techniques.
Partner with Purpose is informed by the experiences and advice of professionals on the forefront of using cross-sector collaboration to solve global challenges, such as universal health access, financial inclusion, and the circular economy. By bringing together the resources, expertise, and capabilities of government, business, and civil society, cross-sector partnerships are essential tools in tackling the “wicked” problems of the 21st century.—Steve Schmida
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Analyzing the Problem
The first step for considering the possibility of a cross-sector partnership is to get very clear on the problem to be solved or, as Harvard University’s Clayton Christensen puts it, “the job to be done.” What is your company trying to achieve? Are you trying to capitalize on a new opportunity, mitigate a future risk, or address an ongoing challenge? Is the problem you face a simple, complicated, or wicked one?
Cross-sector partnerships are time-consuming to build and manage, so they are not terribly efficient or effective at solving simple problems. As David McGinty, global director of the Platform for Accelerating the Circular Economy (PACE), says, “If you can do it on your own, do it.” That will almost always be the easiest and most expedient way to address a simple problem.
However, if the problem you face is complicated or, heaven help you, wicked, then partnership may be a tool worth considering. Partnerships are a powerful tool for solving complicated and wicked problems because they enable companies to engage organizations and institutions that possess resources, capabilities, and expertise that private-sector companies lack.
Darian and her small sustainability team started by defining the problems they faced. They quickly realized that Thai Union faced three overlapping wicked problems—challenges that had little chance of being fixed unless Darian’s team could identify and work with partners who had the capabilities and resources to help them tackle the different facets of the problems.
Labor conditions on vessels and in facilities. The exposure of unethical labor practices onboard fishing vessels and at processing facilities posed a truly wicked problem for Thai Union. Seafood supply chains are enormously complex. It’s not unusual for the fish on your plate to be caught in the Western Pacific, landed in Vanuatu, processed in Thailand, and then imported to the United States. This long, winding product journey makes it difficult for company managers to get visibility on what is happening in the supply chain. What’s more, much of the labor in the seafood industry is migrant labor, largely from low-income Mekong River countries like Cambodia, Burma, and Laos, creating huge language and cultural barriers as well as presenting challenges for jurisdiction. Finally, it’s very difficult and expensive to provide on-vessel monitoring or communications for workers or boats at sea.
Unsustainable fishing practices. With socially and environmentally conscious consumers demanding more sustainable products in markets in the European Union and the United States, unsustainable fishing practices presented a major brand-reputation problem—especially for Thai Union, with its numerous consumer-facing brands. But transforming the traditional fishing methods used by the supplier fleets would be a complicated and expensive proposition.
Legal and regulatory compliance. Bad publicity meant that Thai Union faced intense pressure from NGOs and the media. In response, governments in Europe and North America were putting in place new, much stricter regulations regarding the import of seafood to ensure sustainability as well as traceability, that is, the ability to track a seafood product “from bait to plate.” These new rules would raise the bar on Thai Union’s social license to operate as well as hiking the company’s costs.
With the problems well defined, Darian convinced Thai Union’s leadership that there was no way the company could address them on their own. Fortunately, Darian found that Thai Union’s executives and the Chansiri family were equally appalled by the problems and shared her desire to resolve them. “Thai Union is a business with a family at heart,” she says, “and we had tremendous support—not just for purely business reasons, but also for moral and ethical reasons.”