I am so grateful for this article - and in particular for one sentence that drew something out that is always there, but rare discussed: ". . . that stakeholders have both common and competing interests . . . "
As someone who has spent half my career raising money and relationships/partners - and the other half serving a family foundation in Detroit, I rarely hear or discuss competing interests when in collaborations.
Perhaps it is the Midwest mentality, perhaps it is our general conflict avoidant culture in the funding community, or a simple but critical oversight - when we collaborate as funders and do not recognize the competing interests of our partners who seek our funding, we are missing a huge part of the picture.
Perhaps even as important is we should recognize and make plain that funders often compete for attribution versus simply focusing on contributing toward social or environmental justice. This competition between communication shops, the wrestling that comes with who is at the podium, is not invisible to our partners in the field and even our neighbors who live closest to the issues we are working on together.
So, my gratitude to the many authors of this article and the work it represents. I will pledge to make visible this important dynamic in two collaboratives we are involved in this week!
I love this framing of "minimum viable." Many of our partners are leaders in businesses that are evolving their sustainability strategies, and they are invited to a new collaboration every day, leading to collaboration fatigue. Getting to action is crucial, even as we all know that shared learning is the only way to act effectively.
We’ve also discovered the importance of a safe space for similar players to admit what they don’t know, or share where they’re stuck. Most multi-stakeholder settings do not enable such a safe space because someone is always pitching others who are perceived to have more power or resources.
At any rate, this article is a great contribution to pushing our knowledge of possible forms of collaborative action.
COMMENTS
BY DOUGLAS BITONTI STEWART
ON February 28, 2022 07:40 AM
I am so grateful for this article - and in particular for one sentence that drew something out that is always there, but rare discussed: ". . . that stakeholders have both common and competing interests . . . "
As someone who has spent half my career raising money and relationships/partners - and the other half serving a family foundation in Detroit, I rarely hear or discuss competing interests when in collaborations.
Perhaps it is the Midwest mentality, perhaps it is our general conflict avoidant culture in the funding community, or a simple but critical oversight - when we collaborate as funders and do not recognize the competing interests of our partners who seek our funding, we are missing a huge part of the picture.
Perhaps even as important is we should recognize and make plain that funders often compete for attribution versus simply focusing on contributing toward social or environmental justice. This competition between communication shops, the wrestling that comes with who is at the podium, is not invisible to our partners in the field and even our neighbors who live closest to the issues we are working on together.
So, my gratitude to the many authors of this article and the work it represents. I will pledge to make visible this important dynamic in two collaboratives we are involved in this week!
BY Hal Hamilton
ON March 17, 2022 11:57 AM
I love this framing of "minimum viable." Many of our partners are leaders in businesses that are evolving their sustainability strategies, and they are invited to a new collaboration every day, leading to collaboration fatigue. Getting to action is crucial, even as we all know that shared learning is the only way to act effectively.
We’ve also discovered the importance of a safe space for similar players to admit what they don’t know, or share where they’re stuck. Most multi-stakeholder settings do not enable such a safe space because someone is always pitching others who are perceived to have more power or resources.
At any rate, this article is a great contribution to pushing our knowledge of possible forms of collaborative action.