Zooming out on collaboration

In August’s newsletter, I zoomed in on what it takes to ‘bring the system into a room,’ to achieve fruitful collaboration between multiple stakeholders with different perspectives and different incentives.

In this article, I am going to take a giant step back to take a bird’s eye view of what a collaborative effort could look like.

Imagine that you have brought together a group of people from different teams and/or different organisations to tackle a complex challenge. You have included people directly impacted by the challenge, sponsors, decision makers, experts, and people with a variety of skills that are pertinent to the problem at hand.

Let’s sketch out their possible interactions.

For simplicity, I am going to represent interactions between the different participants with lines, but I am not going to qualify the interactions. For example, an interaction can be an exchange of information, co-creation, coordination, or other ways of working together.

1. Fragmented group

Before the project starts, the participants are likely to be somewhat scattered. They don’t habitually work together, although some people may know, and interact with each other. Clusters may form among people from the same team, but the group as a whole is fragmented.

2. A common purpose

As the project kicks off, the project leader (in this example, it’s you) acts as the glue that brings everyone together. You provide the reason for these disparate participants to come together in the first place. Importantly, you align everyone around the project’s purpose, establish common ground, and kick-start the flow of information among the parties.

 At this stage, the group dynamic may resemble a hub and spoke: you, at the centre, connecting all the participants who rely on you to coordinate their interactions.

3. Building relationships

Ideally, as the project progresses, the different participants become more familiar with each other and the group becomes more established. At this stage, they become less dependent on any single individual to stay connected, and they engage in the act of collaborating, generating a better understanding of the issue at hand, and working towards potential solutions.

4. Expanding network

As relationships deepen, some participants may form new clusters or initiate separate, related activities. These clusters might grow around shared interests, creating new avenues for collaboration and inviting others to participate. The original group now functions as a nucleus, with a larger web of collaboration forming around it, expanding the exchange of information and broadening the reach of new ideas.

This four-step scenario is inspired by one of my current projects but is, of course, highly simplified. In real life, things are much messier, and plenty can go wrong along the way.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

When collaboration fails, and what to do about it

A group of researchers used Organisational Network Analysis (ONA) methodology to study patterns of collaboration practices within large organisations and identified six collaboration archetypes that had a negative impact on team performance.

Based on those archetypes, (read the full article here), some of the pitfalls include:

• Bottlenecks: This often arises from over-reliance on a central person or team for information, decision-making, or even motivation. The contribution of this person/team can becomes a limiting factor for the project.

• Dominance and Marginalization: Some participants may dominate discussions, while others may feel overwhelmed, resulting in less engagement and lower-quality contributions.

• Group-think: With the problem and/or solutions viewed only from one perspective, either as a result of dominance by some participants, or because the majority come from similar backgrounds.

• Distrust/competition among participants: If participants view one another as competitors rather than teammates, or perceive potential solutions as a zero-sum game, they may withhold information, undermining collective efforts.

• Information Overload: Too much going on, too much information being shared, some team members cannot keep up and feel overwhelmed.

• Losing Focus: The group loses sight of the purpose of the activity and drift off topic, or become fixated on small detail.

So, what can you do to avoid these pitfalls?

Besides regularly revisiting the purpose of the collaboration, to maintain focus, I think one way is to maintain a balance between the worm’ eye view and the bird’ eye view. The worm’s eye view focuses on the individual participants to ensure that they all feel heard, valued and included, while the bird’s eye view monitors group dynamics, and allows to adapt and correct course as the project unfolds.

Taking a Step Further

Although this research focused on corporates and businesses, and relied on the ONA methodology, I think there is much to be learned from the concept. What if we zoomed out even further? Imagine we look at interactions between different players in a sector—or even between entire sectors or countries.

Think of global issues like wars, energy crises, or disease preparedness. Would we see similar bottlenecks, dominance, or disengagement on a larger, systemic scale? How might power dynamics or a lack of trust play out across borders, and what could that teach us about how to approach these issues?

By taking this broader view, we can learn a great deal about the dynamics driving large-scale collaboration. Collaboration isn’t just a matter of structure and governance—it’s a dance with complex, adaptive systems. It is not a linear process but a dynamic interplay of factors and actors, requiring constant evaluation and adjustment. While this complexity can be challenging, it also makes the rewards of collaboration all the more exciting if you set the right conditions.

What has your experience of collaboration been? Have you encountered similar patterns, or challenges? How do you deal with potential bottlenecks or groupthink? I’d love to read your views, hit reply and let me know.

October thought experiment

Think of a collaborative project that you are working on (or worked on in the past) and draw it out like I did above. Draw the people/ teams and link them up.

What pattern emerges?

Where are you in the map? Who do you collaborate with most/least?

Consider colour-coding the links: e.g. information sharing in blue, decision-making in red, funding in green. Does anything surprise you? Let me know what you discover.

 Until November…wishing you all the good things!

Houda

p.s. If you have an extra five minutes, send me a little note to say Hello! I’d love to hear from you!