Why Radical Collaboration is important and difficult

Addressing global challenges such as climate change and biodiversity loss is increasingly difficult and complex.  Delivering rapid, large-scale solutions is often outside of the scope of any one organisation or sector.  This realisation has led to increasing interest in the concept of Radical Collaboration which seeks to dissolve the barriers between competitors, sectors, service providers and clients.

To be successful radical collaboration requires more creative, inclusive and flexible forms of leadership.  To flourish, unlikely partnerships need to be nurtured and grown.  Voices of those usually excluded from the decision-making process need to be heard.  Leaders need to leave ego and self-interest at the door.  

At a recent event organised by the Charities Aid Foundation https://www.cafonline.org and Forster Communications https://www.forster.co.uk I was asked to reflect on what I had learned about developing Radical Collaborations and believe that there are five essential elements.

Clarity

Creating a partnership of unusual suspects is time-consuming and risky.  It is only worth taking the plunge if there is absolute clarity and agreement on what the partnership is seeking to solve.  Ideally these challenges need to be of fundamental long-term importance to all relevant parties.  They need to be too big for any one organisation to address and there has to be a belief that solutions can be delivered by a new collaboration.

An example of this approach working successfully is Leeds By Example  https://www.hubbub.org.uk/leeds-by-example which brought together over 30 organisations exploring how they could boost high street recycling in the city and use this to inspire replication in other areas. 

There is an increasing amount of food and drink consumed ‘on the go’ and recycling infrastructure hasn’t evolved to address this change of habit leading to more littering and less recycling.  This trend poses a significant reputational risk to many companies, is an expensive headache for local authorities and degrades the local environment.  Leeds By Example successfully united these concerns behind a successful and replicable campaign.

Bravery

Radical Collaboration can be uncomfortable as it often requires reaching out to competitors acknowledging that there is a need to work together to address a sizeable challenge.  This runs counter to the usual order where organisations seek competitive and financial advantage.

 The approach also requires identifying and listening to those people and organisations most directly impacted by the challenge the partnership is seeking to address.  This isn’t easy but can be incredibly insightful and rewarding. 

One of the first Hubbub projects sought to understand and address fuel poverty in partnership with constituent MPs, British Gas and local communities https://www.hubbub.org.uk/fuelling-connections.   A colleague and I visited the homes of people struggling to pay their bills in three diverse communities.  The conversations were unstructured allowing every household to tell their story honestly and openly to people who were genuinely seeking to help.  The findings resulted in radical new approaches being taken to help households in each of the constituencies.

This ‘open listening’ approach can often surface deeper reasons for problems that organisations are seeking to address.  For example, a campaign aiming to reduce fly-tipping in Oldham revealed the need to tackle deep seated racial tensions as part of the approach.

Built on Values

Radical Collaboration requires organisations to come together from different cultures and backgrounds.  Finding a common language and way of working can be difficult.  This can be overcome by spending time defining a core set of values that underpin the partnership. 

This approach has worked successfully with the Community Fridge Network https://www.hubbub.org.uk/the-community-fridge of which there are now over 300 across the UK.  The Network is built on a core set of values such as their primary purpose being to cut food waste, being accessible to all, to be run safely, to be led by the requirements of the local community and to share experiences openly and honestly.

These values have enabled the Network to be supported by a diverse range of companies, have ensured that local fridges are integrated into support provided by community organisations and allowed the network to develop rapidly through shared experience.

Humility

One of the biggest challenges with Radical Collaboration is the internal power dynamics.  Invariably some of the partners will be the funders and this comes with expectations and pre-conceived attitudes.  These funder organisations need to accept that they are not entering a client to contractor relationship and instead it is a genuinely collaborative approach.  Equally those organisations that are being funded must come to terms with the fact that they have a strong voice and can have the confidence to voice their opinions.

Understanding this power dynamic was one of the key things I learned through the six year charity partnership Global Action Plan had with Sky.  The learnings from the partnership were shared at an event called ‘Uncomfortable Bedfellows’ where we agreed that it would have been great to have signed a pre-nuptial agreement setting out what each of us hoped to get from the relationship.

Courageous

It is a massive achievement to create an effective, radical collaboration and it is important to maximise the opportunities that this can present.  A danger with any collaboration is that it moves at the speed of the most conservative contributor, radical collaboration should always seek to move at the pace of the most courageous. 

This approach can take organisations outside of their comfort zone.  For example, the Port of London Authority was incredibly reluctant to be associated with the branding of the #FFS campaign (For Fish Sake) https://www.hubbub.org.uk/blog/tidy-litterers-are-polluting-the-river-thames-ffs-things-need-to-change which sought to stop plastics entering the River Thames.  They eventually agreed and were rewarded by being associated with a high profile and impactful campaign.

Being courageous can mean handing over media duties to those people who are most impacted by the campaign rather than relying on a senior spokesperson from one of the partner organisations.  Handing over this responsibility requires investment to be made in media training but can generate high levels of coverage as media outlets increasingly seek out authentic voices.

Creating radical partnerships is time-consuming and can often hit a dead-end but I believe the approach is essential to deliver rapid and large-scale change.