HOW to collaborate across your collaborative: What we can learn from Underpants Gnomes and other tips, strategies, and resources
Are you tried of hearing the word "collaborate", Reader?
I know the word can sometimes seem…empty. Something everyone pays lip service to but that we don’t often explore HOW to do well.
That’s our goal here at PoP Health - not just to talk about collaboration a lot (which, admittedly, we are guilty of!) but to also dive deeply into HOW we can do this well.
Earlier this month, we introduced the “collaborating with your collaborative” aspect of our C.A.P.E. process (see issue here) and today, we’re going to dive into the “Yes, but HOW?” question with some tips, strategies, and resources.
Can you share some tips for collaborating across your collaborative?
Move beyond information sharing. Far too often, we see collaborative meetings that are nothing more than surface-level information sharing about what each member organization is doing. This could just as easily - if not more easily - be done offline. When you convene your collaborative, make it about something that couldn’t be done offline or asynchronously - a space for creativity and generating new ideas, a space for collective sensemaking and achieving new understanding, a space for unearthing complexities and conflicts.
Make sure your members each have a clear role. Collaboration does not mean everyone does everything. Both recruitment and retention are difficult if an individual member of your collaborative doesn’t see a clear role for themselves. People’s time is limited and valuable, and collaborative membership is often on a volunteer basis, something taken on in addition to a person’s day-to-day job responsibilities. If they feel that their absence from the collaborative isn’t going to have an impact, they will not care to join or stay. When you ask someone to join the collaborative, make sure you describe their exact role and responsibilities, and why they are uniquely suited for it. And make sure one or more of those roles includes leadership of the collaborative!
Establish a system where the collaborative - collectively and also each individual member - earns their success and sees and feels the value they create. This is a lesson from happiness researcher Arthur C. Brooks. He says, “The number one thing that you can do for recruitment, for retention, the ultimate rewards that go far beyond money are making sure that you have a system where people are earning their success through their merit and personal accomplishment. They know it, they see it, and so do their friends. And they actually feel like they’re serving other people and they can see the faces of the people for whom they’re creating value.” Make sure the accomplishments the collaborative is striving for - and that individual members are pursuing - are 1) clearly defined, 2) celebrated once achieved, and 3) connected directly to the value that’s created in the community, ideally by fostering meaningful connections between collaborative members and community members so the value that’s created in the community can be truly seen and felt by collaborative members.
Unearth underlying power dynamics. As Collaborate CIC puts it, “For collaboration to be effective, we need to be able to talk about where power lies, how it plays out, and how power dynamics (and behaviors, governance, and so on) need to change to make space for everyone to genuinely contribute in ways that make sense for them.” There are various types of power (financial, political, social and other types of power) and assessing them - at individual and organizational levels - and making them explicit can help set your collaborative on a path towards consciously identifying ways to shift or share power in ways that make the work more community-driven and effective.
What are some specific strategies for collaborating across your collaborative?
Conduct a partnership survey. I know, I know, surveys get a bad rap, and justifiably so. But this is an idea for a non-cringey survey, a survey your collaborative uses to reflect on themselves. These surveys are solely for members of the collaborative, and the results help collaborative members understand who they are and what they bring to the table, where they already have a lot of energy and expertise to move things forward, and where they may have gaps that need to be filled.
We used this kind of survey in advance of our kick-off meeting with the Perry County Health Coalition in Pennsylvania. We asked about top action planning priorities; what members hope to accomplish via participation in the coalition; current coalition composition, sectors and topics represented, populations touched by coalition member organizations, and suggestions around who else to engage; alignment between member organization focus areas and focus areas identified in the most recent health assessment the coalition completed; current and desired levels of engagement in the coalition; activities and tasks members are most interested in supporting; and desired meeting format, frequency, and scheduling.
By gathering this information ahead of the meeting and then sharing the synthesized responses and drawing out the key takeaways, we were able to facilitate a much more meaningful, nuanced discussion about where to go from here.
Collectively develop a joint Theory of Change. Have you heard of the Underpants Gnomes, Reader? I feel in love with this clip when a friend introduced it to me:
In this episode of South Park, the boys encounter a group of gnomes who’ve been very busy stealing underpants as part of a big plan. Phase 1 is collect underpants. Phase 3 is profit. But in between? A giant question mark.
In the “collect underpants” context, this seems a little wild. But you’d be surprised how very often this happens in our work with public health focused coalitions and collaboratives. We have an end goal in mind and a set of activities we’re going to launch, but we haven’t actually mapped out exactly why and how we believe these activities are going to get us to that end goal.
Enter a theory of change. We are especially strong advocates for bringing your collaborative together and jointly developing a theory of change that everyone contributes to and - by the end, after rounds of revision - agrees with and endorses.
This is something we did to launch our work co-leading evaluation and learning for a whole-child development initiative in DC public schools. We got everyone together in person and had them react to an initial theory of change our team developed based on our understanding of the work. We tore it apart during this meeting, revised it, conducted follow up interviews with each partner to get their reactions to the revised version, revised it further, and finally landed upon a version that everyone “stamped” with their approval.
This was over two years ago and we STILL root all our work and evaluation in that theory of change. It has been an incredibly helpful grounding and guiding force.
Have collaborative partners lead Ignite Talks. In that same DC project, once we were a little further along into implementation, partner organizations expressed a desire to know more about the activities other partners were leading. Because as useful as our Theory of Change has proven, words on paper are no substitute for a true understanding of how the work looks, sounds, and feels on the ground where it’s happening.
One of my colleagues on the project suggested using the Ignite Talks format - “20 slides, 15 seconds a slide, 5 minutes on stage, just you and the audience”. The emphasis in this format is on highly visual slides with interesting imagery. It’s similar to the PechaKucha format, which originated in Japan, and involves 20 slides, each for 20 seconds.
We used these talks to open an in-person convening and it was lively, engaging, interesting, and everyone learned a lot about the different elements of this joint effort we were engaging in.
By emphasizing visuals, we got to see what the work looked like in action. By forcing everyone into a new presentation format, we escaped the boilerplate slides and explanations we otherwise would have gotten. Perhaps most surprisingly, by providing a tiny bit of extra structure (“20 slides, 15 seconds each” - instead of just saying “no more than 5 minutes, please”), we actually had everyone stay within the time limit - every single person. (Who else has tried the “no more than X minutes, please” route before, only to find that no one listened to you? Turns out, a little extra structure is the answer!)
What are some resources to help me collaborate with community members?
Here are just a few examples of resources we here at PoP Health have found helpful - some related to the specific tips and strategies noted above, and others more general. This is by no means a comprehensive list - please email us to share other resources and tools you’ve found helpful in collaborating across your collaborative!
Collaborate CIC’s Common Misconceptions About Collaboration
The National Association of City and County Health Officials’ (NACCHO’s) Mobilizing for Action Through Planning and Partnership 2.0 resources, especially the Community Partner Assessment survey tool
Collective Impact Forum’s Resource Library
The various other collaboration frameworks highlighted in the previous issue of this newsletter
These tips, strategies, and resources begin to paint a picture of HOW to collaborate across your collaborative. It’s a messy, slow, challenging process - but it can also be a creative, illuminating, and rewarding one. We hope what we’ve shared helps you navigate the challenges and reap the rewards!
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