Collaboration models

Why collaboration models?

In theory collaboration is easy:

STEP ONE:

identify stakeholders who support your objective

STEP TWO:

execute collectively with common desire

In practice, collaborating is work and it gets messy quickly.

A common objective does not mean common priorities. Common priorities don't indicate joint incentives. The required relationships are often weaker, more distant, and less direct than needed. Barriers are uncovered along the way, providing unwelcome surprises. The way is longer than expected, and people need encouragement and reasons for persisting.

Collaboration models resolve these issues, and in some cases help avoid them altogether.

They are conceptual frameworks used to help align collaborative thinking with collaborative action through stakeholder communication.

They are best led by one stakeholder, ideally by one person within that stakeholder.

How to build a collaboration model

I find it helpful to be explicit and explain that I am using a collaboration model. I spend some time talking about it and filling its empty theory with examples, from prior work and with information from the current project. This helps people settle in to the notion that they are going to be executing a framework that has some rules, and they need to learn and influence what those rules are. Right from the start they have some agency and responsibility to engage in the governance and direction of what they are working on.

It also helps start the discovery process with a deflection away from the specifics of their project and onto the model. This helps them avoid getting bogged down in the specific minutiae of their real world situation and abstracts them just enough to think strategically about the problem they are trying to solve and how collaboration might help them solve it.

All collaborations differ, so collaboration models should deploy principles rather than comprehensive instructions so they are as generally useful as possible.

Beyond this they should not be prescriptive, allowing them to flex to the dynamics of each collaboration and, ideally, grow stronger as they flex.

As organisational methods they can be short term or long lasting, formal or informal, bilateral or multilateral, commercial or social, professional or amateur.

Objective

The first job of a model is to bring stakeholders to a common understanding of the objective, making it THEIR objective.

It is surprising how often collaborators miss this step, leaving it only partially completed – and thus not completed – and everyone heading off thinking slightly different things about why they're working together.

It is useful to describe objectives in terms of what must be true for them to be achieved, as this has the effect of describing the common ground on which all stakeholders must stand in order to collaborate successfully.

Anyone unable or unwilling to commit to such ground must exit the collaboration, because by definition they will not ultimately be able to contribute to achieving the requirements of the objective.

This discipline helps ensure all stakeholders commit to a precisely elaborated objective, and to identify issues needing resolution before commencing the collaboration.

It won't eliminate all disagreements or disputes, but will help the stakeholders to start from a common understanding and builds channels and terms of communication that apply specifically to the relevant topic.

Seeing the objective in detail from the perspective of standing on common ground also helps stakeholders align their own incentives and priorities in support, and do so consistently.

Principles and boundaries

A collaboration model should then proceed with principles and boundries for the collaboration.

These:

define key elements of the collaboration (to create certainty);
compose the elements into a unified concept (to create comprehensiveness); and
provide a structure for stakeholders to narrate those elements (to create consistency).

Principles define what will always be held true within the collaboration, while boundaries define its limits (such as a particular topic, domain, geography, or timescale).

In combination they recognise that every collaboration, however important to a stakeholder, exists within a much wider world that lies beyond it, and which inevitably will affect it.

Articulating them helps stakeholders use them consistently to balance risks and rewards for attaining the objective, and so help shape the incentives and controls needed between (and within) stakeholders to make these efforts stick.

By being specific they help stakeholders express the objective in consistent ways and describe how they are approaching its execution. This aids communication as well as providing a benchmark ida against which activities can be assessed.

All of this helps ensure preparations and practice are guided with common practice in in order to maintain the common focus (the objective). This means all stakeholders combine more successfully, whether in informal arrangements or legally binding ones.

The principles and boundaries of a collaboration therefore apply to every topic involved in achieving the common objective, and allow for flex in what those topics should include, such as building revenue or some other value of impact; adding reach or scale; delivering and combining resources; creating knowhow, intellectual property, or other assets; addressing both tactical and strategic initiatives in service of the objective.

Changes become simpler to anticipate and execute because everyone can easily distinguish the new path and its benefits from the previous one within the consistency of a single model. Change no longer feels like a threat to the whole collaboration but simply a natural part of the process, which stakeholders have the tools to address.

Applications

Collaboration models apply to every scale and structure of collaboration.

For example, I originally developed the Collaboration Map to negotiate complex multi-stakeholder commercial ecosystems, working at Symbian, Android.

Then I tested this concept in an entirely new field: social impact at Peek Vision, and it worked there too. I improved it, refined it, expanded it, but didn't fundamentally change it.

And then I began using it in 1:1 collaborations, coaching, and advisory work.

It turns out the concept for collaboration models I've described in this article is really flexible.

It's not rocket science, but it does take attention and intention.

Collaboration models are useful for analysis, communication and planning as much as engagement, execution, and reporting and I have found they apply to a wide variety of activities, including:

founding & fundraising
- coordinating exec teams & boards to a common narrative
- co-founder arrangements on vision & mission
- conveying value and reward vs risk to investors, boards & management

product development
- IP licensing (inbound & outbound)
- developing new capabilities & joint propositions
- co-research & development

revenue & go to market planning & execution
- sales (direct, indirect, enterprise)
- marketing (awareness, reach)
- partnerships (leadgen, distribution, reselling)
- business development (new territories, new products)