Developing a strategy to harness ecosystems of change …
Pretty much every charity I know has, at its heart, an aspiration to create a better and more just world, very often reflected in their vision statements of “a world in which…”.
But few, if any of those visions can be achieved by a single charity working alone. Which begs the question, “How good are we at working with others?” if, as it appears, that’s a fundamental requirement for the outcome we say we want.
A mixed bag is probably the most fitting idiom – not bad in some areas, not great in others.
Certainly, our most enduring coalitions tend to stay in the safe lanes: best practices, shared policy, peer support and development. And to be fair, they’ve probably had good reason.
Some parts of the sector have a long history of competitive behaviours, mistrust, sometimes even open hostilities going back for leadership generations. But something happened in the pandemic. Something that perhaps could change all that.
I can’t have been the only one who saw a rapid defrosting of relationships when the pressures and uncertainties of Covid started to bite.
An emerging sense of being in it together, a shift in perspective around the fragility of our social systems and infrastructure, and a dawning realisation that if we want a more resilient and equitable environment for those we care most about, these are the kinds of collaborative conversations, the potential ecosystems of change, we’re going to need to have far, far more of.
Because nobody else is going to be riding to the rescue anytime soon.
Those conversations have, in many cases, already started to transform not just how we work together, but what we think is possible if we do. From charities working in crisis response, to social justice, to environmental action, I’m seeing more and more purposeful and committed forums and coalitions starting to genuinely find their feet.
Next month, the Big Help Out will launch their new platform in preparation for the weekend of 7th to 9th June, when they’re hoping to build on their one-day event of last year, to get literally millions more people volunteering for tens of thousands of different charities up and down the country.
This game-changing initiative is entirely the work of coalitions, most of which formed during the pandemic, but which have since grown and strengthened to the point of being able to achieve remarkable things, things to which no charity could remotely aspire on their own.
And that example is the tip of the iceberg; of burgeoning ecosystems of change – those networks and collaborations with the collective potential to transform our impact.
But only, only if we keep investing in them.
And that’s a challenge, because resources are tight, our time is already spread thin, all these groups demand both, and more importantly, when we each look at our strategic priorities ahead of our next board meeting, it’s unlikely we’ll see “building coalitions” at the top of any of them.
Thus, many of us are going to find ourselves facing a difficult choice: whether the fledgling collaborations of the last couple of years continue to spread their wings and soar, or pass away under the pressure of our other priorities. It is a conundrum of our own making.
But there’s a simple reason for that conundrum. And it has a simple solution.
We know we can move mountains when we work together, but when we develop our strategies, we’re far more likely work in isolation. We might involve our beneficiaries and our teams, our trustees and our members. But our networks of partners? Our various competitors? I don’t think so! What if they copied us? What if they beat us to it?
But what if every single one of our strategic priorities, our themes or pillars or initiatives, or whatever else we choose to call them, might in fact be shared by whole groups of other organisations?
What if we discovered we could form ecosystems of change and collaboration around each one, that would help us, and them, travel further and faster than any of us could alone?
What if we thought about collaboration as the default route to delivering our strategy, rather than as a niche necessity in some areas, or as a nice-to-have in others? Our first choice rather than our last option?
Because the question we need to ask now isn’t “How good are we at working together?” We’ve already shown we can be brilliant at it when we go all-in.
The real question is: “How important is it that we do?”