Collaborate in the Development Sector through sustainable social change in transforming lives
by ISDM (Development Management) ISDM ExecutiveA lot of recent development sector conferences have focused on
Collaboration as an important theme and sometimes the central pivot around which
the conference has been designed – Collaboration for Sustainable Impact,
Collaboration for Big Bets, and Collaboration for Scale etc. There is almost no
one I have met or heard who doesn’t believe in the potentially large-scale
impact of partnerships and alliances but they also believe that more often than
not it seems like mirage, an unfulfilled promise or unleveraged potential. What
kind of collaborations will help take the sector to the next level in terms of
bringing about sustainable, scalable social change and what’s needed from a
process perspective to make this happen? While there are
no clear answers to this question, there are many different models for
collaboration doing the rounds.
1. Technical Collaborations: Based on a specific technical shortcoming
faced by an organisation which it is looking to fulfil through a partnership or
alliance. Ex: Organisation A is not good at fund raising and ties up with Organisation
B which specialises in that. There is a very clear quid pro-quo involved here
and as long as there is a mutual need such partnerships survive on a strong
footing.
2. Relationship Based Collaborations: Based on the need to understand and connect
with specific stakeholder segments. Ex: Organisation A has the funding and
desire to work on improving education in a district and teams up with Organisation
B who has the expertise of working with the government along with the relevant
relationships. Alternatively, this expertise could be with regards to working with
the community, with high net worth individuals, or with corporates etc. With
relationship building being more of a softer skill (versus say fund raising or
story telling), these partnerships take a longer time to come about and are
driven a lot by the equation between the respective leaders of these
organisations.
3. Sector Specific Collaborations: Based on the need to bring organisations
working in a particular sub sector (Ex: primary education, primary health,
livelihoods, environment, trafficking etc.) together to articulate the actual
problems facing the sector, ideate on a basket of solutions (with or without
consensus around them) and then work together to implement solutions and
advocate with the government. This helps bring together much needed expertise
onto a common platform and provides the opportunity to look at issues from a
variety of different perspectives, learn from each other’s experiences and make
an effort to influence the external ecosystem through a united voice.
4. Geographic Collaborations: Based on the need to bring organisations
working in a specific geographical area (Ex: District, State, Region etc.)
together to develop a more holistic, systems thinking driven, cross sectoral
view of development for that geography and evolve silo-less solutions to the
issues being faced there. This idea is supported by the belief that
understanding local context and issues is most important in the development
space where standardised, cookie cutter kind of approaches to developmental
problems don’t really work.
5. Ecosystem Collaborations: Based on the need to bring organisations
across the ecosystem (Ex: Funders, Government, Implementation NGOs, Social
Consulting organisations / Programme Managers, Community Representatives etc.) together
to make sure that discussions cover all viewpoints and a lot-of decisions
regarding the idea of development
leadership and how to go about it can at least be touched upon in the room.
Imagine the power of an intervention which has political buy-in, is supported
by the government machinery, has a funder backing it (at least initially, till
the government takes over), has been evolved ground up using participatory
approaches and has really good professional talent programme managing and
implementing it.
Moving from 1 to 5 clearly increases the complexity of bringing together
stakeholders and managing collaboration in terms of multiple parameters – No.
of stakeholders, Multiple viewpoints, multiple agendas and egos, moving from a
transactional relationship which is largely bilateral to a strategic
relationship where the focus is more on the final beneficiary / participant
pool, challenges in decision making, keeping everyone interested and motivated
over time etc. However, the benefits and possibility of actually bringing about
sustainable social change at scale also increases with this move. Sector
specific, geographic and ecosystem level collaborations have the power to break
down silos within the sector and actually make it a more serious contributor in
transforming and improving lives.
Making a move towards institutionalising collaborations of this nature
and scale would require individuals/teams/organisations with the skills and
perseverance to influence and incentivise sector leaders to come to the table, the
ability to facilitate discussions through a system thinking view of social
issues and to make meaning in a collaborative fashion designing sustainable
solutions for scale (rather than at scale). It would need a breakdown of
hierarchies, egos and specially organisational boundaries so that people are
able to unite towards a common goal and purpose that goes beyond just their
organisations.
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Created on Jun 25th 2018 01:03. Viewed 480 times.