Leading Across Boundaries: Creating Collaborative Agencies in a Networked World

6

Getting the Collaborative Process Started

If you want to go quickly, go alone. If you want to go far, go together.

—African proverb

 

This chapter deals with the challenge of getting a collaborative group started and developing a collaborative process. There are many fine books on leading teams. Here we’ll focus especially on strategies for creating a collaborative team—one that includes people who represent different units or agencies.

There’s no single strategy for getting started on collaborative projects. Smart leaders pay attention to the specifics of culture, politics, timing, the stakeholders, and the relationships among the leaders and stakeholders when designing a game plan. That said, many successful collaboratives follow this ...