Do we have models for 21st century collaboration. In the internet age, are we doing it differently?
I recently attended a seminar organised by the Australian Centre for Social Innovation.
It featured Tonya Surman, founding executive director of the Centre for Social Innovation, based in Toronto. She offered a simple model that captured something I had been struggling with. For collaborative activity across a number of organisations, how do you combine loose, self-affiliating, interest groups with ‘just-enough structure’ to provide coherence and support. We have all had experience with collaborative efforts that collapse under the paperwork once the association is formally incorporated. And the opposite problem – insufficient structure and direction to maintain long term momentum.
Tonya offered the design principles, the ‘minimum specifications’ for effective collaboration with her ‘constellation’ model. It is based on web 2.0 principles: models relevance, opting in, self-interest, self-organisation, transparency. The model allows for scaled aggregation – the number of participants can multiply without diminishing the capacity to interact. At the heart is a ‘magnetic attractor’ something that draws people to the defining issue.
What about the structure? She outlined an ‘above and below the line’ structure. Above the line – chaos and messy interaction in a number of clusters (constellations), where people gather, share information, undertake common activities. The focus of each sub group is on action. These teams thread into an overall partnership, which is held together with a framework that shares leadership between the partners”. Then ‘below the line’ a small group of key partners who ‘steward’ the interactions (the ‘stewardship group’), providing stability, facilitating connections, holding the space for effective dialogue and movement over time.
“With the action-focused work residing in the constellations, these clusters become active when a group of partners decides to work on a particular issue. When there is low energy or declining opportunity, a constellation can become inactive or disappear altogether without impacting negatively on the overall partnership”.
The three organising principles:
- ‘lightweight governance’
- ‘Action-focused work teams’, and
- ‘Third party coordination’
are described in more detail in this article:
The Constellation Model of Collaborative Social Change
and visit the Australian Centre for Social Innovation – The Social Innovator Dialogues web site.