Collaboration is a continuum
Playing well with other organizations requires growing trust and shrinking turf
“…trust is defined as choosing to risk making something you value vulnerable to another person’s actions.”
—Charles Feltman, The Thin Book of Trust
We often think and talk about teamwork within the arts organization – building trust, candor, care, and collaboration among the internal crew. But we speak less about the larger challenge of playing well across organizations to advance our shared missions through multiple means.
Most of our mission statements are larger than any one organization can achieve on its own. And even when we pretend to work alone, we’re drawing from and contributing to a shared ecology of people, stuff, and money. The challenge is that true collaboration takes time and trust. So if we haven’t been investing in the necessary relationships for a long while, with care and compassion, we can wonder where to begin.
The Collaboration Continuum (Himmelman 2002, ACT for Youth nd) offers a path from first contact to full integration across people, groups, or formal organizations. Each stage builds muscle and meaning for the next. And each demands more trust and less turf between partners.
Networking begins the journey by simple exchange of information for mutual benefit. What are you doing? When and where? How might your constituents benefit from knowing about each others’ work?
Coordination builds on networking to include altering your offerings (even if only a bit) to achieve a common purpose. Perhaps rescheduling so as to not directly compete on the same day and time. Perhaps reducing or increasing a programmatic focus in relation to what’s on offer from the peer.
Cooperation ups the stakes of coordination by sharing resources for a common purpose. Swapping mailing lists, sharing supplies, pooling volunteers to increase the reach or impact of both organizations.
Collaboration increases the entanglement and cooperation through active capacity building and sharing across peers. Cross-training to share and build skills across institutions, extending one organization’s systems (like ticketing or facilities management) to support the other organization.
Integration removes the space between institutions to merge operational and administrative structures together into one. This doesn’t need to be the ultimate goal, but it can be the ultimate expression of shared purpose and shared commitment.
One benefit of the Collaboration Continuum is that it reminds newcomers that there’s a journey to shared work rather than just a big jump. It supports little victories that build trust and reduce fear for larger experiments. One challenge of this model is that it can center a transactional mindset even in shared work – where each step upward is driven and measured by its independent benefit to each player.
Many indigenous traditions, for example, seek right relations before transaction or tasks – building and committing to reciprocal, consensual, and sustainable relationships as a foundation. This can be particularly essential if there’s a wealth, resource, or power imbalance between collaborators.
From the ArtsManaged Field Guide
Function of the Week: Gifts & Grants
Gifts & Grants involve attracting, securing, aligning, and retaining contributed resources (also called fundraising or development).
Framework of the Week: Adizes Four Management Styles
The framework discussed in this Field Note can also be used to understand management style and team dynamics. For a video overview, watch “Which Style of Arts Manager Are You?”
Sources
Photo by Elaine Casap on Unsplash
ACT for Youth. “Community Collaboration.” Accessed March 25, 2024.
Castañer, Xavier, and Nuno Oliveira. “Collaboration, Coordination, and Cooperation Among Organizations: Establishing the Distinctive Meanings of These Terms Through a Systematic Literature Review.” Journal of Management 46, no. 6 (July 1, 2020): 965–1001.
Convergence Labs. “The Four Cs: Communication, Coordination, Cooperation, and Collaboration,” January 3, 2018.
Himmelman, Arthur T. “Collaboration for a Change: Definitions, Decision-Making Models, Roles, and Collaboration Process Guide.” Minneapolis, MN: Himmelman Consulting, January 2002 (pdf format).
Love it... and need it! I appreciate these five simple tools for demystifying the concept of partnerships. That the aspirational goal of merging structures begins simply by "sharing info" is enlightening to me... and most encouraging.