Collaborationfor new growth:learning from leadersA GLTE Report featuring first-hand insights for pioneering collaborative leadership at the nexus of water, energy, food and climate.

GLTE, Royal Dutch Shell and XyntéoReport

Contents

Foreword 06

Executive summary 08

Collaboration: moving centre stage 14

The collaboration journey 20

Establish strong foundations 24

Develop deep alignment 36

Pilot and scale 52

Leadership for successful collaboration 60

Barriers to collaboration 68

Creating collaborative organisations 74

Taking the next steps 82

Interviewees and source material 84

Mythbusters: surprising truths about collaboration 90

Energy, food and water are all interacting and interconnected. These problems need to be solved by a coalition of different societal forces: policymakers, industrials and NGOs all working together. The capacity to collaborate … is the biggest challenge we are facing today.Ben Van Beurden, CEO, Royal Dutch Shell

“

Royal Dutch Shell is a global group of energy and petrochemicals companies with

around 90,000 employees in more than 80 countries and territories. Shell’s Upstream

businesses explore for and extract crude oil and natural gas, often in joint ventures

with international and national oil and gas companies. Shell’s Downstream businesses

manufacture, supply and market oil products and chemicals worldwide. Shell has been

reporting on its environmental and social performance since 1997, and its sustainability

performance is ranked in some leading indices.

www.shell.com

Xyntéo’s mission is to ‘reinvent growth’. As an advisory firm, it works with global

companies to identify and carry out projects that aim to enable businesses to grow in a

new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic realities of the 21st century.

The founder and engine of the GLTE partnership, Xyntéo is also the driving force behind

The Performance Theatre. The theatre is an annual meeting for CEOs and chairmen that

aims to inspire the leadership needed to build a new kind of growth, capable of creating

longer-term value for both shareholders and society as a whole.

www.xynteo.com

The GLTE partnership connects global businesses engaged in the pursuit of resource-

efficient, low-carbon growth. It builds senior executives’ knowledge of how the changing

resource picture and climate change are affecting their businesses and industries,

and of how other organisations are responding with innovation that embeds resource

and carbon efficiency into the core of their businesses. What sets the GLTE partnership

apart is its bias for action. The partnership conceives and conducts projects that aim to

enable businesses to grow in a new way, fit for the resource, climate and demographic

realities of the 21st century. Advisory firm Xyntéo founded and runs the GLTE partnership.

www.xynteo.com/glte

require? And what incentives can support them?

We have started our journey by speaking with

39 people, each with a track record of leadership

in collaborative initiatives. Some have worked

on collaborations in the food-water-energy-

climate nexus, while others have insights from

other contexts. We have also looked at other

collaborations and the work of leading thinkers

in the field.

The insights we have gleaned through this work

form the basis for this report. We hope it will be

a starting point for thinking about collaborations,

and a living document that will evolve as we

test it with other collaboration practitioners and

accumulate their collective insights.

Forewordfrom De la Rey Venter and Dr Osvald Bjelland

The Global Leadership and Technology Exchange is a partnership of leading global companies. We have been brought together by a shared conviction that we need a new model of growth for the 21st century.

The strains created by our current model

of growth are particularly visible at the

nexus of our food, energy, water and climate

systems. The scale of these problems, and

their close interdependence, means that we

need to find significantly new and different

ways of working: business-as-usual is no

longer an option. There is a huge potential

for organisations who are able to develop

innovative responses to these challenges.

It is this opportunity for systemic, path-breaking

changes to our growth model that has led Royal

Dutch Shell and Xyntéo to work together on the

topic of collaboration, under the auspices of the

GLTE partnership. This report marks the first step

in our work together.

We believe that collaboration – working together

to achieve what we cannot achieve alone – will

be a key tool for creating this new, transformative

growth. Collaboration across industries will

catalyse innovation, creating new value through

new technologies and processes that will underpin

more resource-efficient and lower-carbon growth.

Successful collaboration between government,

civil society and industry can help to steer

economic growth that is better aligned with the

interests of society as a whole, while creating a

more stable climate for wealth creation and

high-quality economic development.

In this work we focus in particular on leadership.

Our aim is to understand more about the kind of

leadership that is required for collaborations to

succeed. What kind of mindset do collaborative

leaders need? What skills and knowledge do they

De la Rey Venter Executive vice president Joint Ventures, Shell Upstream International

Dr Osvald Bjelland Chairman and CEO, Xyntéo

6 7

Executive summary

The Collaboration Journey (p20)

Collaboration: moving centre stage (p14)

We are entering a new era of environmental stress. Water scarcity, air pollution, deforestation, and problems are growing in intensity and in scale.

Addressing these ‘wicked’, complex, environmental challenges that we face today will require collaboration across the boundaries of several sectors and industries.

Collaborations are:

Creative: they enable innovation to spring from new combinations of knowledge, resources

and technology

Open: they begin with a shared problem and allow solutions to emerge from within the group

Alive: they develop their own culture and are dynamic, experimental and nimble.

1. Establish strong foundations (p24)

It’s vital to front-load your collaboration.

Identify a common purpose. You have to know from the beginning why you are doing this and why you need each other

Create a partnership. Partners should have both a strategic fit and a personal connection. Make sure the partnership is diverse and includes quieter but potentially influential voices

Create an appropriate architecture. A neutral anchor can help. Also, define resources commitments early.

2. Develop deep alignment (p36)

Ensuring that partners are aligned takes time but is important.

Understand the context. Gathering, sharing and evaluating data help collaborations to understand poorly defined problems, to expose areas where participants’ perspectives are different, and to build trust

Create a shared narrative. Creating a short, engaging, written narrative builds trust and helps to keep the collaboration on track later. At this stage, the focus should be on the why, rather than what or how

Build trust by sharing power. Collaborations can share power by recognising that all partners are needed for the outcome, working in a shared physical or digital space, and ensuring all parties have skin in the game.

3. Pilot and scale (p52)

Moving to impact at scale is challenging but there are strategies that can help.

Brave the valley of death. Maintain a collaborative mindset and ensure that new personnel joining the project understand the collaborative nature of the work

Use pilots to build knowledge and trust. Pilots are an opportunity to get valuable information about the practical challenges of implementing ideas. They can also be beacons – showing the outside world what is possible

Scale intelligently. Think carefully about how to scale pilots – focus on the process rather than the outcome – and about how the project’s narrative is relevant to all stakeholders.

No two collaborations are the same, but the life cycle of almost all the collaborations in our research can be broken down into three phases.

8 9

Leadership for successful collaboration (p60)

Collaborations need effective leadership. Leading collaborative projects requires many skills that aren’t necessarily evident in more conventional projects. Leaders can be effective in several ways.

Use purpose to lead. Give up control and allow solutions to emerge from the group. Keep underlying purpose as the guiding principle – deviation from this is one of the main reasons collaborations fail

Show personal commitment. Collaborations need champions who are visibly committed both emotionally and professionally

Support the collaboration’s values. Ensure the collaboration’s own cultures and values come from enough different voices to be upheld by everyone. This also helps avoid returns to default, non-collaborative behaviour.

Creating collaborative organisations (p74)

The characteristics of participating organisations can play a vital role in making collaborations succeed.

Emphasise leadership based on accountability and trust. Promote and enable the right kind of leadership for collaborations – built on purpose and accountability rather than hierarchy and control

Establish strong vertical and horizontal communication. Ensure that senior leaders understand the challenges facing collaborations and that there is alignment across the organisation on the collaboration’s purpose and approach

Understand collaboration throughout the organisation. A shared understanding of the nature and value of collaboration throughout the organisation creates a supportive environment for collaborations to thrive

Reward collaborative behaviour. Creating the right incentives and reward structures for collaborative behaviour is important – and can require considerable imagination and creativity.

Barriers to collaboration (p68)

Many things can block progress – a lack of shared purpose, weak governance structures, unequal expectations and misunderstandings – but there are ways to minimise or avoid these.

Mythbusters (p90)

Collaborations can be counterintuitive. From who you should choose as partners, to how to get the most out of the partnership, the ways to succeed are not always obvious.

10 11

Case studies

Throughout the report, case studies illustrate how the collaboration journey plays out in practice.

Case Study 1: Water4Crops Addressing water shortages in India.

Case Study 2: Center for Sustainable Shale Development Developing performance standards for shale gas production.

Case Study 3: Liquefied Natural Gas in shippingExploring the potential for using cleaner fuels for powering ships.

Case Study 4: PEMANDURealising Malaysia’s goal of becoming a high-income economy by 2020.

Case Study 5: The US-China Clean Energy Research Center Enabling scientists and engineers in the US and China to work together on clean energy technologies.

Case Study 6: The H2 Mobility Project Expanding the use of hydrogen vehicles in Germany.

Case Study 7: Sustainable Food Lab Changing the food system for the better.

Case Study 8: Singapore Water PolicyAccelerating innovation in water and waste management.

Case Study 9: Tropical Forest Alliance 2020Reducing the deforestation caused by the production of paper and pulp, palm oil, soy and beef.

Case Study 10: BhavyshiaHelping India reach its Millennium Development Goal of halving the number of malnourished children by 2015.

Case Study 11: LinuxCreating “open-source” software used on millions of devices worldwide.

Case Study 12: CityLabFinding systemic solutions to the challenges thrown up by urbanisation in Africa.

12 13

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

African proverb

“

Collaboration: moving centre stage

A new era of environmental stress

First the good news. This is an age of

unprecedented growth in population

and aspiration. Over the last 100 years, the global

population has quadrupled to 7.3 billion people.

The global economy is now some 25 times

larger than it was a century ago – an expansion

accompanied by radical improvements in

technology, health and nutrition.

And now, of course, the bad news. The sheer

scale of human activity and the nature of the

economic model that has delivered these gains

are increasingly straining our natural resources.

The accumulation of greenhouse gases in the

atmosphere is changing the climate, affecting

not just temperature but also water availability,

storm intensity, ocean acidity, sea levels and

food production. Fisheries are collapsing,

while biodiversity elsewhere is being lost at

extraordinary rates – so fast that many scientists

believe we are entering a new mass extinction.

All this adds up to one very troubling conclusion.

In the coming decades, we face a new era of

environmental stress.

One reason is that water scarcity, air pollution,

deforestation and other environmental problems

no longer seem like abstract risks for future

generations. Instead, they are already having

an impact on businesses, by eroding the social

licence to operate and imposing growing costs

and complexity on core operations, and on

government, by undermining economic growth

and reducing quality of life.

Moreover, environmental problems are intensifying.

In some cases, systems are approaching boundaries

that have not previously been crossed. Today we

are already extracting all the fresh water that exists

in reliable sustainable sources. By 2030, if current

trends continue, there will be a 40% shortfall. Unless

water use becomes considerably more efficient over

that period, water users face some combination of

diminishing reliability, higher costs and restricted

availability – with implications for business operations,

economic growth and human welfare.

If you think about the significant global policy challenges that face the world, collaboration becomes essential because countries or companies acting alone simply can’t solve these problems. Collaboration is a requirement, not a choice.Merit Janow, dean of the School of International and Public Affairs, Columbia University, and chair of the Nasdaq Exchange

“

14 15

We interviewed 39 leaders with deep and broad

experience of collaborative ventures. Some have worked

on collaborations within the water-food-energy-climate

nexus, others in very different arenas – from military

operations to election campaigns.

We have also drawn on projects known to Xyntéo,

as well as published literature by theorists who work

on collaboration. We highlight case studies of practical

collaborations, and the work of some particularly

significant thought pioneers, in boxes along the main

body of the text.

Based on all this material – interviews, case studies and

literature – we have drawn out observations on what

makes a collaboration successful. We summarise these in

three areas: navigating the collaboration journey; lessons

for leaders; and creating collaborative organisations.

How we created this report

In Focus

And after the good and the bad comes the ‘wicked’.

Environmental issues are highly interconnected.

In 2007/8, a combination of higher energy prices,

droughts, scarcity of agricultural land, economic

growth and population growth contributed to

a global food price crisis. The effects were felt

by societies as far apart as Mexico, Senegal,

Bangladesh and Libya. Environmental problems

like these are known as ‘wicked’ problems,

because they are so interconnected, and interact

in complex ways with social and political systems.

Such challenges are difficult to define, impossible

to solve definitively, and require interventions at a

very large scale to have any hope of an impact

(See Churchman, Webber and Rittel on complexity

and wickedness, page 19).

Many of these strains become evident at the nexus

of the food, water, energy and climate systems. Water

crises, food crises, extreme weather events and

climate change all feature in the World Economic

Forum’s top 10 global risks for the next decade.

Why collaboration matters

OK, environmental problems are both

immediate and intensifying. So what do we do

about them? Confronting these issues will require

rapid innovation in two directions:

technological innovation – advances that enable

considerably more efficient resource use

institutional innovation – new ways of managing

scarce resources in a way that is both socially

and environmentally acceptable.

But that’s not enough in itself. The interconnected,

‘wicked’, nature of environmental problems means

that this innovation will also need to be systemic,

responding to complex interactions across the

boundaries of sectors, industries and geographies.

This need to innovate across boundaries is

driving the need for collaboration. Organisations

from different sectors, industries and geographies

will have to come together to develop solutions

that they cannot achieve alone.

Get it right and organisations will become more

innovative, achieve new growth, and create wealth that

is more widespread and more sustainable. Already,

organisations are recognising and taking advantage

of this opportunity, as you will see from case studies of

cross-boundary collaboration related in this report.

What collaboration means

Collaboration is special. It’s not just any old

multilateral activity.

Instead, collaboration is a creative activity that

enables innovation. In a way, innovation is merely

a social process that creates new combinations by

putting together different knowledge, resources

and technologies. Collaboration can do this across

organisations and sectors, enabling innovations

that are more radical than you could expect from a

single organisation.

This collective creativity is what sets collaboration

apart from other forms of interaction between

groups. It is not at all like cooperation, which is

simply dividing a known task among a number

of individuals or organisations. By contrast,

16 17

Here’s an example of complexity that we’ve all

experienced. You’re motoring along on a highway,

more or less keeping to the speed limit, when

suddenly you hit a jam and everyone grinds to a halt.

Then the jam clears for no apparent reason and the

traffic speeds up again. And there’s no accident, no

roadworks, nothing to explain the slowdown.

This is a complex system at work. Simple interactions

between many individuals can generate unexpected

behaviour at a system level. Pioneering thinkers

from mathematics, biology, computer science

and economics have found this sort of complex

behaviour in many human and natural systems

– such as the motion of a flock of birds and the

behaviour of financial traders during a crisis.

The complexity of our world can lead to ‘wicked’

problems. This notion was articulated by C. West

Churchman, Horst Rittel and Melvin M Webber,

both of the University of California, Berkeley, in the

late 1960s and early 1970s.

They observed that some problems facing society

are impossible to define unambiguously and have

no specific, closed solution. These problems don’t

have a right or a wrong answer: instead there are

many possible answers, which may be better or

worse than one another. Wicked problems are

usually connected and the solution to one wicked

problem may be the cause of another.

The interconnected, systemic nature of wicked

problems means that any solution is likely to be one-

shot – it is likely to have other impacts on the system,

some of which are unforeseeable and some of which

will create or contribute to other wicked problems.

Wicked problems include epidemics such as malaria

and AIDS, drug trafficking, terrorism, nuclear power,

the welfare system and climate change.

Existing in a web of complex social dynamics,

businesses often encounter wicked problems.

These can be a challenge for executives, especially

in organisations whose core business is to solve

‘tame’ problems in engineering or science. In a

2008 Harvard Business Review article, John C.

Camillus outlined some of the approaches that

executives can use to manage wicked problems.

Many of these relate strongly to the themes of this

report, such as working collaboratively with other

stakeholders, and focusing on action – with an

emphasis on trying out practical solutions while

acknowledging that no solution will be perfect.

Thought Pioneers:Churchman, Rittel and Webber on complexity and ‘wickedness’

collaborations start with a shared problem

and work together to develop solutions that

no individual or organisation would be able to

develop on their own.

In this sense, collaboration is an open process:

solutions emerge from the interaction of a group.

This mode of working is inherently ‘bottom up’.

Rather than implementing solutions that have

been decided by corporate decision-making from

the top down, collaborative partners develop their

own solutions. As a result, collaboration can be

challenging for people who are accustomed to

‘closed’ problems, or work in strongly hierarchical

organisations (See Creating collaborative

organisations, page 75).

Finally, collaborations are entities of their own.

They do not belong exclusively to one partner

or another. Over time, collaborations develop

their own culture and their own way of working.

This requires organisations to transcend the

transactional relationships that often typify their

interactions – buyer and supplier, service provider

and service user – and develop solutions together

that are better than they could achieve alone.

Why leadership is critical

No organisation has ever existed in a vacuum,

but now more than ever leaders need to engage

thoughtfully with the complex and interconnected

systems that surround them. Some thinkers on

business and organisations are already exploring

what this means in practice (See Michael Porter,

creating shared value, page 67).

Smart leaders know that their stakeholders go far

beyond shareholders or governing bodies of their

organisations. And they know that the answers to

the challenges they face do not lie solely within their

own organisations. Smart leaders, in other words,

are actively seeking collaboration.

Even so, leading collaborations can be distinctly

uncomfortable. You have to give up some control

in the present if you want a better outcome in the

future. You also need to bring together people from

different organisations and cultures, and build them

into an effective fighting force with its own distinct

character, identity and purpose. And you have to be

ready to tackle open-ended, messy problems that

are a world away from the order that typifies the

inner structure of corporations and bureaucracies.

If you’re up for the challenge, that’s good for you

and for your organisation, because leadership for

collaboration is moving centre stage. The ability to

collaborate is not just a desirable attribute, it is now

becoming a prerequisite for success.

The purpose of this report is to support leaders

in building successful collaborations. Much of the

material is drawn from the experience of leaders

who have successfully led collaborative initiatives

in a wide range of contexts (See In Focus: How we

created this report, page 17). In the next sections,

we explore the collaboration journey: how

collaborations begin and grow. Later, we return

to “leadership for successful collaboration”.

18 19

The collaboration journey

Establish strong foundations

Many of the successful collaborations

we encountered share common elements in their

initial stages. They began by identifying a common

purpose, creating a complete partnership and

establishing an appropriate architecture for the

collaboration. Though this may seem obvious,

many leaders described experiences where not

paying enough attention to this earliest stage

created fatal difficulties later.

Develop deep alignment

Next comes an extended period of building

trust and alignment among partners. Many

collaborations also use this period to create a

detailed narrative that describes their shared vision

for their work together and how to proceed to

action. All interviewees emphasised the importance

of this phase. By investing time and effort here you

can reap great rewards in the resource-intensive

phase that follows.

Pilot and scale

All collaborations seek to create a tangible change,

and the path to doing so is through piloting and then

scaling up the innovative concepts that emerge

from a collaborative effort.

Collaborations face challenges as they shift from

development to operation. Investment in physical

assets and new processes needs much greater

resources than the earlier stages of collaboration..

Partnerships increase in size and new people are

now involved who are often unfamiliar with (or

not incentivised to support) the collaboration or

appreciate its value.

This framework for a collaboration life cycle, with

an extended period of forming and aligning, bears

a striking resemblance to Otto Schamer’s Theory

U – a concept that some of our interviewees found

particularly powerful (See Otto Schamer, Theory U,

page 22).

The next section of this report explores each of

these three phases.

No two collaborations are the same, but the life cycle of almost all the collaborations in our research can be broken down into three phases: ‘establish strong foundations’, ‘develop deep alignment’ and ‘pilot and scale’.

20 21

22 23

Theory U, developed by MIT’s Otto Scharmer, takes

familiar practices and tools and organises them into

a process for effectively creating change.

Scharmer describes a U-shaped process in five steps.

The first is co-initiating: a group of people who want to

change a situation begin to listen to each

other and understand the group’s common intent.

The second is co-sensing: observing different

perspectives and gathering data without pre-judging

it, to develop a collective understanding of the

current system.

The third phase, and the lowest part of the ‘U’, is

presencing. Group members let go of anything that

is not essential to the collective purpose and possible

future directions start to emerge. Individual members

and the group as a whole often start to operate with

a heightened level of energy.

The fourth stage, co-creating, sees the group move

to action by trialling ideas in practice. Prototypes

should be quick and cheap to launch, so that the

group can rapidly learn lessons about what works

and what doesn’t.

The fifth and final stage of the U process, co-evolving,

involves taking the ideas that have been trialled and

prototypes that are likely to have the highest impact

on the system, and scaling them up.

Many of the collaborative leaders described

elements of the collaboration life cycle in terms

that are similar to the movements of Theory U –

even those who didn’t refer to it explicitly. This is

reflected in our description of the collaboration life

cycle including, for example, the identification of a

shared need (which has parallels with Theory U’s

co-initiating movement), understanding the context

(similar to co-sensing) and using prototypes to gain

information and trust (similar to co-creating).

Theory U applies to the micro level of individual

interactions as well as the macro level of group

interactions – a notion echoed by Jeremy Bentham,

vice-president of Global Business Environment at

Shell, who told us how he has experienced a U-shaped

process both across the whole set of collaborators

and internally within an organisation participating

in a collaborative venture.

Thought Pioneers:Otto Schamer, Theory U

You need a defined self-interest on the

part of the different groups. It is crucial

that the players have a very clear appreciation that

they can’t achieve their goals by

themselves. They have to collaborate.

Jay Cowles, president, Unity Avenue Associates;

and co-chair, Itasca Project’s Transportation Committee

“

Establish strong foundations

Identify a common purpose

It’s surprisingly easy to skip over the first vital

step of all collaborations, identifying a common

purpose. This might sound obvious, but it’s not.

Some collaborations are not born out of any

shared purpose, but come from organisations or

individuals with exceptional convening power

who simply draw leaders together and look for

something to do. And all collaborations need to be

very explicit about what they are trying to achieve.

To spell it out, you need to:

identify a common need that is shared by

all participants

establish that collaboration is necessary

to fulfil that need.

For example the Water4Crops initiative (Case study

1, page 26) and the Center for Sustainable Shale

Development (Case study 2, page 30) both began

by identifying a system-level problem that affected

several stakeholders who could not address the

underlying causes alone.

Usually one organisation identifies a need and

then seeks out partners to collaborate with. More

rarely, a group of organisations may identify a

shared need together.

Either way, many collaborative leaders favour

starting small – it’s easier to identify a clear shared

purpose when there are only a few partners

involved, and if you need more later you can

always approach them as the project evolves.

At this stage there’s no need to understand what

the collaboration will do or how it will achieve its

purpose. But a shared understanding of why the

collaboration exists is paramount.

Developing a common vision and

position on what needed to happen

was extremely valuable. It helped

to create a common platform among

arch competitors who were not

accustomed to working together.

Lisa Dreier, senior director, World Economic Forum

“

24 25

Case Study 1: Water4Crops

Most river basins in India are experiencing water shortages brought on by agricultural growth, industrialisation and urbanisation.

Water4Crops is a collaborative initiative that involves

over 30 research bodies, large companies and

SMEs. It is working to develop new technologies to

treat and reuse wastewater, improve the efficiency

of irrigation, and improve the management of water,

land and crops. The idea is not just to reduce fresh-

water demand in agriculture but also to help protect

groundwater contamination and water quality.

Beer and soft drinks business SABMiller is

a partner in the initiative. Vice president for

sustainability and communications, Meenakshi

Sharma, told us that openness was critical to

making the collaboration succeed: “we’ve thrown

open our brewery for people to come in and work,

in the spirit of transparency. One of the preconditions

when you think of working in collaboration is that

you’ve got to have enough trust to be able to share

what you’re doing, not just the good work, but also

the weak links. So collaboration requires that you’re

brave enough to share.”

They also found a clever way to overcome suspicion

between different groups of water users. Early in

the collaboration, Water4Crops worked hard to

understand the incentives facing farmers and other

water users, and collected data on water use

in different sectors. Sharing objective data in a

transparent way went a long way towards breaking

down barriers between different users and focused

their effort on searching jointly for solutions.

More information:

www.water4crops.org

26 27

Formally, collaboration is between organisations and institutions. But at heart, collaboration is between people. As one interviewee put it, “at the end of the day, institutions are run by people and it’s my counterpart on the other side of the table that matters”.

Many collaborative leaders emphasised the importance of the personal dimension. Per Heggenes, CEO of the IKEA Foundation, explained that when exploring collaborations he seeks to identify not only institutions whose values are sufficiently aligned to collaborate successfully, but also individuals within those organisations who understand what it takes to collaborate successfully.

While they were united in their view that personality matters, leaders were divided on the importance of trust.

Many leaders suggested that trust is a luxury not a necessity. They argue that there are situations where you’ll have to work with people you neither trust nor like, but where you both share a common purpose and need one another in order to achieve it. Some suggested that in these situations, trust is too high a bar: a combination of respect and a recognised mutual dependency – rather than personal trust – is the glue that binds the collaboration together.

These differences may well represent the varying circumstances in which our collaborative leaders have operated. Whereas as some leaders were spoilt for choice when selecting partners – such as, for example, in cross-industry technology-development partnerships, where there might be several appropriate partners available – others had worked in complex social environments where there was little freedom to choose collaboration partners.

Even when it’s not there at the beginning, trust can be built over time. Making a public commitment to a project can help to develop trust in a situation where there is little. Over time, focusing on quick wins and showing that progress is possible can help to build even more trust.

The personal dimension

In Focus

29

As in all relationships, partner choice is hugely

important. You need to understand the

motivations and ambitions of potential partners,

and be sure that their objectives are fully

compatible with the collaboration’s purpose.

Some interviewees emphasised the value

of partners who were well-aligned with the

collaboration’s purpose not just in their immediate

objectives but also in their overall strategy. As

Leo Yip, chairman of the Singapore Economic

Development Board, put it, “we always thought

of seeking to understand what the company’s

objectives are. What does it seek to do? How does

it sit within the broader strategy and within the

broader business objectives that the company

has? I think this is fundamental.”

Don’t ignore the potential of smaller partners, who

might not seem important enough to be invited to

the party, but who could end up being crucial to its

ultimate success. Patrick Rousseau, chairman and

managing director of Veolia Water India, explains

that they took care to engage closely with local

community leaders: “you cannot impose things

on people who appear not to have power, because

even though they are poor they in fact have all

the means to exercise their power in society”.

A little desk research on potential partners’

priorities can help, but in the end there is

no alternative to getting to know both the

organisations and the individuals. It’s not enough

to have a good institutional fit; you also need

a good personal fit.

And as long as you have that vital shared purpose,

a diverse range of partners can create stronger,

more resilient outcomes. The advice of Peter Voser,

chairman of ABB, was “Don’t work only with people

who have a similar thinking. In collaboration it’s

important to have a common vision, but working with

people who are different means you will have to work

to convince others and show leadership along the

way”. The Center for Sustainable Shale Development

(Case study 2, page 30) is a collaboration that draws

its strength and impact from a mix of groups with

differing agendas and cultures.

Create a partnership

“Human nature is that you will select those who are pretty close to you, and what you should do is the opposite because you need the challenge.

Peter Voser, chairman, ABB

2828

Case Study 2: Center for Sustainable Shale Development

The emergence of shale gas in the United States has changed the energy sector in North America and beyond. While there have been clear economic benefits, the fracking technology used to extract the gas has been opposed on the grounds of safety and environmental impact.

But instead of assuming that industrialists and

environmentalists should remain implacably

divided by fracking, a group of former regulators,

shale gas producers, environmental groups and

local community and environmental activists in

Pennsylvania decided to establish the Center for

Sustainable Shale Development (CSSD), with the

aim of creating jointly agreed performance standards

for shale gas production.

The idea was to form an institute that could

establish leading practice and certify companies

that were adopting it – and, by doing so, positively

influence the culture in the industry as a whole.

By setting a high standard, CSSD could raise

standards across the industry without waiting

for regulations to catch up.

The legitimacy and the effectiveness of this

collaboration rests on the diversity of its

membership. This has not been without challenges.

Several partners faced criticism and resistance

from other organisations in their own sectors,

both in the oil and gas industry and among

environmental organisations.

Companies joined because they believed the centre

could change their relationship with the public by

showing tangible commitments to best performance,

something they could not achieve alone. The CSSD

partners shared data and involved independent

academic and research institutions in assessing it,

which helped to build mutual trust within the initiative

and credibility to the outside world, resulting in a

much less adversarial process than you often get

when developing environmental standards.

More information:

www.sustainableshale.org

30 31

The investment of time will create dramatic value in

the future so we should not focus

on the short-term benefits.

Huang Guoshu, vice chairman, Sinew Corporation

“Although we encountered different architectures

for collaboration in the course of this research, there

were some common features.

For example, many collaborations have a neutral

anchor: an organisation or person who leads

and facilitates the process. The idea is that the

anchor does not promote any partner’s interests

over another’s, but instead makes sure the overall

purpose is fulfilled. Many of the leaders who

acted as anchors came from relatively small

organisations, rather than one of the

main interested parties – as in the GLTE

collaboration on liquid natural gas in shipping

(Case Study 3, page 34).

The role of a successful anchor is not to be a hub

mediating between many spokes, but rather to bind

partners together by leading and sustaining

a conversation. As Adam Kahane, partner at

Reos Partners, put it: “they need to go beyond

connecting people to working together in a way

that requires everyone to take risks”.

Anchors can also act as a trusted partner – for

example by holding or using data that partners

may not be willing to share more widely.

A variant of this approach is a multi-layered

architecture, with one anchor at the centre of an

overarching collaboration across a broad set of

organisations, and then a number of more specific

collaborations within this, each with its own

anchor. This is an effective model for ventures

with a large number of partners and a relatively

general goal, where the next step is to reduce the

partners to a manageable number and focus the

work. Examples are the Sustainable Food Lab

(Case Study 7, page 48) and Cape Town’s CityLab

(Case Study 12, page 80).

To make this work, though, you need anchors who

know what they are doing. Gerald Schotman, chief

technology officer at Royal Dutch Shell, observed

that unless the anchor is sufficiently skilful,

involving someone to play this role can take away

a sense of ownership from the other partners.

Of course in the smallest form of collaboration,

a bilateral partnership,, you don’t need a neutral

anchor. Those that we encountered, such as

the US-China Clean Energy Research Center

(Case Study 5, page 40), tended to be between

organisations with a broadly similar scale and

nature, and had a governance structure that was

specifically designed to balance power.

Establish an appropriate architecture

32 33

Case Study 3: Liquefied Natural Gas in shipping

The shipping industry faces tightening emissions regulation, designed to reduce both local pollution and greenhouse-gas emissions. As a result, liquified natural gas (LNG) looks increasingly like an environmentally and commercially attractive alternative.

The trouble is that no single player in the business

can act on this independently. Shipping companies

would need to build and operate ships that can

run on LNG, fuel companies would need to build a

refuelling infrastructure, and users would need to

provide demand and agree on pricing.

In other words, this is an opportunity that has the

need for collaboration at its core. So to address the

issue several GLTE partners came together to try

to develop a new class of ships powered by LNG.

Royal Dutch Shell, who supply LNG, and Cargill,

potential users, brought together technical and

commercial expertise to evaluate ways of using

LNG for dry bulk and tanker vessels. Shipping

specialist firm DNV GL provided key input on

risk management.

Xyntéo acted as anchor for this collaboration,

performing a role with at least three dimensions.

The first was operational – to manage the project

and facilitate meetings between the participants.

The second was to provide a degree of neutrality,

balancing power in the collaboration. The third was to

embody the values and purpose of the collaboration.

More information:

www.xynteo.com/projects/scoping-the-use-of-

lng-in-shipping

34 35

Of course, when you embark on any project it’s

important to understand the context that you’re

operating in. But with multi-sector open collaborations

the context becomes paramount. And it’s surprisingly

easy to assume that you know the background

without digging into it deeply enough from the

outset. Many leaders stressed this point and urged

collaborators to define the situation in as much detail

as possible, as early as possible in the collaboration.

One way to do this is to pool resources by sharing,

discussing and collectively agreeing on empirical

data, such as geographical information, resource

use, technical parameters and economic variables.

This reduces the risk of misalignment later on and

can help the team to shape their priorities. For

example in the Water4Crops project (Case Study 1,

page 26), data on water usage helped define areas

where the collaboration could focus its efforts to

improve water use practices.

The process of gathering, sharing and evaluating

data jointly at this early stage can also help

build trust and confidence, expose areas where

participants disagree over matters of fact and,

if necessary, trigger further research or data-

gathering to resolve these differences. Sharing

proprietary data and intellectual property can be

difficult for companies and governments: some

collaborations, like the US-China Clean Energy

Research Center, have spent considerable effort to

find ways for participants to do this (Case Study 5,

page 40).

Just as important is the realisation that for

complex problems the answers might not all be

out there. Building trust and alignment doesn’t

require an exhaustive set of data on all aspects of the

problem: the key is that all the collaborators agree

on the data that does exist and work through

disagreements over matters of fact. Piloting

ideas to test the waters can sometimes be a more

powerful way to deepen understanding than trying

to accumulate more data.

In Malaysia, the government’s Performance

Management and Delivery Unit established a data-

sharing and scrutiny exercise on an enormous

scale. Civil servants collected data that was

then taken on a roadshow, and was shared and

discussed with members of the public. The public

loved it and the process meant they were much

more ready to buy into the policy decisions that

followed. (See Case Study 4, page 38 for more

information on PEMANDU).

It’s not just data that can cause dissent. There are

often differences in the way participants perceive

the context of a problem, depending on their

mindset, culture and history. Upmanu Lall, director

of the Columbia Water Center, has worked on

many water-related collaborations around the

world. “Wherever we work, we reach out to local

NGOs, government agencies and corporations.

What we find is that invariably each entity has a

very idiosyncratic view of what the problems are

and they don’t match anybody else’s”.

While none of our interviewees has a fail-safe

approach for overcoming differences in perception,

many agree that it is worth investing time and effort

to create as much alignment as possible. In the end,

there is no substitute for talking, listening and trying

to understand the motivations and culture of the

other partners. The next phase in the process,

creating a shared narrative, can also help with this.

Develop deep alignment

We reach out to local NGOs, government agencies and corporations. Invariably each entity has a very

idiosyncratic view of what the problems are there and they don’t match anybody else’s.

Upmanu Lall, director, Colombia Water Center

“

Understand the context

36 37

Case Study 4: PEMANDU

Since independence, Malaysia has had decades of rapid economic growth and it is now an upper-middle income country. The government has set the objective of making Malaysia a high-income economy by 2020, while following a growth process that is both inclusive and sustainable.

To support this goal, the government established

the Performance Management and Delivery Unit

(PEMANDU) in 2009. PEMANDU is tasked with

identifying how this goal can be achieved across

a range of economic sectors that are intended

to deliver this growth. It has used a process of

intensive “labs” to share expertise and create a

detailed implementation strategy for each of the

growth opportunities that have been identified.

Ministers are then obliged to commit to the goals

publicly and are tested on their delivery. The

policies and implementation strategies are huge

collaborative efforts, spanning both the public and

private sectors, and involving different government

departments, companies and civil society.

The staff of PEMANDU are drawn from many

departments of the civil service, but they share the

same working space. This allows them to develop

ideas quickly and test some of these rapidly

through pilot programmes – for example, they

tested a policy idea for the retail sector on

a small shop.

Idris Jala, deputy-chairman and CEO of PEMANDU,

explains that after an extensive process of

gathering data and formulating policy ideas, the

unit organises roadshows where they exhibit their

data and conclusions and invite a discussion with

members of the public – a process that has built

considerable public trust and confidence in the work.

More information:

www.pemandu.gov.my

38 39

Case Study 5: The US-China Clean Energy Research Center

The US and China together contribute more than a third of global greenhouse gas emissions, and both countries have a central role to play in mitigating climate change.

In November 2009, President Barack Obama

and President Hu Jintau launched the $150 million

US-China Clean Energy Research Center (CERC).

With participation from universities, research

institutions and industry, the CERC aims to enable

scientists and engineers from the United States

and China to collaborate on clean energy projects.

Intellectual Property is a key consideration for

companies participating in collaborative R&D.

To address this, the CERC has introduced a new

framework for the protection and distribution

of IP between China and the US. The idea is to give

research partners the confidence they need to

share information while maintaining rights for the

technologies they develop and ensuring they get a fair

share of the rewards from technology breakthroughs.

The CERC supports a broader agenda of

deepening collaboration and cooperation between

China and the US, including the announcement

in November 2014 of a joint commitment by the

two countries to make specific reductions to CO2

emissions over the coming decade.

More information:

www.us-china-cerc.org

40 41

The most frequent and emphatic advice we

received from collaborative leaders was to agree

on an explicit, written, common narrative for

the collaboration. This narrative should lay out

the partners’ shared vision: the goal of the work,

the context, and possibly the principles that the

partners will initially use to guide them as they work

together to find solutions.

This is not a project plan or a roadmap – it doesn’t

focus on the ‘what’ or the ‘how’ of what the

collaboration partners will do together. Instead,

it focuses on the ‘why’: the underlying purpose

of the collaboration.

Practitioners suggest that narratives are most

effective when they are:

calculated – analytically rigorous and firmly

rooted in empirical facts

captivating – able to inspire and connect

emotionally with the collaboration participants

concise – shorter than two pages.

Leaders identified several advantages to creating a

shared narrative. First, as with sharing data, the process

of creating a shared narrative builds trust and provides

partners with experience of working together.

Creat

e a

shared narrative

Second, a shared narrative forces partners to

reach an explicit agreement on the central

points of the collaboration. This process can reveal

differences of opinion. One leader commented that

the ability to form a shared narrative is an acid test:

if partners can’t agree on a common narrative,

then there is probably little scope for the

collaboration to succeed.

Finally, a shared narrative becomes a tool that a

leader can use to retain focus. Collaborations can lose

momentum as time elapses and practical challenges

accumulate; some leaders advocate minimising

this risk by returning to the narrative frequently to

remind partners of the purpose and vision for the

collaboration. This resonates with the findings of

Robert Axelrod on cooperative behaviour – the

more you emphasise future payoffs, the more

incentive there is for collaboration in the present

(see Robert Axelrod and the implications of game

theory, opposite page).

Create a shared narrative

42 43

The 20th century saw the emergence of a

branch of mathematics known as Game Theory,

for analysing situations where two or more people

have the opportunity to cooperate.

In the Prisoner’s Dilemma, for example, two

prisoners are being interrogated by police. If both

remain silent, they will each spend a year in prison.

If one gives evidence against the other, the first

will go free and the other will spend five years

in prison. But if both give evidence against one

another, they will each spend three years in prison.

In this situation, the best overall outcome is for the

two prisoners to cooperate by remaining silent. But

unless a prisoner can ensure that the other will

cooperate, the logical thing to do is give evidence.

But of course if both prisoners do this, they both

end up spending an extra two years in prison.

More sophisticated games give a different

outlook. In 1984, Robert Axelrod published The

Evolution of Cooperation, which explored the

implications of game theory for cooperation in

a number of spheres, from ecosystems to the

trenches of World War I. Axelrod studied games

more complex and realistic than the Prisoner’s

Dilemma, in particular where there were repeated

opportunities to interact and cooperate over time,

rather than a one-off opportunity.

Axelrod drew useful lessons about how to cooperate

successfully. Emphasise the value of future positive

pay-offs as much as possible. Change the effective

payoffs to make cooperation more attractive.

Encourage a culture of altruistic behaviour. Practise

reciprocity. Ensure that an individual’s behaviour is

recognised, so that it can be rewarded or punished

by other participants.

It is striking how many of these theoretical

insights are reflected in the experience of the

collaborators we spoke with. Many of them, for

example, advised leaders to keep reminding

participants of the future rewards from achieving

the goal of the collaboration, and to recognise

and reward collaborative behaviour.

Thought Pioneers:Robert Axelrod and the implications of game theory

43

Case Study 6: The H

2 Mobility

Project

Transport accounts for almost a quarter of energy-related CO

2

emissions globally. One of the promising technologies that may enable a lower-carbon future for transport is the fuel cell: a technology that can convert hydrogen fuel into electrical power, creating only water as a by-product.

Fuel-cell powered cars are already feasible and

have a number of attractive qualities – they are fast

to refuel, are able to store enough fuel for very long

journeys and create no tailpipe pollution.

Building the partnership

The H2 Mobility Project is a cross-industry

collaboration that is working to expand the use

of hydrogen-powered vehicles in Germany.

The consortium includes six members: Air Liquide

and Linde, suppliers of industrial gases; Daimler,

an automotive corporation; and Shell, OMV and

Total, oil and gas companies.

Even before building a single fuelling station, the

consortium has invested a considerable amount

of time in identifying a common purpose and

creating deep alignment.

Common purpose

The collaboration is helping to overcome a chicken-

and-egg problem that faces hydrogen cars (and

other new transport technologies): without a robust

refuelling infrastructure, drivers will not want to use

hydrogen-fuelled cars; but if there are no hydrogen-

fuelled cars, there is no commercial case for building

a refuelling infrastructure. Thus, all members of the

partnership are needed to achieve the ultimate goal.

The project is currently working to build one

hundred refuelling stations over the next four

years, and to expand this to four hundred by

2023: a total investment of €350 million. This will

accompany a planned 250,000 fuel-cell vehicles by

the same date.

Understanding the context and setting an

appropriate architecture

Following its inception in September 2009, the

participants came together to develop a fact-

based analysis of vehicle power trains that could

meet the EU’s long-term goal to reduce emissions

by 80% by 2050. This achieved two things. It

created a common understanding of the context

that highlighted the importance of hydrogen in

decarbonising road transport, and a shared set

of data and assumptions that were accepted by

all partners. It also helped to shape a common

narrative and vision that was shared by the group.

The consortium has also thought deeply about

resourcing and the roles that each partner will play

at an early stage – a difficult process, but one that

has helped to lay strong foundations for the work

to come.

Common narrative and sharing power

The group developed innovative ways to address

differences and ensure that power was shared

equally among them. On one occasion, when there

was a lack of alignment, they gathered together

and used flipcharts to note areas of mutual

agreement and areas of disagreement.

At the end of this process, there were five flipcharts

of agreement and only one of disagreement –

a moment that reminded all participants of their

common purpose and their shared interest in

making the collaboration succeed.

44 45

The moment you marginalise a ‘less powerful’

partner is the moment you lose

the partner and ultimately the collaboration.

Matthew Thomas, managing director, Prospect Madison

“The power dynamics of the collaboration are

vital. As Matthew Thomas, managing director

at Prospect Madison, puts it, “the moment you

marginalise a less powerful partner is the moment

you lose the collaboration and the partner”.

One way of sharing power is to work in a shared

space that belongs to the collaboration as a whole

rather than an individual player. Adam Kahane,

Partner at Reos Partners, believes the conceptual

shared space of the Sustainable Food Lab was

crucial for maintaining energy and direction,

by bringing partners together continually even

during times of setback and disappointment.

The shared space also helped to level the

differences in size, power and resources between

partners (see Case Study 7, page 48).

Idris Jala says that moving collaborators into a

shared physical space was a good way to break

down silos and build an ethic of working jointly.

Some leaders also cited shared digital spaces such

as social networks.

Another means of sharing power is to design

clear break points where participants can decide

whether to continue or walk away. This lets people

keep control of their participation, and renews

the legitimacy and unity of the collaboration

when they do decide to keep working together.

Establishing clarity over how partners can leave

and join a collaboration echoes Elinor Ostrom’s

observations of how to manage common resources

(see Elinor Ostrom, managing the commons,

page 50).

Build trust by sharing power

46 47

Case Study 7: Sustainable Food Lab

The Sustainable Food Lab began by bringing together 45 leaders from government, food processors, retailers, banks, non-governmental organisations and citizen and worker movements. With very different backgrounds, drawn from Europe, the United States and Latin America, these people had a common purpose: they wanted to change the food system for the better. All also realised that their individual efforts were not enough to create systemic change.

Starting from this common purpose, the

group used the Theory U process (see Otto

Schamer, Theory U, page 22) to create a shared

understanding of many of the challenges facing

the food system, while simultaneously building

trust among the participants.

Quite a few initiatives and projects then emerged

from this shared vision. Though some foundered,

many others succeeded. Today the Lab is working on

several continents with agriculture and development,

more climate-friendly agricultural practices and more

sustainable commodity production.

More information:

www.sustainablefoodlab.org,

and Power and Love: A Theory and Practice

of Social Change, Adam Kahane

48 49

51

It’s best to start with a small pilot, run it for a full year, and

make sure that you can actually really

document and prove the success. That’s your sell in.

Once I had a single case that showed

what could be done, the support and

enthusiasm within our company was

unbelievable.Guido Verijke, former chairman,

Better Cotton Initiative

“

In 2009, Elinor Ostrom became the first woman to

receive the Nobel Prize for Economics, awarded for

her work on collaborative behaviour.

She focused on how people collaborate to manage

common resources such as fisheries and grazing

land. These resources have a finite capacity, but are

open to use by many individuals. This can result

in the ‘tragedy of the commons’: the resource

is degraded by over-use because nobody feels

sufficiently responsible to restrain their own use,

so eventually everybody loses out.

Ostrom’s work was based on years of observation.

She spent time in Maine looking at how communities

managed fisheries; in Switzerland to observe how

mountain farmers shared pastures; and in Kenya

and Nepal to see how farmers shared water resources.

She concluded that the traditional distinction

between the private sector and the state is much

too simplistic. Communities in a wide range of

contexts collaborate to manage common resources

without being coerced into doing so by an external

authority. So the tragedy of the commons is

not inevitable, even without government regulation.

She also found that collaborations work best where

participants can communicate face to face regularly.

Also, people collaborate more readily when they

recognise that their individual actions can make a

significant difference to the outcome. And providing

low-cost routes to leave the collaboration gives

participants an incentive to ensure that the project

remains worthwhile for everyone involved.

These observations reflect many of the lessons

drawn by the leaders we spoke with: the need for

regular communication, reminding participants

of the potential for achieving results together, and

providing regular gateways for participants to leave.

Thought Pioneers:Elinor Ostrom, managing the commons

50 51

Pilot and scale

Probably the greatest danger point in collaborations

comes when a project moves on from the design

phase, and seeks to pilot and scale its ideas.

Personnel often change. Resource requirements

increase. And pilots often uncover unanticipated

consequences and complications that can sap the

energy of the collaboration.

Although there is no way of avoiding these challenges

altogether, there are ways to mitigate them.

More than one of our interviewees emphasised the

importance of maintaining a collaborative mindset –

recognising that collaboration is a dynamic process

of creation to fulfil a purpose, with many possible and

equally valid ways of doing so. This is particularly true

when responding to unanticipated developments

and failures, where collaborators may revert to a

more transactional relationship and seek to assign

blame, rather than search jointly for solutions.

One option is to think ahead, and bring in some of

the people who will be involved in pilots and scaling

at an earlier stage, so they understand the purpose

of the collaboration, feel ownership and get used to

a collaborative style of working.

If you want to know whether a collaborative project

is going to fly, you obviously need to pilot it. Even at a

small scale, pilots can provide valuable information

about the practical challenges of implementing ideas.

Indeed, in a complex and dynamic system, pilots may

be the only way to understand the effects of implementing

an idea. There are usually unintended consequences in

such situations, and not all pilots will succeed. Pilots also

create additional trust as the collaboration team work

together to make them happen.

Many collaborative leaders advocate a “fail fast, fail

often” attitude towards pilots. Explicitly acknowledging

that they are primarily tools for gathering information

puts the emphasis on joint learning, and ensures

that the collaboration is not destabilised by failures or

unintended consequences.

However, while collaborations must become

accustomed to failure at the piloting stage, more

than one interviewee emphasised the importance

of taking smart risks, by building success into

early pilots as much as possible. Patrick Rousseau

of Veolia Water India and Guido Verijke of the

Better Cotton Initiative both highlighted the value

of successful pilots in getting buy-in from external

stakeholders for scaling up.

In Malaysia, the government’s Performance

Management and Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) has

repeatedly tested new policy ideas in the field by

running pilot projects (see Case Study 4: PEMANDU,

page 38). In Singapore, collaboration between the

public and private sectors on piloting new water

treatment technologies has yielded significant

benefits for both (see Case Study 8: Singapore

Water Policy, page 54).

Many experienced collaborators say that the pilot-

and-scale stage is actually the second of two main

danger points in the collaboration journey (see In

Focus: The twin valleys of death, page 57).

Brave the valley of death Use pilots to build knowledge and trust

52 53

Case Study 8: Singapore Water Policy

Singapore’s small area, dense population and scarce freshwater supplies have forced it to develop one of the world’s most innovative water management plans.

The country plans to eliminate its dependence

on water imports by 2060, using an extensive

urban rainwater catchment system combined with

wastewater reclamation and desalination to boost

supply, plus water pricing and efficiency measures

to cut demand.

The government recognised that new technology

would be critical for achieving this vision, and

that the private sector would need to be involved.

By creating a supportive business environment,

including financial incentives, they have

encouraged companies to move their R&D

on water issues to Singapore.

Private companies gain from this collaboration by

being able to pilot new technologies on a real water-

treatment system, while the government gains

from developing a hub of world-leading water-

management expertise in Singapore.

This approach has brought additional benefits

by creating commercial opportunities for

Singaporean companies overseas. For example,

Hyflux, which produced the membranes used

in Singapore’s desalination and water plants,

has now built water-recycling plants in China.

54 55

The path of collaboration is fraught with difficulties, but there are two

particular low points that can cause the enterprise to fail. Think of this

as a W shape.

After strong beginnings with a sense of common purpose and mission,

things become harder as collaborators work towards creating a collective

narrative and identifying each participant’s roles and responsibilities. All

parties now have to learn to share power, which can lead to tensions;

and explore the scope of their work together in detail, which can reveal

conflicting expectations. Energy is being spent with no immediate rewards.

If a deep internal alignment emerges along with a truly shared vision, the

collaboration regains momentum and heads back up into the light.

Then the collaboration seeks to pilot its ideas, which often sends it

plunging into the second trough of the W (see Brave the valley of death,

page 52).

Resource requirements increase, which means seeking approval and

buy-in from senior leaders in the participating organisations. This can be

difficult enough in just one organisation but doing it simultaneously with

many organisations is often paralysing. If you manage to build this external

alignment, you will have navigated the second valley successfully and be

heading back up to the heights of collaboration.

It’s worth being aware of these low points, as these are the places where

collaborations need the strongest support.

The twin valleys of death

In Focus

57

The two pieces of advice I would give are be prepared for the long haul and give up on the idea that you can control or manipulate the results. Otherwise you won’t get very far.

Adam Kahane, chairman, North America, Reos Partners.

“

When your pilot is working effectively, the next step

is to scale. But this almost always requires buy-in

and commitment from people and organisations

that have not been involved directly before, a

painful process that kills off many collaborations.

Among those we examined, only a few

collaborations navigated the path beyond this valley

of death (above). The Tropical Rainforest Alliance is

one example of an initiative that may now be able to

achieve systemic change at a global scale (see Case

Study 9, page 58).

This is where the narrative can help. Thinking carefully

about how the narrative of the collaboration relates

to the narrative and priorities of external stakeholders

can make the scaling process much more effective.

Successful pilots can also help by showing

stakeholders what has already been achieved.

Some leaders discussed the importance of

focusing on precisely what is being scaled.

For example, Meenakshi Sharma, vice president of

sustainability and communications at SABMiller India,

pointed out that the solutions for a successful

pilot project are often very dependent on the local

context: a particular choice of technology, say, or

business model. Even if this works for one pilot in

one context, it may not be the appropriate solution

in other settings.

As a result, it may be valuable to think of scaling

not to reproduce the same technology or business

model, but rather to reproduce the discussion and

collaboration that yielded a successful outcome

at a pilot scale. The outcome may be a range of

different technology or business model choices in

different settings, but the goal and the process of

deciding on these are the same.

Scale intelligently

56 57

Case Study 9: Tropical Forest Alliance 2020

The Tropical Forest Alliance 2020 aims to reduce the deforestation caused by the production of paper and pulp, palm oil, soy and beef.

The Alliance is a tri-sector collaboration, with

participants from government, NGOs and

industry – including McDonald’s, Unilever, Nestlé,

Cargill and Coca-Cola. Participating companies

have committed to purging their supply chains of

products from deforested areas by 2020.

The scale of private-sector participation means that

TFA 2020 has a decent chance of creating change

at a system level. Members account for 15% of the

total consumer market and more than 50% of the

global trade in palm oil. Given the inefficiency of

keeping oil from different sources separate, this

may be enough to prompt the entire global market

to switch to sustainable palm oil.

The initiative is supported by another collaboration,

the Banking Environment Initiative, which is

a group of banks that help companies and

their suppliers develop appropriate finance for

sustainable commodities.

More information:

www.tfa2020.com,

New Climate Economy report.

58 59

Leadership for successful collaboration

New leadership skills

Use purpose to lead

The defining feature of successful collaboration

leaders is their ability to use the underlying

purpose to drive the collaboration forward.

Leaders of non-collaborative projects within single

organisations can exercise authority by relatively

simple means such as their control over hiring and

performance appraisals. They also have considerable

sway in determining the solutions to the problems

their teams are tackling.

However, leaders in collaborations generally

don’t have direct hierarchical authority over all

the participants, as they are from many different

organisations. Nor can they dictate solutions –

collaborations must find answers interactively.

Instead, collaboration leaders should articulate

the purpose of the collaboration strongly at the

outset, and then maintain the partners’ focus

on that purpose throughout. There are several

practical approaches that can help, such as using Credit: AJP/Shutterstock.com

Leading collaborative projects requires many skills that aren’t necessarily evident in more conventional projects. In most of the successful collaborations we looked at, there was strong leadership both from a CEO or equivalent and from someone responsible for the collaboration at an operational level.

the opening section of each project meeting to

remind everyone of the purpose, and dedicating

time to co-creating a shared narrative for a

collaboration during its early phases.

Since collaborations are often iterative processes,

involving trial and error, collaboration leaders are often

confronted with decisions over whether to change

course or adopt new approaches as the project

progresses. With an eye firmly on the purpose,

it’s much easier to make these such decisions.

Show personal commitment

Collaboration leaders are much more effective

when they are visibly committed to the initiative

at an emotional as well as a professional level.

Collaborations are risky enterprises both for the

participating organisations and for the individuals

involved. The payoff may be large, but it is also

uncertain, and there are considerable costs.

The leader needs above all to inspire, particularly in

the early stages where costs are great and benefits

are yet to appear.

Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb differentiates

between different sorts of leadership: instructional

leadership, based on techniques that can be taught

or learnt; institutional leadership, with an authority

that comes with an individual’s position in an

organisation; and inspirational leadership, which

relies on trust, loyalty and relationships, and is

deeply personal. The most successful collaboration

leaders are the inspirational ones.

But how to demonstrate personal commitment

in practice? One way is to involve leaders that

are likely to stay in post for the duration of the

collaboration. Another is to consider not only the

leaders’ skills and abilities but also their values.

Are their personal and professional interests

well-enough aligned with the purpose of the

collaboration to let them champion it credibly both

to the collaboration partners and the outside world?

Support the collaboration’s values

As collaborations form and evolve, they often

develop cultures and values of their own, distinct

from the culture of any of the organisations that

are participating. Nobel laureate Elinor Ostrom

documented the emergence of such norms in her

studies of collaborations around the world (see

Elinor Ostrom, managing the commons, page 50).

As the World Economic Forum’s Lisa Dreier put it,

“all of the groups we worked with have developed

their own culture of constructive collaboration and

will often address issues by peer-to-peer feedback

or advice if they feel someone is acting out of line”.

That does not mean leaders are out of the loop.

They can support the emergence of values within

a collaboration by ensuring the process feels

inclusive. If people feel their views are being heard,

they are more likely to engage in forming norms

and values, and to address situations where they

feel that other participants are breaking their

collective rules.

Several leaders spoke of the importance of

adopting an inclusive, listening style of leadership,

including General David Petraeus who emphasised

the value of what he refers to as the “Big Tent”

approach. For operational leaders, a key component

of this inclusivity is to be present with participants –

we explore this in more detail on page 65 in

The role of operational leaders.

60 61

You must constantly expose

people to what the benefits can

be, and why this is necessary to deal

with challenges that are very

different today from what they were yesterday.

Shyam Saran, former foreign secretary, India

“The role of CEOs and other senior leaders

All our interviewees agree that the CEO’s support

is pivotal to any business collaboration. CEOs need

to be very visible in their commitment, and take

practical steps to support the collaboration and

its leadership.

Provide material resources

Perhaps the most important practical way

in which CEOs can support collaborations is

to provide enough resources. Several of our

interviewees have experienced collaborations that

failed through inadequate resourcing, sometimes

when participants overestimated their partners’

ability or willingness to contribute. Resource

needs can change unpredictably, so CEOs need

to make sure that resources remain adequate for

the project’s needs throughout its lifecycle. This

is particularly important at certain danger points

along the path of collaboration (see In Focus:

The twin valleys of death, page 57).

Demonstrate commitment

It is important to be visibly committed to the

collaboration. Of course, leaders cannot spread

themselves too thinly. Peter Voser, former CEO of

Royal Dutch Shell, observes that: “it will not work

if a CEO tries to dance at too many weddings”.

The CEO’s remaining term also matters. Visible

support means little if the leader’s tenure could

end before the collaboration gains momentum. After

that initial bedding-in stage, however, a leadership

transition should be less of a problem. Deepak Jolly,

vice president of Coca–Cola India, spoke of planning

for a collaboration to last two CEOs so the new

incumbent can continue championing a collaboration

after the transition.

Support and empower operational leaders

Collaboration leaders face challenges that are

not typical of internal projects. They must be

accountable to other collaboration partners;

respond flexibly to unanticipated developments; and

maintain the collaboration through its early stages,

where a long time can pass before results are visible.

CEOs need to understand these challenges and

maintain realistic expectations of the timescales

involved, which can be much longer than in a

conventional internal project.

They also need to allow operational leaders

discretion to take decisions without having to

consult many levels of management. Those inside

the collaboration will understand both constraints

and opportunities better than anyone, and having

this discretion allows them to maintain credibility

and accountability with the other partners.

62 63

The role of operational leaders

Operational leaders face a host of challenges that

do not exist in more conventional projects. They

are the guardians of the vision and purpose, and

have to be accountable to all the participants while

maintaining a level of neutrality.

Retain vision and celebrate progress

Leading a collaboration to a successful outcome

means continually reminding participants why they

are collaborating, so that they don’t lose sight of the

initial purpose.

When a project hits difficulties, participants tend to

revert to more familiar modes of interaction that are

competitive or transactional. As Lieutenant-General

Sir Graeme Lamb put it, “you have to have a leader

with depth and strength of conviction that, even

under pressure, collaboration is still the answer”.

Unexpectedly, some of our interviewees pointed

towards the need for developing inner strength

to keep focus when the situation becomes

overwhelmingly complex. One suggested spending

one-third of working time exploring data; another

third engaging with people; and the final third

“staring at a blank wall” to reflect on the data and

the personal interactions.

It is also important to celebrate even small

successes – particularly at the early stages of the

collaboration journey – to build confidence, trust,

momentum and commitment.

Maintain responsibility and accountability

Collaboration leaders should be responsible for the

success of the collaboration as a whole, rather than

for realising the goals of any one partner. They also

need to be accountable, demonstrating to all partners

that they are holding the collaboration to its original

purpose and that progress is happening. This requires

a high degree of openness and transparency.

Remain close but retain neutrality

In many of the successful collaborations we have

explored, the project was led by someone from an

organisation that was separate and independent

from all the other participants. This neutrality

supports the development of trust. For example in

tri-sector collaborations (involving industry, NGOs

and civil society) the international organisations

and not-for-profit institutions may be seen as more

neutral than commercial companies, which can

make them a natural choice as collaboration leaders.

However, not all successful collaborations use a

neutral leader. We saw some successful partnerships

between corporations of a broadly similar size where

a stable balance of power came instead from giving

equal authority in decision making (see Establish an

appropriate architecture, page 32).

Collaboration leaders also need to work close

to the ground. Several interviewees say that key

factors in success are an intimate familiarity with

realities on the ground and a deep understanding

of the motivations of other partners and the

obstacles they face. Matthew Thomas of Prospect

Madison calls this contextual intelligence: the

ability to understand the priorities and concerns of

different types of organisation. Often, experience

of working in different kinds of organisation can

help to develop this ability.

64 65

You have to have a leader with depth and strength of conviction that, even under pressure, collaboration is still the answer.Lieutenant-General Sir Graeme Lamb

“

Michael Porter of the Harvard Business School

is one of today’s most influential thinkers on

business and organisations. Much of his work has

focused on competition – his five-forces analysis

of competition dynamics is taught in business

schools around the world.

Over the past decade, he and Mark Kramer, co-

founder of social impact consulting firm FSG, have

been articulating a concept they call creating

shared value. They argue that the interests of

business and society are not a zero-sum game

mediated by governments and regulators. Rather,

these interests are deeply interdependent, and so

it is strongly in the interest of business to create

economic value in a way that also creates value for

society by addressing its needs and challenges.

In the words of the authors, “the principle of shared

value creation cuts across the traditional divide

between the responsibilities of business and those

of government or civil society”. Because it doesn’t

matter to society whether value is created by the

private sector, the public sector or NGOs,

the challenge for all three sectors is to find the most

effective ways to work with each other to address

some of the complex needs of modern society.

The concepts underpinning shared value are

reflected in a number of the collaborations we

encountered in interviews and other research:

initiatives like Water4Crops (Case Study 1, page

26) show business working with NGOs and

government across sectors to address social

problems, while enhancing their own ability to

create value in their core business.

Thought Pioneers:Michael Porter, creating shared valueAs collaborations depend so much on communication, language must be

clear, precise and inspiring.

It is vital to maintain both clarity and accuracy in communication. Make it

simple, but don’t twist the message in order to simplify it. The messenger

matters as much as the message, particularly when working across sectors

or with civil society in tri-sector collaborations.

Above all, use language to inspire and unite participants. This means close

and regular communication and careful attention to the way things are

said. Matthew Thomas, of Prospect Maddison, observed that language can

be used very differently in different sectors. For example, the word ‘equity’ in

a commercial context is synonymous with ownership of a company, while

governments and NGOs tend to use the same word to mean equality or

fairness. Even when such differences sound trivial, the misalignment and

misunderstanding that can result are not.

Michael Daddo of the Shannon Company highlights the power of

developing a shared narrative in helping collaborators to find a common

language (see Create a shared narrative, page 42).

More than one of our interviewees stressed the importance of using

language that is positive and creative to describe a purpose. One gave the

example of requiring participants to express their desires as a positive

statement rather than a negative one. This focused them on the inspiring

mission of working towards a positive change, rather than working in

opposition to something.

Language matters

In Focus

66 67

Barriers to collaborationAll collaborations run into difficulty. Many, perhaps most, fail (see Case Study 10, Bhavyshia, page 72). So what are the problems most often encountered in collaborations, and how can they be overcome?

Case Study 10page 72

Lack of shared purpose

Description

A collaboration may find

itself without a clear shared

purpose, maybe because the

group was convened without

a clear need in mind or the

collaboration has not invested

enough time in aligning on

their shared purpose.

How to overcome

Start with a small group of

committed collaborators, who

have a clear collective need

and complementary skills and

abilities, and invest time in

defining together the shared

purpose of the collaboration.

01

Weak design or execution of governance structure

Description

Collaborations can lose

momentum and direction if

they lack a clear governance

structure or when senior

leaders from participating

organisations deviate from it.

How to overcome

Establish a clear governance

structure at the outset, with

for example clearly defined

decision points and meeting

schedules, and stick to it.

02

Deviation from shared purpose

Description

Collaborations can be derailed

if the direction of the work

moves away from the purpose

that they have agreed.

How to overcome

Continually remind

participants of the shared

purpose of the collaboration.

Having a written shared

narrative can support this.

03

Misalignment of mutual resource expectations

Description

Collaborations rely on

investment of resources from

all partners. Organisations

can overestimate the ability

or willingness of others to

contribute, or underestimate

how much they themselves

need to commit. This can lead

to collective under-resourcing

and failure of the collaboration.

How to overcome

Have an early and explicit

discussion on resourcing.

This may involve jointly

agreeing on a relatively

small resource commitment

at the outset, with defined

gateways where partners can

increase their commitment

later in the project.

04

68 69

Misinterpretation of actions

Description

Collaborations can suffer

when one organisation

misinterprets another’s actions.

This is usually unintentional

– though there are examples

of intentional misconstruction

particularly where projects

are highly politicised – but the

effect is to erode trust.

How to overcome

Use clear, simple and regular

communication. This can

include simple steps such as

ensuring that all partners are

invited to and informed of all

meetings.

05

Persistence of default behaviours

Description

Sometimes, collaborations

happen between

organisations that are used to

interacting in a different way

– for example as buyer and

seller. It can be hard to prevent

people from reverting to

their ‘default’ behaviour while

collaborating.

How to overcome

Remind participants of their

shared purpose, and of the

culture values and norms of

the collaboration.

06

Lack of internal collaboration

Description

Collaborations rely on

investment of resources from

all partners. Organisations

can overestimate the ability

or willingness of others to

contribute, or underestimate

how much they themselves

need to commit. This can lead

to collective under-resourcing

and failure of the collaboration.

How to overcome

Maintain clear internal

alignment on the

goals and objectives of the

collaboration,

and consistent internal

communication.

07

70 71

If you want to break down

inhibitions and defensiveness,

be as open and as non-possessive

with informationas possible.

Pavan Sukhdev, founder and CEO, GIST Advisory

“

Case Study 10: Bhavyshia

Collaborations fail regularly. Many of the leaders we interviewed had experienced failure repeatedly. Although failure is frustrating, it often yields useful lessons, and sometimes it can even sow the seeds of future success. The Bhavyshia Alliance is a case in point.

In 2006 in India, 55 million children under five

years old were underweight. That is 43 per cent of

the age group, one of the highest rates in the world.

And although the government gives more than $1

billion per year to tackling the issue, the level

of malnutrition has declined only very slowly.

The Bhavishya Alliance, consisting of 52 people and

their 26 organisations, was founded to help India

reach its Millennium Development Goal of halving

the number of malnourished children by 2015.

The alliance aimed to unite a diverse range of

stakeholders, but found itself increasingly divided

by tensions between government bureaucracies

and grassroots NGOs, between experts and

laymen, between donors and recipients, between

men and women, between international

consultants and Indian nationals. In the end,

the project was suspended.

Participant Adam Kahane says that the collaboration

had failed to address explicitly some of the

underlying differences of opinion and approach

between the collaboration partners. Although

grievances and disagreements were occasionally

voiced, the group never worked through to find

workable compromises and common ground.

Lacking a common narrative and vision, the group

found itself unable to proceed together towards

meaningful action.

Since this difficult initial experience, many of the

participants have reconvened and begun to re-

build the alliance. This resulted in a number of

innovative tri-sector initiatives aimed at improving

child nutrition in India, including programmes to

empower adolescent girls and to improve the

quality of nutrition in childcare centres.

More information:

http://www.synergos.org/knowledge/12/

bhavishyaalliancelegacyandlearning.pdf

72 73

Creatingcollaborative organisationsDo some organisations collaborate more successfully than others and, if so, why?

Our interviewees agree that the culture of

participating organisations can play a vital role

in making collaborations succeed. We have

grouped their lessons into four areas.

Emphasise leadership based on accountability and trust

Collaborative leaders are most successful when

they are accountable for progress to the entire

partnership. Accountability engenders trust and

confidence in a leader will grow as he or she delivers

on their commitments to the partnership.

Collaborations move in ways that are sometimes

unexpected and they can lose momentum easily.

So leaders need the freedom to make decisions

quickly and respond to unforeseen events. That

means giving them a clear mandate, empowering

them to act and providing adequate resources.

In organisations that are highly hierarchical and

centralised – where decision-making that deviates

from the original scope of a project has to be

approved by layers of senior management –

there is tension between the rigidity of the

corporate culture and the flexibility needed by

collaboration leaders.

Sometimes such organisations may be able to work

with partners of a similar size, with similar corporate

cultures and structures. In such collaborations,

steering committees of senior leaders meeting

regularly can address bottlenecks and make course

corrections – an approach well suited to small

collaborations with two or three participants.

An alternative is to adopt a corporate culture

that distributes power through the organisation

and creates an environment more conducive to

bottom-up decision making. This means a system

based on trust and accountability, rather than on

command and control.

Accountability based on measurement and structure is less important than accountability that comes from building trust. Self-driven accountability seems to be associated much more with successful collaboration than engineered accountability.Arun Sundararajan, professor of business, New York University

“

74 75

Establish strong vertical and horizontal communication

A collaboration can become frustrated if partners

get mixed or contradicting signals from different

parts of the same organisation. Horizontal, peer-to-

peer communication should prevent this, but it can

require a special effort in organisations where there

is a strong vertical separation between different

functions.

Vertical communication in both directions is also

vital. CEOs and other senior executives need to

listen to collaboration leaders who have the best

understanding of realities on the ground. In turn,

collaboration leaders need to understand how

their work fits with the company’s overall direction.

Understand collaboration throughout the organisation

A widespread understanding of the nature and

value of collaborations can help create a supportive

environment within an organisation. For example,

knowing that the early stages can take a long time

without yielding visible results can help to ensure

that collaboration leaders do not face unreasonable

expectations at the outset.

It’s also useful and supportive to have a clear

framework for describing both the value and

the cost of a collaboration.

Reward collaborative behaviour

Organisations can set incentives that reward

collaborative behaviour. It may not be possible to

quantify the benefits of collaborative behaviour

in the same way as, say, a sales target, so

organisations may have to be innovative. In online

collaborative software development, for example,

peers can rate their collaborators’ contributions and

register their appreciation for helpful contribution.

All this feedback contributes to an individual’s

reputation (see Case Study 11, Linux, page 78).

Even the most enlightened and thoughtful CEOs are not used to making compromises, making tradeoffs, acknowledging the quality of a competitor’s idea. I think the next generation of CEOs will have to have very different skill sets, and collaborative working will be one of them.

Gavin Neath, former senior vice president for sustainability at Unilever

“

76 77

Case Study 11: Linux

One of the most striking and unexpected phenomena to have emerged from the development of the internet is “open source” software – computer code that is free to use and share, often created by a large number of contributors working in their spare time.

A widely used example is Linux, an operating

system first released in 1991 and in constant

development ever since. Linux is the software

engine for millions of digital devices, including the

Android system that powers most of the world’s

mobile phones.

Arun Sundararajan of the Stern School of Business,

New York University, attributes the success of the

Linux collaboration to two factors. One was the

leadership of the project’s director, Linus Torvalds,

whose strong vision of what the software could

become served both as a focus and inspiration

to programmers. The other was a system

for recognising contributions: programmers

gained reputation and visibility for their efforts.

This combination of shared vision and assured

recognition has provided enough of an incentive

for thousands of programmers to contribute over

more than two decades.

78 79

Case Study 12: CityLab

Cape Town is the second most populous city in South Africa. It faces challenges including the need to reduce unemployment (now at more than 20%), improve healthcare and education, reduce poverty, and bring down a crime rate that is double the national average.

At the University of Cape Town, the African Centre

for Cities (ACC) is conducting research into cities,

with a focus on finding systemic solutions to the

challenges thrown up by urbanisation in Africa. Its

director, Professor Edgar Pieterse, was frustrated by

the divide between academics, policy researchers

and policy makers in addressing these challenges.

So the ACC created CityLab to allow different

stakeholders – academics, community

organisations, NGOs and government officials –

to collaborate in designing educated,

implementable policies for South Africa using a

combination of empirical research and practical

knowledge. Four ACC researchers are even

embedded in Cape Town’s city administration,

creating a hybrid policymaking-academic entity.

Over a two-year period they work on multi-

stakeholder topics that the city finds difficult to

deal with, such as climate-change adaptation

policy. This is a long enough timeframe to allow

strong working relationships and trust to develop

between collaborators.

More information:

www.africancentreforcities.net/

programme/citylab/

80 81

This report marks the start of an exploration of collaboration. We hope it will contribute to building a stronger understanding of how collaborations work, with the ultimate aim of increasing the success of collaborative ventures in the future.

One way we will take this work forward is to

create a new dynamic learning network of

collaboration practitioners within Shell: executives

who are now grappling with the realities of

leading collaborative projects across both internal

and external boundaries. They will be testing and

building on the collaboration insights from our

initial research – getting practical and sharing

what they learn, peer-to-peer.

Xyntéo and Shell will also be working to apply

the lessons from this report to practical

collaborative projects, in turn learning new

lessons from these experiences.

There is scope for doing more. For example this

work could evolve to develop several collaboration

networks within a number of different organisations,

creating a platform to learn not only within our own

organisations but also beyond them.

To learn more about the work we are doing,

to give feedback or more examples of effective

lessons for collaborations or to become involved

in any other way, please visit the Xyntéo

website at www.xynteo.com or contact us at

collaboration@xynteo.com.

Takingthe next steps

Everything today is about building a

story that people believe in and

that people can be involved and

engaged in.

António Mexia, CEO, Energias de Portugal

“

82 83

Interviewees and source material

Case study sources

Material is drawn from

n Interviews with collaborative leaders

n Projects in the GLTE community, such as

LNG in shipping

(www.xynteo.com/projects)

n The Policy Shapers project, which Xyntéo has

been undertaking in conjunction with Shell

(www.xynteo.com/projects/policy-shapers)

n The New Climate Economy report –

Xyntéo participated in the preparation of

this landmark publication in 2014

(www.newclimateeconomy.report/)

Collaborative leaders

Jeremy Bentham

is vice president of Global Business

Environment at Royal Dutch Shell.

He has been responsible for Shell’s

Global Business Environment team

since 2006. His team is best known for developing

forward-looking scenarios to support the company’s

strategic thinking and direction-setting.

Rati Bhattacharya

is delivery manager for sustainability

projects at Tata Consultancy Services,

a global IT services, consulting and

business solutions provider. She

focuses on defining and implementing sustainability

strategies for manufacturing industries. Her areas of

work include water credit-debit models and working

with water-intensive industries on water neutrality.

Dr Mick Blowfield

is a professor at the University

of Wolverhampton and a senior

visiting associate at the University

of Oxford. Dr Blowfield’s research

focuses on private sector transition in a resource-

constrained economy and specifically on business as

an agent of change in the context of climate change.

Flavio Corsin

is the country manager for Vietnam

and Asia-Pacific aquaculture

manager at the IDH Sustainable

Trade Initiative. He is experienced

in developing relationships with Asian governments

and has valuable insights into what drives changes

in the Vietnamese commodity sectors.

Jay Cowles

is president of Unity Avenue

Associates and co-chair of the

Itasca Project’s Transportation

Committee. He was a founding

member of the Itasca Project, an employer-led civic

alliance focused on building a thriving economy

and improved quality of life in the US’s Minneapolis-

St Paul metropolitan area.

Michael Daddo

is managing director of specialist

behaviour-change consultancy

The Shannon Company in

Australia. The Shannon Company

works collaboratively with business, government

and academia to inspire people to change, willingly

and for good – good for themselves, their family, the

organisation they work for and society as a whole;

and for good – a permanent change.

Lisa Dreier

is senior director for food security and

development initiatives at the World

Economic Forum (WEF) in the US.

She leads the Forum’s New Vision for

Agriculture initiative, which serves as a platform to build

collaboration among stakeholders to achieve a vision

of agriculture as a driver of food security, environmental

sustainability and economic opportunity.

Dr Theuns Eloff

was vice-chancellor of North-

West University in South Africa.

He played a leading role in

post-apartheid South Africa by

galvanising the drafting of the country’s new

constitution as well as the integration of universities

that had been racially segregated. As his second

term as vice-chancellor has come to an end, he is

now a director of companies and consultant at large.

Reverend John Freeth

is former chief advisor to Archbishop

Desmond Tutu. He played a pivotal

role in South Africa’s Truth and

Reconciliation Commission, which

demanded profound collaboration between parties.

Thomas Gensemer

co-founded and was CEO of

digital agency Blue State Digital.

There, he created and managed

the 2008 and 2012 social media

campaigns for President Obama which mobilised

13.5 million Americans; causing charities, brands and

Republicans alike to take note. He is now US chief

strategy officer for Burson-Marsteller, a global public

relations and communications firm.

This report draws on interviews that Xyntéo conducted with 39 collaborative leaders, as well as case-study materials from those interviews and other sources known to Xyntéo, and published literature.

84 85

Ilkka Herlin

is chairman of cargo-handling

solutions provider Cargotec. Mr

Herlin also heads the Baltic Sea

Action Group, which brings a

number of partners together to clean one of the

world’s most polluted seas.

Huang Guoshu

is vice chairman of Sinew

Corporation, which has developed

an innovative business model

in China that works with local

government to develop a sustainable agriculture

industry chain and create a harmonious

community with farmers.

Idris Jala

is minister and CEO of the

Performance Management and

Delivery Unit (PEMANDU) for

the Malaysian Prime Minister’s

Department. PEMANDU aims to transform the

social and economic performance of Malaysia by

involving relevant stakeholders.

Merit Janow

is dean of the School of International

and Public Affairs (SIPA) at Columbia

University in the US, and chair of

the Nasdaq Exchange LLC. She is

an expert in international trade and investment.

Ms Janow was previously a judge on the World Trade

Organization’s Appellate Body.

Deepak Jolly

is vice president of Coca-Cola

India and South West Asia. As

a water consumer, Coca-Cola

is well versed in working with

government and civil society to ensure safe and

consistent water access.

Adam Kahane

is director of Reos Partners. Reos

is a social enterprise that helps

businesses, governments and

civil society organisations address

complex social challenges. Mr Kahane has had an

extensive career in collaborations, working in more

than 50 countries with executives and politicians,

generals and guerrillas, civil servants and trade

unionists, community activists and United Nations

officials, clergy and artists.

Lieutenant-General

Sir Graeme Lamb

is a retired British Army officer,

former commander of the Field

Army and former director of the

UK Special Forces. He was also deputy commanding

general of multinational forces in Iraq and special

advisor to the US General Stanley McChrystal

in Afghanistan. As a respected leader of joint

operations, Lieutenant General Lamb understands

the leadership required for successful collaboration

under extreme circumstances and at a large scale.

Upmanu Lall

is director of the Columbia Water

Center. Affiliated with Columbia

University and the Earth Institute,

the centre seeks to find creative

solutions to water challenges through collaborative

projects in several countries.

Li Junfeng

is deputy director general of the

Energy Research Institute at the

National Development and Reform

Commission in China. Responsible

for setting up the legislative framework for low-

carbon development in China, he consults regularly

across boundaries to achieve common goals.

António Mexia

is CEO of Energias de Portugal

(EDP), one of Europe’s major

electricity operators. EDP’s successful

experience in working in Angola

with the Clinton Global Initiative and UNHCR has

led to insights on the role of the private sector in

collaborations.

R Mukundan

is managing director of Tata

Chemicals, which has interests

in chemicals, crop nutrition and

consumer products. The Mumbai-

based company participates in many local initiatives

in India for improving agricultural practices and

farmer livelihood.

Gavin Neath

is former senior vice president

for sustainability at Unilever. The

multinational consumer goods

company has worked through

the Consumer Goods Forum to successfully

operationalise the Tropical Forest Alliance, an

international collaborative effort dedicated to the

conservation of tropical forests.

Mona Nilsson

works for Scandinavian furniture

retailer IKEA as change manager in

its traceability programme. She led

the implementation of a change

concept, training 7,000 managers, and oversaw

IKEA’s largest and most successful change project,

which targeted 65,000 users.

Karen O’Brien

is a professor at the Department of

Sociology and Human Geography,

University of Oslo. She has been

involved with Intergovernmental

Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment

reports and serves on the scientific committee for

Future Earth, the 10-year global change research

initiative.

David Petraeus

is chairman of KKR Global Institute,

partner at KKR, visiting professor

at City University of New York

and a Judge Widney professor

at the University of Southern California. He is a

former director of the Central Intelligence Agency

(CIA) and was a four-star general in the US Army,

commanding US and coalition forces during

the surges in Iraq and Afghanistan. He has unique

collaborative insights, including the necessity to

collaborate across the forces and through coalitions.

Patrick Rousseau

is chairman and managing director

of Veolia Water India. As a world

leader in water services active in

India, Bangladesh and Sri Lanka,

Veolia Water has collaborative experience in what is

one of the most water-poor regions on the planet.

Shyam Saran

is the former Indian foreign

secretary. He also served as Indian

Ambassador to Nepal, Indonesia

and Myanmar, among other

positions, and as India’s special envoy for climate

change from 2008 to 2010. He has extensive

experience in international negotiations and

domestic policy implementation.

86 87

Gerald Schotman

is the former Chief Technology

Officer and Executive Vice

President for Innovation/R&D at

Shell. His role was to ensure that

Shell develops and implements the right technology

to deliver energy projects across the world.

Meenakshi Sharma

is vice president of sustainability

and communications at SABMiller

India, India’s leading beer producer.

As one of the biggest water

consumers in a water stressed region, it

has significant practical collaborative experience.

Dave Steward

is the former South African

Ambassador to the UN and chief

of staff to former South African

President FW de Klerk. These roles

gave him a unique perspective on the collaborative

effort required to transition to the modern South Africa.

Pavan Sukhdev

is founder and CEO of GIST

Advisory, a consulting firm

that helps governments and

corporations discover, measure,

value and manage their impacts on natural and

human capital. Mr Sukhdev led a G8+5- project on

The Economics of Ecosystems and Biodiversity

(‘TEEB’) to develop a global study on the

economics of biodiversity loss.

Arun Sundararajan

is professor of business at New York

University. His research interests

include the sharing economy,

collaborative markets and

digital disruption.

Matthew Thomas

is the managing director of

Prospect Madison, a leadership

advisory firm aimed at enabling

cross-sector leaders to create new

solutions to society’s most pressing challenges, and

serves as a David Rockefeller Fellow of the Trilateral

Commission. He has spoken to audiences at the

White House and World Economic Forum,

and published his research in the Harvard

Business Review.

Robert Thurman

is professor of Indo-Tibetan

Buddhist studies at Columbia

University, holding the first

endowed chair in this field of

study in the US. He is an influential and prolific

American Buddhist writer and academic, with

deep collaborative insights.

Atsuko Toda

is the Nigeria country programme

manager at the International Fund

for Agricultural Development

(IFAD), an international financial

institution of the United Nations. Ms Toda has lead

collaborations in several countries that work with

rural people, governments, donors and non–

governmental organisations. The government of

Vietnam previously presented her with an award

honouring her work in the country.

Ivar Valstad

is project manager at Norsk Hydro.

Previously he was responsible

for overseeing the collaborative

projects Xyntéo facilitates through

its Global Leadership and Technology Exchange

(GLTE) programme.

Guido Verijke

is former chairman of the Better

Cotton Initiative, a cross-sector

collaboration that aims to

reduce the amount of water and

chemicals used to grow cotton and to improve the

social and economic prospects of cotton farmers.

Peter Voser

is former CEO of Royal Dutch Shell.

Before his appointment as CEO in

2009, he was chief financial officer.

Mr Voser pioneered the role of

business in water-energy-food-climate stress nexus

collaborations.

Leo Yip

was chairman of the Singapore

Economic Development Board

from 2009 to 2014. The board

has pioneered new forms of

collaboration between business and government

that has attracted many globally leading companies

to build up a significant presence in Singapore to

drive their business, innovation and talent activities

for not just Asia but also the global market.

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Mythbusters: surprising truths about successful collaborationOur conversations with collaboration leaders helped to bust some myths about collaborations to reveal some of the misperceptions that can cause them to fail.

You don’t have to like the people you’re collaborating with.

Sometimes there’s no alternative but to work with

people you don’t like, and may not even trust – but

it is possible if you have a shared purpose and

recognise that you need one another (see Focus

box: The personal dimension, page 29).

You can’t know what the answer will look like when you set out.

Collaborations have to start with a shared problem,

which requires all the partners to address. But no

single partner has the answers: the collaboration

has to create these together. (See Identify a

common purpose, page 24).

More can be less.

It’s tempting to assume that a broader coalition

can bring more weight to solving the problem.

Sometimes collaborating with many organisations

makes sense, but for others the result is a bloated

or divided effort that leads nowhere. The difference

between enough and too many is defined by two

questions: do all the participants share a common

purpose and are they all necessary to achieve it?

(See Create a partnership, page 28).

How you gather data is as important as the data itself.

Different stakeholders see problems through

different lenses. Involving everyone in the

process of gathering or verifying data can help to

overcome difference in perception. So the process

of data-gathering can be as important as the data

itself. (See Understand the context, page 36).

Collaborations need leaders more than managers.

Collaborations are always difficult and so they

need more than management: they need

leadership. Collaborative leaders seldom have

direct hierarchical control of those they are

leading, so they have to articulate a strong sense

of purpose to drive the collaboration forward (See

Use purpose to lead, page 60).

Don’t be tempted by quick commercial opportunities.

If the chance comes for one of the partners to

sell something to another, this can risk shifting

the mindset of the participants from relationships

to transactions. (See Persistence of default

behaviours, page 70). It can be wiser to ignore the

small prize of a quick commercial transaction to

allow the collaboration to mature and deliver more

substantial gains later.

Even with a long-term perspective, quick wins matter.

Collaborations are inherently medium- to long-

term plays: an investment of resources now that

will yield a prize in the future. While focusing on

the end result is important, it’s essential to give

participants a taste of early success – to give keep

the momentum when energy starts to flag.

Scale your team before you try to scale your project.

When a collaboration moves to piloting and

scaling, new people often enter the teams. Though

they can bring new energy and insights, they

may also not share the collaborative mindset

and sense of purpose. It can be helpful to involve

these people earlier, so they begin to take on the

collaboration’s culture and values before the pilot

phase. (See Brave the valley of death, page 52).

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