Challenges of Community and Collaboration

[Mushin J. Schilling]

Being an aficionado for collaboration, so much so that I've created a job for me being a Collaboration Ecologist, recently more often than not I've come to inquire into the question, "If, as seems to be the case, many if not most people and organisations in the world seek collaboration and want to become communities of mutually aided flourishing, how come it is not the greatest hit on Earth?"

Or as my friend Doug who's profession is coaching CEO's, among other things, tells me, "In the US now all companies want to collaborate. They just don't know how."

Remember New Year's resolutions? Remember, what you wanted to change in your life this year? To be honest, I never make any resolutions on New Year anymore, since remembering them later on is such a pain. The reason is most likely the same that keeps all the good willing people on this planet, including the businesses and organisations, from collaborating to change the course of the planetary commons - we don't like to face the deeper challenges that need overcoming. Actually I think the are the stuff out of which our advances are made.

So here are the challenges as they show up on my radar:

* Challenge # 1: Probably the mother of all challenges to collaboration and community - Trust, patience, 'deep' listening and heartfelt connection.
Looking at my experience in life, business and relationships, and of course at many, many theories of what community and collaboration is really based upon, these 4 'values' seem to be the most persistent ones.
* Challenge # 2: If #1 is the mother of all challenges, # 2 is the father - walking in somebody else's shoes.
People do not only have different characters and views, convictions, beliefs, theories and opinions, they are also on different levels of evolving towards what we could call "wisdom", something that doesn't come with age (as any acute observer of world- and human affairs has already noticed) but with developing all kinds of skills, lenses, and intelligences (heart, mind, gut, social, relational etc.). On the way to some wisdom, for a long time, people live in a land where they wouldn't know what it means to "walk in somebody else's shoes", leave alone that they would actually be able to do so. Yet, it is prerequisite to anything that resembles true collaboration.
* Challenge # 3: This one is centered around the question of leadership.
Community and collaboration are situated far beyond democracy - which is based on quantity, counting the number of voices, and not quality, what these voices are saying. The challenge is to find ways and means to govern ourselves so that the good, right and beautiful things are accomplished.
* Challenge #4: In the famous words of the Clinton Presidential Campaign in the USA, "It's the economy, stupid!"
Collaborations and communities, on top of being simply a good and soul-nourishing thing to participate in by and of themselves, often also produce goods and services, and a commons that is recreational, inspiring, relaxing etc. (a source of aliveness; something like that, and also something that can be marketed). Who gets to share what of the communally created revenues is the fourth major challenge that needs facing, if communities and collaborations are to be more than a hype.

If you thought that I have the answers and that I'm going to give them here, I have to disappoint you. Not that I don't have a number of very good ideas, processes and experiences around them (as many of my readers do as well), but if I were to tell them here, at maximum we would have a very interesting exchange of ideas and stories, and maybe even beliefs and convictions.And, so sorry, but I'm not really interested - mostly, because doing that will most likely lead to trying to make technical change out of the needed adaptive change.

There is a world of difference between technical change and adaptive change. A technical change you can manage using the given instruments and procedures. Often these revolve around a more effective use of the given instruments. You get long and wonderful To Do lists, that basically you need to check one after the other. Adaptive change asks you, on the contrary, to leave behind the old instruments and develop new ones. It requires you to adapt to a situation or process that you cannot yet analyse, and as such adaptive change is an "emergent phenomenon"... simply put, "Something is happening, but you don't know what it is - and you cannot control it either."

Sure, regarding myself as a Collaboration Ecologist I've got quite a number of processes and interventions up my sleeve that I can use in situations where people want to collaborate, and want some help. Often, I cannot do without them, yet these are not the secret of creating great ecologies in which collaboration and community flourishes. The real secret is this, "Find whatever helps the people present face the above challenges co-creatively, and go with what emerges in this group." If you've got compassion, experiential knowledge, a working intuition and some intelligence you will, most likely, empower the people to squarely face these challenges. Then, and so far I can speak for 100% success, what comes out of that process you will advance into the Fields of the Future where Collaboration is Natural again.