Use these two words to motivate collaboration

During our 1:1 call last week, a client asked how best to motivate others to invest their time and attention in an emerging collaboration.

I told him that two little words usually do the trick.

Before I tell you what those two little words are, let me share an analogy…

People don’t buy electric drills to put holes in the wall for the heck of it; they buy drills to put holes in the wall in order to hang shelves (among other uses, of course!).

Likewise, people don’t engage in collaboration for collaboration’s sake. Rather, they use the tool of collaboration to achieve valued ends. These include:

• Realizing bigger impacts in a faster, easier, more seamless way

• Ensuring an investment does more good in the long run

• Driving unexpected solutions to big problems

• Making it easier to respond to future crises and opportunities because partners already know and trust

• Identifying potential partners for future work

• Helping organizations weather challenging circumstances so they can get back to driving their mission

• Bolstering expertise through shared learning

In a nutshell, collaboration allows partners to achieve more than what any one person, one organization, or one foundation could achieve alone.

If you’re trying to make the case for collaboration, it’s critical that could-be collaborators know the valued ends the collaboration will serve. You need to make salient reasons why they need the tool of collaboration in the first place.

Here’s are the two little words that can unlock this awareness:

“Why bother?”

These two words remind people that the point of collaboration is not to join forces because it feels good or because it is easy; the point of collaboration is to join forces because the anticipated result clearly relates to the shared purpose and goals of the participants.  

If you’re gearing up for a complex collaboration of your own, or if you’re part of one that has gone off the rails, email admin@debmashek.com to learn about my collaboration strategy and design services. I’ve got the tools to help you do together better.