Giving Compass' Take:

• David B. Smith and Jeanine Becker explain that cross-sector collaboration is necessary to address the challenges of creating effective policies and share nine essential skills of cross-sector leadership to help eliminate siloed solutions. 

• What partners could you engage to advance your cause through cross-sector collaboration? 

•  Read about how to create a cross-sector leadership network. 

Complex challenges are often approached through siloed solutions—whether policy, markets, or social programs. But rarely are these attempts sufficient because the challenges we face are the result not of one policy, investment, or program, but of the interactions between them. This is why we’ve been seeing increasingly urgent interest in cross-sector collaboration.

The question we face is: How can we best help such collaborations address our pressing challenges at the magnitude and complexity at which they exist?

  1. Developing Trust: Trust is important in any transaction, and it is critical in a collaboration, where parties must rely on one another to achieve something they cannot accomplish on their own.
  2. Managing Power Dynamics and Conflict: Leaders must understand the power and privilege that they own, based on their personal and professional demographics, background, institutional resources, and social network.
  3. Fostering an Innovation Culture: Self-imposed feelings of what may (and may not) be possible can limit the scale of success.
  4. Understanding Impact on People: Social challenges are as intimate as they are big. Design should focus on understanding users’ needs and solving the challenge they are encountering at an individual or family level, as well as at a systems level.
  5. Taking a Systems Approach: By understanding the system that is producing an undesired outcome, collaborators can alter inputs, redefine the system, or activate their networks to achieve more desirable results.
  6. Defining Results and Using Data: Reaching clarity around the shared desired outcome empowers collaborators to work in unison even if their motivations and strategies differ.
  7. Aligning Motivations and Values: Creating a strong virtuous cycle drives the sustainability of any solution.
  8. Using Leverage Points: Leverage points include capital flows, policies and regulation, public opinion, and behavior change.
  9. Sharing Knowledge and Learning: Collaborations should aim not only to achieve a tangible result, but also to pave the way for future partnerships.

Read the full article on cross-sector leadership by David B. Smith and Jeanine Becker at Stanford Social Innovation Review.