It’s easy to say that organizations should be collaborative, but what does that actually mean? And what does it take from executives and board members to actually make it happen?

High-impact nonprofits “see beyond their immediate short-term interest and recognize that they can achieve far more if they collaborate rather than compete.”

In their articles The Networked Nonprofit and The Most Impactful Leaders You’ve Never Heard Of, Jane Wei-Skillern and her colleagues present a persuasive case for a form of collaborative leadership that becomes possible only when we let go of the desire—or need—to do everything on our own, and invest in new opportunities to lead in collaboration with others. They describe four leadership characteristics: trust, not control; humility, not brand; node, not hub; and mission, not organization.

These concepts echo the idea of “network mind-set,” an orientation to collaboration that Forces for Good authors Leslie Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant found in each of the 12 high-impact nonprofits they studied.

While both of these leadership frameworks are compelling, I’m struck by the fact that there’s very little discussion about what such approaches require from boards. Perhaps the assumption is that they don’t require anything different. But if we’re arguing for a different type of organizational orientation and a different type of leader, there’s no question in my mind that we need to argue for a different kind of board.

That’s because—at least in some ways—this collaborative orientation flies in the face of many of the things boards consider important when it comes to organizational and executive leadership:

  • Boards are trained to be fiduciaries of their organizations.
  • Boards often define accountability as measurement against pre-determined goals and metrics.
  • Boards are encouraged to be ambassadors and fundraisers for their organization.

Read the full article about governing collaborative organizations by Anne Wallestad at Stanford Social Innovation Review.