In a previous Stanford Social Innovation Review article, we wrote about the importance and challenges of forming collaborations across organizational and sectoral boundaries in cities and shared our view on the steps collaborators should take to make progress toward a solution. The broad strokes of the work are getting the right people on board, agreeing (enough) on what the problem at hand is, developing a work plan, creating a structure of accountability, and taking time to reflect, learn, and adjust actions accordingly. However, even if collaborators are aware of these steps, just finding a starting point—an entry into the problem—can remain elusive. If our last article was a roadmap for collaborators, here, we try to deliver the keys to the ignition.

In our most recent Bloomberg Harvard City Leadership Initiative study on cross-boundary collaboration in cities, we sought to understand why and how some teams get stuck before they get started, while others find entry points to gain progress. We studied the early stages of 10 cross-boundary collaborations from cities across North America and Europe, each tackling a daunting social issue, such as gaps in mental health services, equitable economic development, affordable housing, and sustainable growth. We found that during this often particularly disorienting phase, teams whose members included varied perspectives, had confidence in each other, and were able to self-direct their collaborative work had a better chance of getting off the ground than those who didn’t.

Without diverse expertise, it’s hard to look at all aspects of a thorny problem and determine innovative ways to tackle it; without trust, it can feel uncomfortable to try new things and cede some autonomy in service of the collaboration; and without a sense of agency, a group can become vulnerable to the dreaded endless deliberation without any action (“analysis-paralysis”) or waiting in vain for detailed directions from leaders with formal authority.

Read the full article about city collaborations by Jorrit de Jong, Eva Flavia Martínez Orbegozo, Lisa Cox, Hannah Riley Bowles, Amy C. Edmondson and Anahide Nahhal at Stanford Social Innovation Review.