Collaboration Crossroads: Recognizing When to Part Ways for Greater Impact

Key Points

• Collaborations are a necessary but often complicated approach to solving emerging and systematic sustainability challenges.
• Recognizing “red flags” versus blockades in collaborations is a necessary skill.
• Members of a collaborative initiative should consider sunsetting when the goals are achieved, barriers become too challenging, members withdraw, or strategy alignment becomes impossible.

Business-led, pre-competitive collaborative initiatives are a cornerstone of systems change and advancing solutions to systematic problems. They allow companies to enter a safe space for best practice sharing, pool resources for problems that any single company could not solve alone, and use a collective voice or action to drive system change across entire industries. However, collaborations are not meant to be everlasting, and companies must recognize when it’s time to pull the plug.

When collaborations begin to flounder, resources become constrained, participants become weary, and impact is minimal. Many of the “red flags” participants might see in collaborations can be conquerable hurdles or they can be warning signs of a pending end. It is important to be able to read the tea leaves, know the difference, and evolve accordingly or plan for an ending.

There are a few clear signs that it may be time for a collaboration to consider sunsetting.

1) Collective goals achieved

The first and most obvious sign that a collaboration should close down is when the intended impact or goal is achieved. Collaborations form around collective visions for learning or creating change. A common mistake is passing that point and trying to refresh a strategy for new goals. While a natural next milestone may arise out of the existing work, trying to carve out a new strategy with the existing members and governance structures may create more challenges and conflict than necessary. Rather than continue, consider which aspects could be spun into a separate, tangential project. BSR’s Future of Fuels is a success story of companies that achieved their mission and goals and sunset the collaboration.

2) Insurmountable barriers

Collaboratives typically form when companies come together to solve some of the world’s most difficult challenges. if they were easy problems to solve, it wouldn’t need a group of companies to find the solution. It is quite common for collaborations to refresh a strategy, change direction, and realign. However, acknowledging when hurdles become blockades is an important trait among participants. Occasionally, we may enter a space before the technology is scalable, before policy allows progress, or there’s a learning curve that sheds light on needs for impossible resourcing. Any number of barriers may pop up, but knowing when they prevent progress and impact will be a telltale sign that a collaboration may not succeed.

3) Dwindling participation or absence of enthusiasm

Nearly every collaboration seeking high-impact or systems change thrives on members’ participation and passion. Individuals may become less interested in topics, turnover in a company might introduce a disinterested or uninformed replacement, company priorities might shift, or the external ecosystem evolves. Any of these factors may influence the participation of members and therefore the progress of the group. This is another “red flag” that may be a temporary challenge, or it may be a sign of greater trouble ahead. Any collaboration that begins to lose its value proposition to members cannot survive. When participants pull back, it is an important reminder to see the bigger picture, reevaluate the problem, rethink aspects like relationships or governance, and determine if there is a possible impact to be made by the group before deciding to sunset.

4) Misalignment among members

It is often a single challenge that brings members together, but it is the individual goals of each participant that keep them in the room. When companies begin diverging from the original goal, it may be due to their own shifting priorities and nothing to do with the collaboration, but it will almost certainly drive a wedge in the collaboration. These situations are fairly common, but when a fracture cannot be repaired and the dissonance is too great, it is important to recognize that it is no longer a collaborative effort for a singular goal. It is natural for priorities and objectives to shift throughout a collaborative lifecycle; however, when members can no longer align on collective objectives, and it is likely more resource-intensive to redirect the group, it may be time to acknowledge the successes and end the collaboration.

Collaboration can be a powerful tool that brings companies together in hopes of solving the world’s most challenging problems. It can also be one of the most difficult, emotionally tolling, and disappointing tools when it falters or fails. Preventing collaboration fatigue and distrust in collaborative efforts often falls on those in the room to know when it is time to sunset. It is rarely black and white, but recognizing the signs and creating a candid space for honest conversations can help tease out the potential impacts and reinvigorate the group. It can also help bring closure when the time comes to shut the doors.

As collaboration experts focused on high-impact, BSR recognizes the difficulties, but also the power, of collective action. The end is inevitable to make room for new beginnings, ideas, and people. The sunset of a collaboration is never truly the end, but rather an opening to start over or for new solutions that can change the world.

This article was originally published at the BSR website "Sustainability Insights" and is written by Cameron Steagall, Manager, Collaboration, at BSR.