1.	Involve Relevant Stakeholders: The first and fundamental step to successful collaboration is to have the right people on board from the very beginning. Nothing will diminish the trust vital to effective work faster than leaving a key stakeholder out of the process. If you fail to build ownership and alignment with key stakeholders, it will cost you dearly down the road.
2.	Form the Team: Forming a collaborative team, work group, or partnership involves getting ownership and alignment around two dimensions – the work you will do and the way in which you will do it. Our process enables both. A properly formed collaborative team does not unravel and become ineffective around the common issues that plague most work groups: roles and responsibilities, scope of work, execution, different work styles and competing values and interests. Ignoring the elements of this critical step guarantees breakdowns which are incredibly difficult to recover from and which will undermine or completely derail the work.
3.	Create a Collaborative Plan: This element is about planning the work; yet in a departure from what many groups do, this process builds ownership and alignment among key stakeholders. It ensures that stakeholders give their full support to the project so it doesn’t unravel in implementation.
4.	Design and Facilitate Truly Collaborative Meetings: Most people we talk to complain that the meetings they attend are a waste of time and in many cases even painful to endure. We’re also aware that working relationships tend to be diminished rather than enhanced during the course of most meetings. Because every aspect of the collaborative meeting is tied to the principles of ownership and alignment, these meetings build and develop trusting relationships and foster high accountability. It is not unusual for front line people who have completed this training and facilitated their first-ever meeting to be told by participants, “This is the most enjoyable, productive meeting I’ve ever attended.”

We help you instill the ability to address complex and even wicked problems
Complex is one thing, wicked is another. Wicked problems arise when multiple stakeholders with different values have competing ideas about how change should take place. Many projects in organizations—and virtually all technology-related projects these days—are grappling with wicked problems. If considerable time and effort has been spent, but there isn’t much to show for it, you’ve likely got a wicked problem. If business process reengineering is involved, there is a very good chance you’ll encounter a wicked problem. Business leaders who ignore the fact that wicked problems are incredibly multifaceted and require a vastly different approach do so at great peril.

Usually, it is the social complexity of these problems, not their technical complexity, that overwhelms most current problem solving and project management approaches. Social complexity refers to the fact that the work is done within a social network of decision makers, influencers and other stakeholders and often include additional project teams or even other organizations. All of these relationships must be appropriately included in the project; if they aren’t, they can undermine (or even sabotage) the project. This dynamic of social complexity can be understood and used effectively via the Working Collaboratively process. In doing so, stakeholders are aligned and the problem’s complexity becomes manageable.

We help you enable successful implementation and thorough execution
Although you can create great strategies and plans, it is only through successful implementation and effective execution that the benefits are realized. Collaborative leaders know how to create the ownership and alignment required for success. Working Collaboratively is a “go slow to go fast” approach. The continued investment made towards true ownership and alignment at every phase of the work will pay off in subsequent time savings and better results.

We help you create a collaborative organization
Rather than working through the typical culture change routes of training, restructuring, and business process redesign, which often produce mixed results at best, collaborative leaders build collaborative organizations simply by collaborating. Unlike other approaches, this one fully integrates culture change within the day to day work, making it both effective and sustainable. By modeling and teaching the new way of doing business, collaborative leaders more rapidly make the organization successful in solving business problems and executing business strategies.