Ben Hecht, President & CEO of Living Cities recently published a Harvard Business Review blog that highlights concrete ways that organizations can work together to tackle big, societal problems.
It’s collaboration, not competition that will help solve problems like poverty, unemployment, homelessness and failing schools. Collaboration isn’t a new concept, but it takes focus, accountability, information sharing, and strategic partnerships to really make a difference.
Hecht speaks from experience. Living Cities is a collaboration of 22 foundations and financial institutions that offered more than $140 million in grants and loans to “to re-engineer obsolete public systems and connect low-income people and underinvested places to opportunity.” Living cities has been an important supporter of the expansion of the Strive, cited by Hecht as a leader in embracing collaboration.
Said Hecht: “Leaders and organizations are acknowledging that even their best individual efforts can’t stack up against today’s complex and interconnected problems. They are putting aside self-interests and collaborating to build a new civic infrastructure to advance their shared objectives. It’s called collective impact and it’s a growing trend across the country.”
Hecht expands on five keys to successful collaboration:
- Clearly define what you can do together:
- Transcend parochialism
- Adapt to Data
- Feed the field
- Support the backbone
(M)ulti-sector partnerships based on (Strive) have formed in more than two dozen cities to reengineer educational systems that are failing kids, from cradle to career. Unlike previous efforts, they have set specific goals along this entire continuum, and are committed to data-informed decision making. This model requires partners to continuously track and publish progress and results; and to collectively reflect on, re-evaluate, and refine their work.
