Collaboration+NGO Leadership=Sustainability

by hanspetermeyer

I just got back from a three week working holiday in northern Europe. Besides family and tango, I did manage to squeeze in a couple of sustainability stops – and I was always being inspired by the matter-of-fact approach to getting on with the job of lowering CO2 emissions.



Compared to North America there's no wasted breath, debating the chicken-egg of climate change. There's just an awareness that we can do things smarter – whether it's transportation, housing, energy, the social safety net. Back in the "land of plenty," we're still fogged in by the apparent abundance of clean air, water, and land. Climate change seems an abstraction. We'll simply muddle through.


In the meantime, and in the absence of political leadership – at almost every level of government here in Canada – our muddling through is helped by leadership in the NGO sector. Particularly, it's helped along by leadership that is willing to collaborate. That means, leadership more interested in achieving common goals than in building profile.

Collaboration is sexy – and it works
It's no secret that "collaboration" is a sexy word for me. I think it's got a natural affinity with sustainability. And I get excited when I see organizations – NGOs, government, businesses – working together towards a common goal. I'm also excited about it because I've seen it achieve remarkable things through the work of a friend, mentor, and collaborator: Tim Pringle.


I've had the pleasure to learn from and work with Tim since the mid-90s. He's been Executive Director, and more lately Director of Special Programs, with the Real Estate Foundation of BC since the late 1980s. Several years ago I researched and wrote about the Foundation's first 20 years. What I learned was that across the province Tim and the Foundation had established a far-reaching but understated reputation for sustainability leadership – and for the promoting the value of collaboration.


The results of Tim's leadership don't wear a bronze plaque with his name – at least not yet. They do, however, wear the stamp of his involvement. Three examples: the South Okanagan-Similkameen Conservation Partnership (SOSCP), Convening for Action Vancouver Island (CAVI), and the Comox Valley's Conservation Strategy. In all three, many hands – including a wide range of often fractious local governments, NGOs, provincial, and federal departments – are making the work of stewardship and sustainability a little lighter. It's called working smarter – or maybe it's just the "new business as usual?"


Collaboration isn't just about the conservation side of things. In his recent editorial for the new Truck Logger BC magazine, north Island logger and Truck Logger Association President Graham Lasure focuses on the need for collaboration in the private sector. "As a small business operator... I am used to having control over my business and making my own decisions. However... I have come to realize that collaboration is the best way to affect positive change for the entire industry." I like this: a private business guy championing the need to make common cause for the long term benefit of an industry, and the millions of lives that are financially connected to that industry.


A third recent input on the collaboration topic comes via Nancy Lublin. Her column in Fast Company business magazine is always a delight, and I'm a fanboy. Lublin always suggests new – and fun! – things that NGOs can do to, as she puts it, "get more bang for less buck." She recently sent me a review copy of her book on this topic: Zilch – the Power of Zero in Business. It's an inspired bit of writing and thinking; it's inspiring for anyone looking for ways to recharge batteries with their business or NGO.


Lublin on more bang, less buck
Nancy's premise is that, at a time when the US economy is struggling, business has a few things to learn from what the NGO sector has been doing for decades. That is, learning how to achieve incredible results with next-to-nada for financial resources. Besides the constant need to change one's sense of limitations/opportunities, there's the consistent theme of collaboration.


Lublin is pitching her book to the private sector, suggesting the NGO sector knows a few (or more) useful things. I think it's a good pitch, even here in Canada. Our private sector is, generally, in better shape than south of the 49th, but as Lasure's editorial on the coastal forest industry makes clear, new approaches are needed if we're serious about the economic sustainability of coastal communities.


My big concern, however, is with the NGO sector in our region. We've had a very different relationship to government and to entrepreneurialism than Lublin and her peers in the US. And we're (generally) naive about how markets and policy work. Things that Lublin takes for granted in the US NGO sector aren't quite so evident in the Canadian context. We've got some catching up to do. Her book is an excellent read. I'm hoping it turns a few heads (and minds) to more creativity and collaboration in a sector that badly needs it.


Collaboration contest ~ Win this book!
Interested in Zilch? Please send me a short note (at CollaborationContest <at> gmail.com) about 1-2 cool NGO collaborations in BC by December 1, 2010. In mid-December I'll draw a name and one of you (or more if I can twist Nancy's arm ;-) will get my copy of Lublin's lovely little book. In 2011 I'll follow-up on these notes and write about the way that NGOs are making a difference through collaboration.


Collaboration isn't the One Big Answer to "solving" the issues we're facing in our communities. What Lasure says about the confounding challenges of the BC forest industry is as true for things like climate change and affordable housing: "It is important to understand that working together does not always mean coming up with singular solutions, and that one size does not fit all." If we're serious about sustainability, we need to open up to new ideas, new approaches, and a diversity of actions. Collaboration is a way to do this opening.


October 24, 2010