Councils, Common Purpose, and Collaboration

<p>I read a terrific blog post at Harvard Business Review (HBR) the other day about collaboration. The author explained that “purpose is collaboration’s most unacknowledged determinant.” Community collaboration has never been more important as today’s challenges are too complex and interconnected for any one organization–government or otherwise–to handle alone. The issues we care about, more often than not, are enmeshed in complex systems that connect many disparate stakeholders. The ideal is to bring the different stakeholders–the different parts of the system, if you will–together, to work together, to collaborate, for the betterment of all. I’ve written several posts lately about local food economies as an example of this kind of complex system that requires collaboration in order to become more equitable, resilient, and sustainable. I’ve argued that local governments in particular should have local food system development on their radar screens. But collaboration amongst the relevant stakeholders doesn’t just happen. Collaboration is difficult. Councils for cross-cutting issues like food are a tool to help overcome barriers to collaboration. They can help create the common purpose needed to drive collaboration.</p> <p></p> <p>The term council denotes a formally constituted body of people that meet regularly to deliberate and provide guidance on some issue of shared concern. Mark Gerzon, in his book Leading Through Conflict, notes that council was “turned into and art form” by the Iroquois nation who formed a council to bring together different tribes “to find common ground.” Gerzon also explains that a council creates “a container in which trust can grow, and new relationships [...]</p>