How Do Collaborative Processes Work?

Although all collaborative processes have beginnings, middles, and ends, no two are exactly the same. Some have short life-spans. A group meets a few times, conducts its business, comes to conclusions, and disbands. Others go on for years. Some are high in complexity, conflict, and drama. Others are slow, easy going conversations.

Some stakeholder groups are composed of parties who have established standing in a lawsuit or who are on a trajectory toward administrative rule-making, standard-setting proceedings, or contested administrative hearings. Others, like appointed or nominated advisory boards, are convened to exchange ideas or provide reactions to proposed policies, projects, or programs.

Some groups -- watershed councils, forest management groups, and re-vegetation committees for example -- work collaboratively over years to manage and improve a resource. Sometimes an independent facilitator or mediator is involved. More often than not, collaborative leadership must come from the group itself, often with government officials acting as conveners or moderators. Typical collaborative processes involve a variety of functions and activities organized into three broad phases (Table 3).


What Kinds of Outcomes are Produced?

Every stakeholder group aspires to what is popularly known as the "win-win" solution. This term is attractive but misleading. It suggests that collaborative processes can perfectly and comfortably integrate different ways of knowing and produce results which give everybody everything they want in terms of their values and interests. Unfortunately, it also implies that anything less than a full "win" is somehow a loss. We don’t like this term very much and try not to use it because it obscures more than it reveals.

In reality, stakeholder groups come to different kinds of closure, many of which are not win-win but which are nonetheless acceptable, durable, effective, and well reasoned. They also produce powerful and graceful reconciliations and accommodations that honor different forms of knowing. Consider the following two cases, both involving Native Americans.

In the first, the Rose Center for Earth and Sky in New York’s American Museum of Natural History acquired a geologically unique 15.8-ton meteorite from the rain forests near Willamette, Oregon in 1906. In 1999, the new center was literally constructed around the meteor. Following the museum’s opening, members of the Clackamas Tribe stepped forward and demanded that the meteor, called "Tomanoas" and revered by their tribe, be returned. After arduous negotiations, the tribe and the museum reached an agreement in which the meteor is retained by the museum, the scientific and cultural explanations of Tomanoas sit side-by-side, and the tribe’s right to perform ceremonies in the museum is preserved in perpetuity.2

In the second case, a drumming ceremony conducted by the Spokane Tribe served as a solemn goodbye to a site where generations of the Spokane had fished. The ceremony, in honor of Coyote Rocks, was a stately close to a controversy that had arisen from a road-widening project. The Spokane had wanted the area left untouched. After negotiations, the county agreed to bypass certain boulders even though some sacred rocks had to be destroyed. "We didn’t win, but we didn’t lose," said Brian Flett, the tribe’s cultural director. The final agreements included $114,000 for archeological digs, monitoring by the tribe, and a closure honored by tribal protocol.3

While an infinite number of outcomes (including no outcomes) are possible, skillful and well-executed stakeholder processes can braid different ways of knowing together in unusual and creative ways (Table 4).



2 “Between A Rock And A Hard Place,” The Bulletin, March 28, 2000.
3 “Special Rocks Drummed Out,” AP, Journal North, p. 4, December 14, 2001.