What Makes Collaborations Succeed:
The Collaboration Factors Inventory

Resource
The Collaboration Factors Inventory (click link to take the inventory online)

Contents
Why Do Some Collaborations Soar Where Others Fail?
Where to Learn More

From Vince Hyman, former Publishing Director, Fieldstone Alliance:

Why Do Some Collaborations Soar Where Others Fail?
If you're just starting a collaboration, how can you assess its chances for success? Is there a way to jumpstart a stalled collaboration?

We get asked these questions a lot--and often asked whether we've got a book on the topic. In fact, we do have something that can help. In 2001, we revisited the research on what makes collaborations succeed. (See Collaboration: What Makes It Work, 2nd Ed. As part of that book, we released The Collaboration Factors Inventory.)

The inventory is available at no cost on our web site, where you can take it online and get an immediate score. We put it there to help your collaboration succeed!

This inventory was developed and tested by Wilder Research over a period of eight years. It is designed to help a potential or existing collaborative assess its strengths and weaknesses relative to the 20 success factors. If a group has just begun to consider a collaboration, the group members can use the inventory to assess their readiness to collaborate--and make plans to remedy weaknesses that might torpedo the collaboration.

Longstanding collaborations can use the results to unblock logjams, surface unspoken agendas, and troubleshoot problems. It gives the collaboration a less subjective way to talk about issues of trust, resources, leadership, communication, and other problems that might otherwise be too sensitive to bring up in a group setting.

Where to Learn More

List: Collaboration Resources
These are resources that deal directly with the topic of collaboration or are deemed useful to collaborations and collaboration consultants.

Article: Four Keys to Collaboration Success
This is the birds-eye view of the most significant success factors when collaborating.

Books:
Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey
The step-by-step path for forming a collaboration.

The Nimble Collaboration: Fine-Tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success
Collaboration Handbook co-author Karen Ray compiled the results of her work consulting to collaborations over the past ten years into a new text that helps collaborations become more nimble. While not as well-known as its older sibling, the book was a winner in ForeWord Magazine's business/economics category—evidently, the business world is catching on to the benefits of collaboration. Her work with some very large collaborations has opened ways to speed the success of system-wide changes—an area where collaborations excel, but which can be very cumbersome to manage.

Forming Alliances: Working Together to Achieve Mutual Goals
Of course, collaboration is not the only way for organizations to work together. At the far end of the spectrum, organizations may actually merge, or collaborations may formalize their work as a new 501c3. At the other end are the overlooked tools of simple cooperation and coordination. This book helps organizations understand when it makes more sense to use these less intense partnerships—and how to make them work.

A tapestry woven of promises, obligations, self-interests, multiple agendas, assumptions, communication styles, and leadership styles of every stripe and hue, the collaboration is a work of abstract art with tremendous concrete results. It has become the preferred method for many goals. We hope the tools we've provided make your collaborative efforts more productive.

Sincerely,

Vince Hyman
Publishing Director
Fieldstone Alliance

January 26, 2005

Copyright Fieldstone Alliance. For reprint permission, click here.