Collaboration ... and the universal

I had an utterly uplifting 2-hour conference call with two fascinating acquaintances in the USA on Monday, both associated with the Genetic Alliance. They had offered to talk through my current thinking about my fellowship. I was already charmed by them giving up their work time to my fellowship, but became deeply moved and humbled by the end.

One of the first questions I was asked was, ‘what is at the core of this?’. It took me out of my list of technical things (performance management systems, and governance and soforth) and into why I care.

I told them about growing up as a Quaker and going to Quaker business meetings, where you went with the intention of listening out for ‘the promptings of love and truth in your heart’. Quakers don’t vote, and they know that even a minority voice might speak the ‘Truth’ the group needs to hear, so they are very disciplined at listening to all those who feel moved to speak. To find consensus from there, though, you have to assume that your perspective, your opinion, might just be for you rather than the whole group. I had to expect that I might be wrong and my view would be changed through listening.

So there is an altruism in working together that appeals to me, a self-effacement, where the needs of the self become subservient to the needs of the whole. That’s what I see happening in collaborations. To succeed in collaboration, organisations have either to align their own internal demands and issues with the collaboration, or set their internal ‘stuff’ aside, in favour of the whole.

Gene and Kemp then asked me, ‘where does my desire for harmony come from (and my discomfort with lack of unity)?’ They said that in their experience, what you’re trying to heal in the world is what you’re trying to heal in yourself. The question brought to the surface lots of my recent reflections on my need for external approval, and how this often ends up being my internal immune system against taking risks and changing.

Both said, in their own ways, that ‘the whole’ often brings safety and peace in a way that the ‘part’ cannot.

All this led me to wonder if working in collaborative ways, could be not just about being ‘effective’ in ‘public sector outcomes’ (all a bit jargon-y and empty as words, let’s face it) but also be about affirming wholeness, unity in diversity, something universal, possibly spiritual?

Suddenly my inquiry into inter-organisational collaboration has the potential to expand out into myth (ie universal experience), and to delve into the personal (i.e. individual felt experience). I think I might revisit my methodology a little and be braver about bringing in these territories of experience which often we are more reluctant to talk about to strangers.