Keeping the Megacommunity Strong

If government, business and civil society are to collaborate, they must avoid common pitfalls that can derail the process.

Leaders of government, business and civil society are forming powerful “megacommunities™” to address complex problems. But they are often tripped up by their failure to understand some key dynamics of this innovative form of collaboration, according to Booz Allen Hamilton Senior Vice President Reggie Van Lee.

He described these pitfalls – and how to avoid them – in a panel discussion at the July 2009 Excellence in Government conference for federal managers, held in Washington, DC. Van Lee, who leads Booz Allen’s public health and not-for-profit business, is a co-author of Megacommunities: How Leaders of Government, Business and Non-Profits can Tackle Today’s Global Challenges Together.

There is a growing realization, Van Lee told the conference, that complex issues such as health, energy, climate change and the financial crisis cannot be solved by government alone, or by business or civil society.

As an example, he cited the difficulties faced by soldiers and veterans returning from the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Many have trouble reintegrating into their communities because of post-traumatic stress disorder and traumatic brain injury, which often lead to higher rates of suicide, alcohol and drug abuse, and domestic violence. While there are enormous resources available for returning veterans and soldiers, government, business and veterans groups have often applied them in a piecemeal way that has proved inadequate.

Van Lee described a summit on community reintegration, convened in January 2009 by Booz Allen, the Veterans Coalition, the Survivor Corps and Business Executives for National Security (BENS). More than 150 leaders from government agencies, employers and non-profit groups took part in a series of scenarios that demonstrated the need to come together in a megacommunity. But the exercise also revealed how the collaborative process can break down, and the steps that must be taken to keep the process vital.

At the summit – as is often the case in megacommunities – specific problems were seen as affecting only one stakeholder, rather than the group as a whole. “You have to articulate the problem in a way so that everybody sees it as their problem,” says Van Lee. “You start with a discussion with each of the stakeholders. You ask, ‘What are the issues your organization is dealing with?’ Get it in their language, and then you weave that together with the language of the other stakeholders, so they’ll see it as an issue they have to address. What you’re doing is finding commonality, rather than forcing it.”

Megacommunities can also be derailed by an insistence that participants abandon some of their most important priorities. “I might have ten issues that are important to me, and I might share three of those with you – that doesn’t mean I’m dropping the other seven,” says Van Lee. The problem arises when participants are forced to stop pursuing priorities that aren’t common to the group. Those participants will likely drop out, and the megacommunity will fall apart.

“People are by nature self-interested,” says Van Lee. “You have to make them feel they’re getting at least as much if not more than what they’re giving up. And when you’re working with those one or two or three issues, you’ll find that over time the other seven issues will find their way into the mix, if they’re relevant to the group.”

Megacommunities can also be undermined when stakeholders who may not seem powerful or relevant are ignored. Megacommunity participants often reach out to the stakeholders who are the most vocal, or seem, at first blush, to have the most credible claims of importance. But they ignore, to their peril, organizations with “negative power”—ones with the ability to sabotage the entire process if they are not brought into the field.  With technology and access to the media, says Van Lee, “a seemingly small stakeholder can stop everything.”

Van Lee also told the conference that megacommunities can only be sustained through “heavy program management” that keeps the focus on milestones, change management and interventions. “You have to make sure the real work is being done,” he says.

story posted September 25, 2009