Stuck start
We've brought together passionate partners with lots of potential, but we're stuck on what to prioritise first.
The first few workshops were electric. We had a dozen potential projects, a hundred possible actions, and a shared feeling that we were on the cusp of something transformative. But when we tried to answer the simple question, "What do we do first?" the conversation stalled. The surplus of good ideas revealed a deeper challenge: we hadn't agreed on how we would decide together. Unspoken questions about who holds the authority to set the agenda, whose priorities matter most, and how to navigate different interests are now causing paralysis. The initial excitement is fading into a frustrating cycle of circular conversations, and we're caught between an inability to choose a path and a lack of a process for choosing.
Connecting Learnings to this Challenge
The early phase of a collaboration is a critical moment for turning potential into momentum. The twin challenges of defining a clear starting point and establishing the initial 'rules of the game' can quickly erode trust if not handled intentionally. The following insights and alerts offer considerations for tackling these intertwined problems.
Areas of the Many-to-Many System that aim to address this challenge
A "Stuck Start" caused by an inability to prioritise and decide often points to gaps in a collaboration's foundational strategy and governance. The following layers are particularly useful for addressing this dual challenge:
- Missions: Helps tackle the "what" by using the Wide and Narrow boundary missions as a tool to distinguish the ultimate North Star from the most strategic first step.
- Ecosystem Strategy: Offers a collaborative process for sifting through possibilities to define a shared strategic focus, directly addressing the challenge of prioritisation.
- Governance System: Addresses the "how" by helping establish the necessary decision-making frameworks and processes needed to make a collective choice.
- Deep Code Shifts: Provides a lens to surface the unspoken assumptions about power and value that are often the root cause of decision-making paralysis.
Tools and Examples linked to this Challenge
Moving from a powerful vision to a shared, actionable plan requires more than just good intentions—it requires practical scaffolding. The tools and examples below are designed to help with this critical transition. They offer tangible starting points for co-creating your initial strategy, defining roles, and building the momentum needed to move forward together.
Spotting patterns in your context: diagnostic tool
A diagnostic tool to analyse patterns within your context and to suggest process considerations.
Open details →Legal Scope Sensing
A simple flow chart to help analyse the legal scope for innovation in your context.
Open details →Alerts
Alerts are the critical 'watch-outs'—the common challenges, tensions, complexities, and areas where we learned special attention is required.
Too much emphasis on one area out of balance with the others
When stewarding governance processes part of the craft is in navigating the balance between focusing on the mission and the work planned, with attention to the governance, learning and organising - too much emphasis one side or the other can topple the group dynamics. The mission and work provides momentum and a vector for the work whilst the governance, learning and organising enables us to hold difference, risks, tensions, disagreement and learning. Each necessitates the other and if the balance is significantly off then the collaboration can start to dysfunction. The order of the attention we place depends on the type of collaboration and its context.
Not inspecting the relational capacity of the system
Beware of going too hard and fast into polarising topics such as money before there is the relational capacity across the group to hold them.
Ignoring group dynamics
Group dynamics are a huge shaping factor in what the group can create together - insufficient attention can create a false economy where the actions we take can’t fulfil their possibility.
Insights
Insights are the key discoveries that emerged from our work and point to promising pathways and core principles.
Stewardship Assumptions
When things go well, contributions amplify in a positive, virtuous cycle. Conversely, when dynamics tip and begin to deteriorate, a rapid, vicious cycle of withdrawal can take hold. A key part of the work is stewarding this balance to prevent the tip into a vicious cycle.
Stewardship Assumptions
A key challenge for early stewards is developing appropriate ways to understand the live dynamics of the complex system in order to determine what to do next.
Stewardship Assumptions
A key challenge for early stewards is developing appropriate ways to understand the live dynamics of the complex system in order to determine what to do next.