Tension driven fragmentation
It was going well until controversial topics like money came to the table and now there is fragmentation.
For months, our collaboration was defined by a spirit of unity and shared purpose. But as soon as we had to make our first significant budget decision—allocating shared funds to different partners' projects—that unity fractured. Conversations became tense, trust eroded, and partners started retreating into their own corners, advocating for their individual interests. The focus has shifted from our collective mission to a zero-sum competition for resources, and the group is now fragmented into competing factions. How do we navigate these tough, unavoidable conversations about money and power without shattering the collaborative trust we worked so hard to build?
Connecting Learnings to this Challenge
Controversial topics, especially those related to resources and power, are the ultimate stress test for a collaboration's culture and structures. This fragmentation reveals where the underlying agreements are weakest.
Areas of the Many-to-Many System that aim to address this challenge
"Tension driven fragmentation" often arises when a collaboration's "deep codes" around value and power haven't been properly embedded in its formal structures. The following areas are designed to build resilience for these moments:
- Governance System: A robust governance system provides clear, agreed-upon processes for navigating difficult decisions, ensuring fairness and transparency when controversial topics arise.
- Deep Code Shifts: The shift to a "Multi-Capital" perspective is critical here, as it provides a framework for valuing contributions beyond just the financial, which can help defuse tensions around money.
- Infrastructure Model: This is where the 'rules' for resource allocation are formally encoded. A well-designed infrastructure can create pathways for mutual resolution rather than fragmentation.
- Stewardship Approaches: Skilled stewardship is essential for hosting difficult conversations, managing conflict, and holding the group accountable to its shared mission when tensions are high.
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.
Taking a multi-value view in governance
An example of taking a multi-value view within governance structures.
Open details →
Multi-Value Asset Mapping
Mapping of the different assets, especially non-tangible, being brought to a complex collaboration.
Open details →Emergent strategy and learning
An overview of the strategy and learning approach taken in a systems change collaboration.
Open details →Alerts
Alerts are the critical 'watch-outs'—the common challenges, tensions, complexities, and areas where we learned special attention is required.
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.
Insufficient capacity, time and resource given to collaborating
It is often significantly underestimated how much time and attention is needed for the organising, governing, learning, operating, practising, embodying and other systems needed in order to do good work collaboratively. When this is not given enough attention the conditions erode over time.
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.
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.
Stewarding governance
Stewarding governance and organising for complex collaborations is a craft that requires practice, multiple disciplines and many types of capacities (head, heart, hand, gut)