The Nimble Collaboration

How to make your collaboration more responsive, more flexible, and more productive

Working in collaboration is a must for many organizations, but collaborations are naturally cumbersome. Often, meetings are unproductive. Decisions are made over and over again. Tasks take forever to complete. Accountability shifts. Resources are wasted. Unresolved conflicts lurk below the surface.

In their best-selling, Collaboration Handbook: Creating, Sustaining, and Enjoying the Journey, Michael Winer and Karen Ray describe how to form a successful collaboration. In The Nimble Collaboration: Fine-Tuning Your Collaboration for Lasting Success, Karen Ray guides existing partnerships into the next stage: becoming more effective.

- Part I presents the "three Rs" of nimble collaboration: results that are clearly defined, relationships that are deft, and a structure that is resilient. You'll learn how to determine, describe, seek, and evaluate the specific results everyone wants to achieve-and keep them at the heart of each step you take. You'll find out how to build trust, reinforce roles, and avoid turf issues and hidden agendas. You'll discover ten principles of resilience that make any collaboration more supple and sustainable.

- Part II walks you through real-life applications in two typical collaborations: service integration collaborations, and complex problem-solving collaborations. Detailed case studies demonstrate nimbleness in action. Whatever collaboration you're in, ideas in these stories can help you solve a problem you're experiencing.

Throughout this book, you'll find samples, examples, and how-tos based on the author's many years of experience consulting with real people in real collaborations across the United States. A special section explains how to write the various documents that bind partners together on paper, including a memo of agreement and a formal governance agreement.

If you're already working in a nonprofit collaboration that involves government agencies, nongovernmental organizations, community-building groups, nonprofits, law enforcement, education, health, housing, arts, social services, business, foundations-you name it-this book is for you.