In our first episode in English, we (Karoline Bottheim and Anna Zingmark) talk about "the art of collaborating" - why do we see collaborating as an art? 
After having explored multi-stakeholder collaboration processes for more than a decade within mainly the Swedish context, we are now reaching out for an international audience! In this initial episode, we talk about the importance of multi-stakeholder collaboration when finding solutions for today's complex challenges, and about the importance of realizing that this kind of collaboration can be quite challenging per se.

1. Why the art of collaborating?

Anu Manickam and her colleague Karel van Berkel have written the book "Wicked World - Complex Challenges and Systems Innovation" (2020). In the book, you find a framework for understanding systems dynamics and practical tools for working with wicked issues. In this episode, we talk with Anu Manickam about how to deal with wicked issues practically. We recorded this episode in 2020, but the topic seems still very relevant in today's challenging world. We hope you enjoy listening!

2. Wicked World – Anu Manickam

We use to say that leading multi-stakeholder collaboration is an ”art”. But how can we describe the competencies and skills that are required in multi-stakeholder collaboration? What are the differences compared to more "traditional" leadership skills that we know from leading within an organization?

We discuss topics like:
- The importance of embracing differences in knowledge, logic, perspectives etc. when meeting between different ”silos”
- How we need a specific understanding of group dynamics that is different from ”traditional” group theories
- How to navigate when working in the ”transitional space” that can be seen as an ”unknown territory” for everyone
- Why we need to talk a lot – for example about how we talk, how we do things, how we learn, how we collaborate, how we interpret what we are doing...
- Sensemaking and mobilization as crucial aspects of success
- The frustration that will occur in order to integrate our differences and create something new
- Trust as a precondition for getting anywhere, and as an ongoing process
- The role of the collaboration leader: Being a facilitator and a system architect
- A crucial reminder when considering the difficulty of multi-stakeholder collaboration: The great importance of being a collaboration leader for solving our worlds complex problems!

3. What are the competencies required in multi-stakeholder collaboration?

In this episode, we have a conversation with Sam Kaner and Nelli Noakes from
Community at Work in San Francisco. Sam Kaner is the senior author of Facilitator’s Guide to Participatory Decision-Making. In 2006, Sam was named “one of the world´s leading experts in collaboration". Nelli Noakes is a practicing systems change consultant and is much sought after for her skillful approach to the diagnosis, design and facilitation of multi-stakeholder collaboration.

In 2018, we participated in their very inspiring training: "Multi-Stakeholder Collaboration-Strategies, design principles and best practices". We talk with Sam and Nelli about what it is that makes multi-stakeholder collaborations so complex, how we can handle diverse perspectives, the importance of having a shared aspiration, the risk with early consensus, "collaboration literacy" and groan zone.

4. Help solving the world’s toughest problems – Sam Kaner and Nelli Noakes

This framework provides a way of looking at multi-stakeholder collaboration processes that can help us when designing and navigating in these complex processes. Even if models are always a simplified picture of reality, this model can be very useful to talk about in a collaboration group.

We talk about:
- The ”father” of this model: Arne Eriksson, a Swedish pioneer when it comes to theories and methods for multi-stakeholder collaboration, coming from local and regional development and innovation leadership
- The ladder is actually a staircase with five steps: 1. Meeting place (forum, network, conference, getting in contact) 2. Conversation (going deeper into exploration of different perspectives and potential when going in a common direction) 3. Consensus (deciding on a common direction), 4. Collaboration (doing things in new ways together, coordinating processes) 5. Collective action (established collaboration that is integrated in daily routines in the different stakeholders’ organization)
- How the ladder can be a practical tool for sensemaking and in typical situations that occur when meeting between organizations
- How to use the ladder as a method to clarify the level of ambition in a multi-stakeholder collaboration and to spark interesting and important conversations
- The popularity of this model among participants in our trainings


5. The collaboration ladder

In this episode, we discuss the book "Social Worlds. A Communication Perspective", written by Barnett Pearce. This book inspires us to look at our communication patterns from a meta perspective and thereby open up for new insights and ideas. Taking a ”communication perspective” as Pearce recommends, provides an opportunity for more mutual understanding in the global complexity we find ourselves in today, where multiple perspectives exist around the same issue. The episode was recorded in 2020, the year of the worldwide COVID 19 pandemic.

6. What are we making together?

Join us in our "thinking along episode" with researcher Els de Maeijer from Eindhoven university in the Netherlands. With a starting point in Els' dissertation we discuss the importance of languaging in academi a and industry collaborations.

7. Languaging in collaborations – how can we grasp what we are doing? – Els de Maeijer

In this episode, we talk with Sandra Janoff, who has developed (and practiced for decades) the method ”Future Search” together with Marvin Weisbord. We met Sandra in a facilitation training in Berlin in 2024, and were deeply inspired by her way of working systemically with complex issues. Here you can listen to Sandra describing how we can understand systemic change, how we can connect with people’s hearts and the situation as it is, creating action that makes a difference for the system as a whole.

8. Future Search, a method for creative systems change – Sandra Janoff

Art of Collaborating is a podcast produced by Länka Consulting. Länka was established in 2015 by Anna Zingmark and Karoline Bottheim with the mission to explore and develop the tricky "art" of multi-stakeholder-collaboration. When we meet between organizations, sectors and knowledge areas in order to find solutions for handling complex societal challenges, we need support from practical methods and ways of understanding how to collaborate more efficiently. After years of discussing this topic with experts, researchers and practitioners all over the world, we are quite sure that multi-stakeholder collaboration can be called an advanced "art", a specific way of working, it may even be seen as a specific "community of practice". With our podcast, we want to make this - really necessary - specific way of working accessible to more people who find themselves in complex processes with many stakeholders involved.

Art of Collaborating

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