Get the system into a room!

‘If you want to innovate, get the system in a room.’

As organisations face increasingly tangled, interconnected problems, collaboration among multiple stakeholders is becoming critical to problem solving, innovation and success.

More and more initiatives are bringing together multiple stakeholders affected by a problem, the experts who’ve studied it, and the decision-makers who hold the power to solve it. By tapping into their diverse perspectives and collective intelligence, the aspiration is to gain a richer, more well-rounded understanding of the situation and develop more effective, durable solutions.

In theory, it sounds straightforward.

But in practice…

Have you ever tried getting multiple stakeholders into the same (virtual or physical) room? People with wildly different perspectives, incentives, and priorities? People speaking in different professional languages, motivated by entirely different goals?

I bet it’s not that simple.

You may have been in situations where…

• People outright refused to be in the same room (or Zoom) as others.
• Politeness smothered honesty, with everyone nodding along while offering little of real value.