Are You Ready to Be a Collaborator?

A board-level question for charity and for-purpose leaders.

“Do you accept the premise that collaboration is a good thing? And if so, are you ready to be a collaborator?”

That was the question David McLean left us with in a recent conversation, and it is one worth sitting with.

Most leaders in the charity and for-purpose sector would be comfortable with the first part. Collaboration is a good thing. The sector needs more of it. Funders encourage it. Boards often support it in principle. Communities usually benefit when organisations work together with less duplication and more coordination.

The harder question is the second one.

Are you ready to be a collaborator?

That is a different standard. It asks whether an organisation is prepared to behave differently, not simply speak positively about partnership. It asks whether boards and executives can be honest about capability, share some control, work at a compatible pace, and look beyond the current organisational form when the mission may require something stronger.

Collaboration sounds straightforward until it begins asking something of the people involved.

Honesty Is the First Discipline

David spoke about the idea of being a “category captain”, a lesson he took from his earlier commercial experience. The principle is simple, but not always easy: be honest about the market, honest about competitors, and honest about where others are stronger than you.

He gave the example of competing with Australia Post while still being prepared to say that their mobile app is the best in the business. That kind of honesty can feel counterintuitive. In many organisations, there is a habit of defending your own position and minimising the strengths of others. David’s point was that honesty builds credibility. People can hear when you are telling the truth.

The lesson carries directly into the for-purpose sector.

Many organisations operate alongside others doing adjacent work. They may serve similar communities, respond to similar needs, or compete for the same funding pool. In that environment, it is easy to become protective. It is harder, and more useful, to say: this is what we do well, this is where another organisation is stronger, and this is where the community may benefit if those strengths were brought together.

David used the example of disaster recovery. Some organisations are most visible during the immediate response, when the event is on the news and emergency support is mobilised. Others may be more useful later, when the cameras have moved on and the community is still cleaning up, rebuilding and dealing with the longer tail of the disaster.

That creates an obvious collaboration opportunity. One organisation may be strong during the emergency. Another may be strong after it. Together, they may be able to offer a more complete response than either could provide alone.

The important word there is “together”. That only becomes possible when organisations are honest enough to recognise complementary strengths.

Control Is Where Collaboration Becomes Real

The logic of collaboration can be clear and still fail to progress.

David’s view was that the issue is often not the collaboration itself, but people’s appetite for giving up some degree of control. That is true in commercial partnerships and it is true in charity and not-for-profit work.

Leaders may agree that two organisations could achieve more together. They may see the overlap in clients, geography, capability or mission. They may understand the efficiency and impact case. Then the practical questions begin. Who leads? Who decides? Whose systems are used? Whose relationships sit at the centre? Who changes more?

These are not minor details. They shape whether the partnership can work. But when they are approached from a place of protection rather than purpose, the conversation can quickly lose momentum.

David gave an example from his own commercial experience, where one organisation had strong logistics infrastructure and technology, while another had deep retail capability. The combination made sense. The businesses could have been stronger together. Yet the collaboration did not happen in the way it might have, because the control questions could not be resolved through partnership. It eventually happened by acquisition instead.

In the for-purpose sector, the same dynamic often appears in a softer form. Organisations may talk about working together while still wanting to preserve every part of their current operating model. The intention is collaborative, but the behaviour remains independent.

A serious partnership usually asks for some change. It may ask leaders to share decisions, adjust systems, reshape roles, or accept that another organisation may be better placed to lead part of the work. That can feel uncomfortable, especially when history, identity and relationships are tied closely to the current organisation.

"The question is not simply what the organisation keeps. The better question is what becomes possible for the people being served if the organisation changes how it works."

Founders, Identity and the Difficulty of Letting Go

David made a useful comparison between founders in commercial businesses and founders in charities. His view was that the emotional difficulty is often very similar.

He described it as a rock band coming to terms with the possibility that maybe it has come to the end, and it is time for someone else to play.

That is a human way to describe a leadership issue many boards recognise but struggle to name. Founders carry the early risk. They build something when there is no certainty it will work. They hold the story, the relationships, the original energy and often the personal sacrifice behind the organisation.

When the organisation reaches a different stage, stepping back can feel like losing the right to enjoy what has finally been built.

David’s point was not that founders are the problem. It was that the skills needed to create something from nothing are not always the same skills needed to lead a more stable organisation into its next chapter. A founder may be exactly the right person for the early, risk-heavy stage, and may not be the right person for a steadier, more mature operating environment.

That observation applies beyond founders. It asks every board and leadership team to separate the mission from the current form of leadership, structure or identity.

For-purpose organisations often carry deep emotional attachment to their name, history and way of working. That is understandable. But if the mission is the centre, leaders need to be willing to ask whether the current structure is still the best vehicle for that mission.

Sometimes it is. Sometimes it needs to change. And sometimes the most responsible act of stewardship is to let the work continue in a stronger form.

Boards Need to Look Outside the Room

One of the strongest themes in the conversation was the internal focus of many boards.

Most board agendas are full for good reasons. Finance, compliance, risk, operations, workforce, fundraising, governance and service delivery all need attention. In many for-purpose organisations, those pressures are constant. There is rarely a quiet season where leaders can simply sit back and enjoy stability.

The consequence is that boards can spend almost all of their time looking inward.

That creates a problem. Strategic collaboration requires leaders to look outward. Who else is serving the same community? Where is effort being duplicated? Which organisations hold capabilities we do not? What could be delivered better if we worked differently? Are we still the best structure for the work, or are we simply the most familiar one?

These questions need space before an organisation reaches distress.

When collaboration is only raised after sustainability has become urgent, the options are usually narrower. The organisation may have less time, less negotiating power and fewer potential partners. What could have been a strategic exploration can begin to feel like a last resort.

The stronger board conversation happens earlier, while there is still room to think clearly. That does not mean every organisation should collaborate, share services or merge. It means boards should be prepared to test those options as part of good governance, rather than waiting until pressure makes the conversation unavoidable.

Performance Still Matters When the Purpose Is Good

David also spoke about the difference between performance in business and performance in charities.

In business, the measures are often blunt. Revenue, margin, growth, retention and cash all create a clear rhythm. They may not tell the whole story, but they make it difficult to avoid the performance conversation.

In charities, outcomes can be harder to measure. The impact may be long term, complex, indirect or influenced by factors outside the organisation’s control. That can make accountability more difficult. It can also allow inefficiency or structural weakness to sit under the surface for longer than it should.

This is a sensitive point because most people in the sector are working hard and for the right reasons. Many are carrying heavy workloads with limited resources. Difficult conversations about performance can feel disloyal when the mission is deeply worthwhile.

But caring about the mission should make those conversations more important, not less.

If an organisation exists to serve a community, then performance, sustainability and structure all matter. They are not corporate distractions. They are part of whether the work can continue, improve and reach the people who need it.

This is also where collaboration can become a strategic lever. If an organisation cannot build the systems, scale, workforce depth, technology or governance capacity it needs alone, then partnership may be one of the most responsible options available.

Pace Can Make or Break the Work

The final practical point David raised was pace.

"Do not work with organisations that cannot work at the same pace as you."

That may sound simple, but it is one of the most overlooked parts of collaboration. A small, agile organisation can lose enormous time and energy trying to partner with a larger body that moves through six-month decision cycles. A charity that needs to act quickly may become frustrated by a partner that requires multiple committees, staged approvals and long internal processes before anything can happen.

This does not mean larger organisations are poor partners. It means pace needs to be understood before expectations are set.

A partnership needs shared purpose, but it also needs a workable rhythm. If one organisation is ready to move and the other is still trying to find space on the next committee agenda, energy can drain quickly. What began as alignment can become frustration.

For smaller organisations, the better first partners may be those with a similar decision-making speed. That can create momentum, build confidence and prove a model before involving larger, slower or more complex organisations.

Pace should be part of collaboration readiness. Boards should ask whether a potential partner can move at the speed the work requires, and whether their own organisation can do the same.

The Question Every Charity Leader Should Ask

David’s final question brings the whole conversation back to leadership:

“Do you accept that collaboration is a good thing? And if so, are you ready to be a collaborator?”

It is a useful question because it moves collaboration out of the realm of general support and into organisational behaviour.

Being ready to collaborate means being prepared to tell the truth about your own strengths and weaknesses. It means seeing other organisations as potential partners in impact, not only competitors for profile or funding. It means being willing to discuss control, pace, accountability, performance and structure with enough honesty to make the work real.

It also means keeping the mission at the centre.

Collaboration is not valuable because it sounds progressive. It is valuable when it helps the work become stronger, clearer, more sustainable or more useful to the people being served.

For boards and executives, that is the standard worth holding.

Not collaboration for appearance.

Collaboration because the mission may require more than the current organisation can carry alone.