Have you ever been part of a group of well-meaning, passionate people who came together to solve a problem, but ended up getting nowhere?

Maybe the group’s vision was too narrow because its members all shared the same ideas and solutions. Maybe they didn’t take the time to establish a focused shared vision. Maybe there was a lack of accountability. That there are so many factors that could have led to the group’s failure points to one thing we can be sure of: collaboration is fragile. And right now, due to the civic challenges the Seattle area is facing, we’re in desperate need of it. That’s why two years ago, the WTIA decided to experiment with the process of civic collaboration and create conditions in which it could develop and flourish. We named this collaboration incubator Ion.

Instead of choosing a civic problem to address and finding the right experts to solve it, we do the opposite. We connect people with diverse professional experiences and let them choose what they want to work together to solve, and how. Like we did with Cohort 1, we recruited 18 volunteers for Cohort 2 whose backgrounds were evenly distributed across the tech sector, government, and community-based organizations. They work at monoliths like Amazon and Boeing, non-profits like the Post Prison Education Program and Year Up, and public bulwarks like Seattle Public Schools and the King County Department of Transportation. They are directors, advisors, analysts, and activists. They reside as far north as Everett and Woodinville, as far south as Tacoma, and as far east as Fall City and Bellevue. Something they all share is that they said yes to Ion – yes to devoting up to 15 hours a month for six months to their project despite their busy schedules; yes to sharing a vision with people different from them despite not yet knowing what that vision would look like; yes to solving community problems without knowing what that would entail.

The 6-month Cohort 2 program ended on August 29th. The core team volunteers contributed over 1,500 hours and built three solutions without a budget over the last three months. The projects include: 1) a discussion about how to deepen the experience of community, 2) research on what communication tools companies use to promote volunteering so Seattle Works can refine their engagement methods, and 3) a series of informational panel discussions and coding demos for formerly incarcerated people. You can read more about each project here.

The pilot program taught us many lessons, and the learning curve didn’t let up for Cohort 2. Here’s what we changed this time around, and insights we’ve gleaned from it.

What We Changed

Universal research questions

In order to understand the wide range of resources in our community, we have the Ion collaborators interview non-profit, government, and private sector employees prior to choosing a project. This is called the exploration period. Last year, we let the teams come up with their own guiding question to ask interviewees, but this year we created a universal set of questions they would all ask: “What are your challenges? What are you seeing, hearing, and feeling that the general public doesn’t know? What resources to you have to offer that people don’t know about? What resources you need, aside from money, that you want to ask from the community?”

Expansion of interviewee diversity

Cohort 1 mainly interviewed authority figures from well-established institutions, while Cohort 2 focused on employees from small businesses and non-profits like the last African-American owned funeral home in Seattle, a Vietnamese Buddhist temple, and an outdoor based preschool. We also went through more unofficial channels to get interviews and got more individual perspectives. For example, last year we interviewed someone with a corporate job at Uber, whereas this year we talked to a Lyft driver. These changes allowed us to hear from a wider range of voices.

More collaborator control during project planning

We loosened the reins a bit with Cohort 2, allowing them to facilitate their own meetings instead of doing it for them like we did with Cohort 1. While we helped them build trust with each other when they were first getting to know each other, we took a backseat role during the project planning period and stuck to scheduling, note-taking, and providing administrative support.

What We Learned

Lack of an agenda leads to deeper listening

Instituting a universal set of questions created a different dynamic between the collaborator and the interviewee. The questions were much broader, and since collaborators didn’t yet know what they were going to be working on, they had to listen more intently. When people don’t have an agenda, they can’t filter things out or try to fit a person’s answers into it. “I feel like I’ve been good at fake listening,” said one of the non-profit collaborators. “But this experience taught me how to really listen and to be open.” Collaborators also discovered that they had more in common with the people they interviewed than they predicted, especially when it came to political views.

There are many dots to connect

A recurring message throughout the project was that Seattle is rich with resources, and many problems could be solved if only we found a way to connect them. The push to hear from a wider range of voices, and do more in-person interviews and tours, brought this to light. Two collaborators who did a tour of the Little Saigon business district learned about how the businesses are struggling to maintain their heritage. Another pair went to visit the Yesler Terrace site and learned about the history between Vulcan and the Seattle Housing Authority. Another pair interviewed a Metro bus driver and learned that there has been an uptick in assaults against bus drivers. They realized that these problems could be addressed if they figured out how to connect them to the many resources they found out about during the exploration phase.

It was more difficult to create a common language

While some of the Cohort 1 collaborators had experience working in multiple sectors, we purposely made sure that wasn’t the case with Cohort 2. Because of this, they struggled to find a common language. There were times they didn’t listen to each other in meetings, which sometimes resulted in a direct negative impact on their project. It was a testament to how difficult cross-sector collaboration can truly be, and that we shouldn’t take it for granted.

We also found that the extra freedom we gave Cohort 2 actually made things more challenging for them. Perhaps because the range of problems they were exposed to was so diverse, it was difficult for them to connect the dots. Whereas Cohort 1 drew direct inspiration from their interviews, Cohort 2 seemed to draw more general inspiration from the spirit of what was said but didn’t address the explicit needs that were discussed in the exploration phase. Perhaps instead of finding a shared language in addressing the concrete needs expressed by organizations, they did so in working to elevate the conversation and extrapolate meaning from the needs.

Like Cohort 1, Cohort 2 struggled, dug deep, and ultimately succeeded in building solutions to civic challenges without a budget, within limited time constraints, and with no financial or political rewards. We’re excited to take all we’ve learned in the past six months and use our knowledge to best support future cohorts.

Interested in building your collaborations skills to help solve civic problems in our community? Join us.