Collaboration & Capacity Building 

What does collaboration for lasting relationships actually look like?  

It has been a big year for the province. This year's budget forecast Newfoundland and Labrador leading the country in economic growth, on the strength of oil, mining, and the fishery. There is real momentum out there, and it is worth celebrating.

I’ve been building my Strategic Systems Alignment (SSA) framework for some time now and recently got a chance to learn how AI can help me share tools that my clients can easily access - tools that help clients achieve what my business is built on - capacity building.  The most reflective question I ask clients is ‘what collaboration looks like for you (your organization). 

Lately I have been having a version of the same conversation with people in very different corners of the province - all in different sectors - has me thinking about what actually makes stakeholder engagement meaningful. 

One commentary I read was from someone who has spent a lifetime in tourism and hospitality, and they made a strong case for the fact that tourism is not separate from our coastal communities. It is woven right into them. Living on the Bonavista Peninsula, experiencing the downfall of fishing in the 90’s and the rise of tourism, it indeed supports thousands of jobs and keeps main streets alive in towns that depend on a year-round economy. And yet tourism rarely gets the same billing as the louder sectors, but when you get left out of the conversation, you lose out.  Not just on recognition but on real opportunity for sustainable growth and regional jobs. Our future depends on collaboration, not exclusion.

I have been hearing versions of that from other corners too. A councillor trying to move a good plan forward, frustrated that the people who could make or break it were never really brought along. A nonprofit director doing enormous work with almost no acknowledgement, watching momentum slip every time a key relationship went quiet. A small business owner who felt like decisions about their own community kept getting made in rooms they were never invited into.

Different sectors, same story. And underneath all of it is the same truth. Collaboration is not a nice-to-have. It is the thing that decides whether anything you build actually sticks.

I have seen this pattern up close for more than twenty years, working inside municipalities, a national program, and a UNESCO Global Geopark that stretched across twenty-seven communities. The initiatives that stalled were rarely the ones with the weakest strategy. They stalled because someone who needed to be at the table was not, or because the relationships got treated as a box to tick rather than the thing holding the whole project together.

So what does collaboration that lasts actually look like?

It looks like knowing, honestly, who is part of your regional ecosystem before you need them. Not just the obvious names, but the quieter voices who carry real influence or who will feel the impact of what you decide. It looks like tending those relationships on purpose, with a bit of time set aside for them, rather than scrambling to reconnect only when you need a favour or a vote. It looks like making sure the people affected by a decision are in the room while it is still being shaped, not after it is already made. And it looks like building all of this into how your team works, so the relationships do not live in one person's head and disappear the day they move on.  From my experience, relationships that depend entirely on one person or champion are fragile. Relationships that are mapped, shared, and tended to by a whole team are the ones that last.

Strategic Systems Alignment ^TM  is the methodology I use to help organizations see the whole system they’re working in, not just their own piece of it.  SSA connects five things that usually get managed separately:  shared vision, strategic priorities, organizational capacity, day-to-day decisions and accountability, and relationships. Because I know when people see how their work connects to the bigger picture, they can move independently, without moving in different directions or make the choice to move forward, together. 

A Strategic Stakeholder Matrix like mine, is a simple tool you can use to map your whole regional ecosystem in one place. You list every relationship that matters, note how important it is, how much influence it carries, and how strong the relationship feels right now, and then name who on your team owns moving each one forward. My SSA also has a capacity calculator that turns those good intentions into honest hours, so relationship-building actually gets time on the calendar instead of always falling to the bottom of the list.

I use these tools with clients and built CSTEAD Advisory on the simple belief that lasting impact is not built on consultant dependency. It is built on strengthening the teams already doing the work, so the capacity stays with the clients with whom I engage. A tool that helps clients build relationships on purpose and make sure nobody who matters gets left out of the conversation. 

If you are heading into the Fall with a plan or a project/initiative/task you are trying to move, or a board or committee you are trying to bring into alignment, this is a good place to start. Map the relationships first. Everything else gets easier from there. 

Like the wild iris that holds its ground along our coastline, the communities and organizations that last are the ones that stay steadfast through every season, rooted in the relationships that hold them up.

Cyndy Stead

Principal Advisor, CSTEAD Advisory