Tension driven fragmentation
It was going well until controversial topics like money came to the table and now there is fragmentation.
For months, our collaboration was defined by a spirit of unity and shared purpose. But as soon as we had to make our first significant budget decision—allocating shared funds to different partners’ projects—that unity fractured. Conversations became tense, trust eroded, and partners started retreating into their own corners, advocating for their individual interests. The focus has shifted from our collective mission to a zero-sum competition for resources, and the group is now fragmented into competing factions. How do we navigate these tough, unavoidable conversations about money and power without shattering the collaborative trust we worked so hard to build?
Connecting Learnings to this Challenge
Controversial topics, especially those related to resources and power, are the ultimate stress test for a collaboration's culture and structures. This fragmentation reveals where the underlying agreements are weakest.
Areas of the Many-to-Many System that aim to address this challenge
“Tension driven fragmentation” often arises when a collaboration’s “deep codes” around value and power haven’t been properly explored together and embedded in its formal structures. The following areas are designed to build resilience for these moments:
- Governance System: A robust governance system provides clear, agreed-upon processes for navigating difficult decisions, ensuring fairness and transparency when controversial topics arise.
- Deep Code Shifts: The shift to a “Multi-Capital” perspective is critical here, as it provides a framework for valuing contributions beyond just the financial, which can help defuse tensions around money.
- Infrastructure Model: This is where the ‘rules’ for resource allocation are formally encoded. A well-designed infrastructure can create pathways for mutual resolution rather than fragmentation.
- Stewardship Approaches: Skilled stewardship is essential for hosting difficult conversations, managing conflict, and holding the group accountable to its shared mission when tensions are high.
We note that the Many-to-Many System focusses on, and therefore shares, infrastructural and process aids for these challenges. We recognise other critical facets including but not limited to relational holding, tending to power, team-building, facilitation and practice development could and should play a role in solving the challenges.
Tools and Examples linked to this Challenge
Navigating high-stakes conversations requires clear processes and strong relational foundations. The tools and examples below offer ways to design equitable resource allocation models and facilitate tense discussions in a way that builds alignment rather than division.
Multi-Value Asset Mapping
Mapping of the different assets, especially non-tangible, being brought to a complex collaboration.
Open details →Alerts
Alerts are the critical 'watch-outs'—the common challenges, tensions, complexities, and areas where we learned special attention is required.
Not inspecting the relational capacity of the system
Beware of assuming that there is sufficient relational trust and connection in the group for effective collaboration to be possible, when this may not be the experience held by all and/or it may change over time.
In particular, going too hard and fast into polarising topics such as money before there is the relational capacity across the group to hold them can open up spaces for harm and rupture.
Ignoring group dynamics
Group dynamics strongly influence what a group can achieve together. Ignoring these dynamics can create a false economy, where actions taken fall short of their potential.
Insufficient capacity, time and resource given to collaborating
It is often significantly underestimated how much time and attention is needed for the organising, governing, learning, operating, practising, embodying and other systems needed in order to do good work collaboratively. When this is not given enough attention the conditions erode over time.
Insights
Insights are the key discoveries that emerged from our work and point to promising pathways and core principles.
Exploring and embedding deep code shifts
Societal transformation involves rethinking how we see the world and our place in it. How will these underlying ideas shape how you work together? What approaches to power, value, ownership, accountability and risk do you want to hold? Writing these down can help keep them present and guide you through change.
Many forms of value
A ‘multi-capital’ view of value recognises relational, reputational, skill-based, knowledge-based and financial value. Naming these different forms helps a group move away from the common habit of prioritising only financial or tangible value.
When this is made explicit, it can be built into the governance of a collaboration. This can influence both day-to-day behaviour and how responsibility is held, in support of the shared mission.
A Collaboration Process
We can draw on examples from other contexts to help decide how to steward a collaboration. The Process Stewardship Experiment Log shares an example from our Proof of Possibility; however, each context is different, and what is appropriate for yours may vary. The Simple Context Diagnostic can help you assess some patterns in your context.