Unripe conditions
We had great ambitions and possibility for our place but the conditions just weren’t present in the major institutions to warrant trying.
Our coalition had a powerful, shared vision and a clear plan for what we wanted to achieve in our city. We even had champions for change inside the major institutions we need on board—local government, key funders, established organisations. The problem isn't their willingness; it’s the systems they operate within. Our partners are themselves encumbered by institutional processes not built for this kind of work. Rigid procurement rules, inflexible funding cycles, and traditional legal frameworks make it nearly impossible for them to engage in the emergent, trust-based way our collaboration requires. It feels less like we’re failing and more like the operating systems of our potential partners are incompatible with ours. Pushing forward now seems destined to fail, wasting energy and burning goodwill. How do we know when the conditions are truly “unripe,” and what is our role: do we wait, or do we start a different kind of work to help our partners make the case for change internally?
Connecting Learnings to this challenge
Sometimes, the biggest barriers to a collaboration’s success are not internal, but systemic and institutional. Recognising when the broader ecosystem’s processes are unreceptive is a crucial strategic judgment. The following insights and alerts offer considerations for assessing this systemic readiness and thinking about the “field-building” work that might be needed before a core mission can be pursued.
Areas of the Many-to-Many System that aim to address this challenge
“Unripe Conditions” demand a strategic focus on the broader ecosystem rather than just the collaboration itself. The following layers are particularly relevant for this kind of work:
- System blockers [coming soon]: These are deep codes that are present in legislation, regulator requirements or institutional interpretations that are at odds with appropriate deep codes for complex collaborations with a vision for societal transformation. They tend to be ‘blockers’ for what is possible in the short-term because they cannot be changed by one collaboration or actor alone.
- Ecosystem Strategy: This is the core layer for this challenge, providing a framework to map, understand, and strategise how to influence the broader system and its key institutions.
- Deep Code Shifts: This provides a lens for understanding the underlying "deep codes" of the external institutions that are creating resistance, helping to diagnose the root causes of the “unripeness.”
- Missions: The Wide-Boundary Mission can be used as a powerful narrative tool to engage external actors and support internal champions, helping to “ripen” the conditions over time.
- Stewardship Approaches: This work requires a particular kind of stewardship—one focused on diplomacy, narrative change, and long-term relationship building to support partners navigating their own internal bureaucracies.
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
Working with “unripe” institutional conditions requires a different set of tools—focused less on internal project planning and more on external influencing, narrative change, and supporting internal champions. The tools and examples below offer starting points for this “field-building” and system-shifting work.
Simple Context Diagnostic
A model looks at two starting conditions of collaborations and how they lead to distinct characteristics and behaviours, and may be approached with different processes.
Open details →Alerts
Alerts are the critical 'watch-outs'—the common challenges, tensions, complexities, and areas where we learned special attention is required.
Institutional deep code blockers
If the internal structures most powerful actors in a system aren’t aligned with the group’s desired deep codes, they can limit what the collaboration can achieve. Early scanning for the presence of “deep codes” in established institutions can help surface potential misalignment.
Micro-tests — small interventions, such as inviting a micro-agreement that aligns with the deep code for them to sign off — can reveal how their internal system is likely to respond.
Misaligned legal relationships to social agreements
If the social agreements a group makes are overridden by misaligned legal agreements, group dynamics can be disrupted, hindering collaboration.
It can help early on to assess what scope exists to align legal relationships and forms to the mission. Once you understand what is possible, you can reassess how far these conditions will undermine the aims and what is worth trying.
Insights
Insights are the key discoveries that emerged from our work and point to promising pathways and core principles.
Legal Architecture
Complex collaborations bring together various institutions and individuals through diverse legal forms, roles, and relationships into what we call Legal Architecture.
Many readily available legal forms and relationships impose ‘deep codes’ that misalign with a collaboration's intended governance, particularly concerning risk and power.
We can analyse our context to sense how far it is possible and desirable to invest into addressing this; if not, we can surface this tension and ways to work with it.