---
title: Governing a Collaborative Organization
description: Anne Wallestad’s thoughts on collaboration and nonprofit board leadership were recently featured in the Stanford Social Innovation Review. We summarize the article here but encourage you to read Governing a Collaborative Organization in full on the SSIR website.
image: https://blog.boardsource.org/hubfs/collab-blog.png
---

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# Governing a Collaborative Organization

Posted by [Anne Wallestad, Former President & CEO, BoardSource](https://blog.boardsource.org/blog/author/anne-wallestad-president-ceo-boardsource) on May 31, 2017, 12:00:00 PM

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*Anne Wallestad’s thoughts on collaboration and nonprofit board leadership were recently featured in the* Stanford Social Innovation Review*. We summarize the article here but encourage you to read* [*Governing a Collaborative Organization*](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/governing_a_collaborative_organization) *in full on the SSIR website.*

*Collaborative organizations require collaborative leadership, but are boards getting in their own way?*

As noted in *Forces for Good* by Leslie R. Crutchfield and Heather McLeod Grant, nonprofit organizations can typically be organized into one of two groups: Ones that can be described as having an “organization orientation” focus on their own goals and sustainability; and others that have a “collaborative orientation” focused on working with others, rather than competing with others, to achieve their goals.

While the latter of those two is characteristic of high-impact organizations, the unfortunate truth is that most nonprofits fall into the first category. And even though there is a lot of information out there on shifting to a more effective collaborative orientation, there is a dearth of information on how boards factor into the equation.

What does strong board leadership look like in a networked context? I offer the following suggestions as a starting point for dialogue:

- Be clear about your purpose and goals, but flexible about your strategies — lessening focus on strategies allows your staff to be more open-minded and leverage potential collaboration
- Expand your definition of organizational accomplishments — your view of “success” should include what your organization made possible, not just things the organization did itself
- Align executive expectation and evaluations with your collaborative goals — this requires distributing power to others and other organizations
- Cultivate curiosity and openness to all forms of collaboration — the more collaboration your organization does, the more board members will identify opportunities for deeper, structural partnerships

*Read* [*Governing a Collaborative Organization*](https://ssir.org/articles/entry/governing_a_collaborative_organization) *in full. *

 Topics: [collaboration](https://blog.boardsource.org/blog/topic/collaboration)

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