Daniel Newman – ‘Collaboration Among Stakeholders’

Daniel Newman is the Principal of the Matter Group and also works with The Value Web. Dan is a highly accomplished strategy and change management professional with extensive international experience in business, non-profit, and education. He built a reputation as an outstanding facilitator to top management teams undergoing periods of major change, solution identification and design, and difficult decision-making.

Dan delivered a workshop to Integrity entitled “Three Cats: Some Ideas About Building Collaboration among Stakeholders with Wildly Divergent World Views”. From his longstanding work experience Dan discovered that stakeholders with widely divergent worldviews often do not collaborate well. He presented three models to analyse, understand, facilitate and ultimately improve collaboration processes among heterogeneous groups. The first illustrated metaphorically the difficulties in communication processes in wildly diverse groups. Unless a common understanding about the different approaches to the subject of discussion is established collaboration may be almost impossible.

The second model Dan presented was an illustration of the topography of the different roles and perspectives often found in groups and teams; leading to the final model – “the seven stages of the creative process”. Common definitions of concepts, complementary team roles and involvement of all necessary aspects of a project – from clarity about a common identity to usage and application – are necessary for successful collaboration and the fruition of a project. One of the most valuable insights during the workshop was the use of metaphors and images to break old disruptive behavioural patterns and changing discourses to enable teams or groups of stakeholders to find a new common understanding for highly effective collaboration.

Integrity is very grateful to Dan for his enlightening and engaging presentation.