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For the past couple of years, I have been watching the progress of the Thrive region of 8 counties around Madison, Wisconsin. I like what I see. They started out by building a good foundation. Like the West Michigan Strategic Alliance, the Thrive region applied one of the most important lessons of collaboration: go slow to go fast.
That is, spend time building trust within a core group of partners. Only then can you scale a network. In our region in North Central Indiana, we took nearly a year to slowly build trust within our core group.
This week, a couple of the leaders from the Thrive region outlined the importance of collaboration. Read more.
You can also visit the website here.
The Thrive region started with a set of principles. That makes a lot of sense when trust levels are relatively high. When they're not, you're better off focusing on small collaborative steps. People learn to trust each other as they work together on projects. In a region with low trust -- like North Central Indiana -- you're probably better off starting on small collaborative projects. As momentum builds, you can turn toward outlining a set of principles that make sense. After three years of work, we are heading in this direction with a new Regional Leadership Alliance based in Kokomo.
The West Michigan Alliance took another tact. They focused its early efforts on building regional awareness. Take a look at their book, The Common Framework, that they produced.
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