Beyond boundaries: stories of collaboration
Once upon time, not so long ago, in a land not so far away, lived a lot of people in whichever way they wanted. They pursued economic growth and prosperity, and competed against each other to reach their goals.
Suddenly, a pandemic hit. A virus like they had never seen before spread faster than wild fire, and threatened to wipe out life as they knew it. People died and industries collapsed, chaos and uncertainty prevailed. Could this be the end?
Among the ashes of the pandemic, something beautiful took shape: scientists, pharmaceutical rivals, governments, businesses, and citizens came out of their silos and worked together to produce medical progress in a record time and at unprecedented scale. They managed what in the past was deemed impossible. They defeated the virus, and slowly they went back to their usual ways.
But more disasters followed. Floods and heatwaves and fires, rebellions and genocides and wars, poverty and economic woes.
No matter how hard they tried, they couldn’t get things back to normal.
Disaster after disaster, they learned that they needed to keep working together, that the juiciest opportunities for innovation and prosperity lay across silos and boundaries and not within them.
That was their biggest challenge. They were used to zero-sum games: I win, you lose. How could they learn to win together?
The answer will not come from me or you, perhaps we need to figure it out together.
Come and share your true or imaginary stories about collaboration across silos, organisations or schools of thought.
Join us at Story Circle, an informal online event, where a small group of individuals share stories — from their own experience or imagination — around a common theme.
This month’s Story Circle will focus on multi-party collaboration, be it between silos or functions in an organisation, between different organisations in a given industry, across industries or across sectors.
They can be short or long stories, real or imagined. Thy can be about successes or failures, about embracing silos or breaking them. There are no limits to what stories you can share.
But there is one rule: no judgement or feedback. We simply listen to each other’s stories and if those stories trigger other stories in mind, we share those. At the end, we will have a little chat about what we discovered.
Join us on Zoom Thursday 27 June 2024, 5pm-6pm BST.
Here is the link to register: https://www.ifsi.uk/storycircle
