To solve the problem, however, they should make their focus much wider to include organizations and other initiatives in their field, like that:

Why? Because your partnership does not exist in a vacuum: its members have their bosses in their own organizations, with their own agendas. They are also likely to participate in other similar coalitions, with very different approaches to the same topic. It creates contradictions. These contradictions surface in your partnership but originate outside it.

 Of course, it is a very simplistic summary of what Martine writes about. I highly recommend you read the whole paper: Martine does a brilliant analysis of this interconnectedness using a typical Dutch coalition. For the rest of us, here is a very frivolous summary:

What happened?

South Holland province needs more houses but also wants to minimize issues like transportation, parking, and green spaces that come with new developments.

What did they do?

• They created 12 themes, such as the impact of sustainable urbanization on housing costs. 

• Each theme became a group ("roundtable"). Every group was supposed to deliver a concrete recommendation, but no specific format was provided.

• Each group had a chairperson responsible for inviting participants, but participation was open to all.

• In the end, 100 organizations and firms joined, including municipalities, housing corporations, and research institutions.

What could go wrong when you throw together 100 different organizations and tell them, "Go figure out what to do yourself"?  Martine, being very tactful, describes it as "emergent playing rules" and "own style and pace of working" within each group. Spoiler: the outcome was worse than the members had hoped for.

What went wrong?

• Representatives cannot be a "voice of the organization" because organizations are fragmented and don't have a single voice.

• Participants struggled to turn collaborative decisions into organizational actions.

• They tried to convince people within their organizations of the problem's urgency but eventually became reluctant to do this "missionary work."

• Roles, rules, and responsibilities weren’t defined upfront and had to be worked out together (=time).

• Some teams, like the strategy team, focused on external goals, while the legal team focused on internal ones. They had conflicting interests, different expertise, and managers with different styles, and they were judged by different standards.

• Most participants were unaware of similar coalitions, and there was no strategy to connect them -> unsynchronized actions.

• The biggest issue: the lack of alignment across different levels: within organizations, networks, and between coalitions.

Why did they have these problems?

Different organizations and coalitions operate based on different logics. In planning literature, this is called "soft space" (informal agreements) and "hard space" (fixed legal processes). Martine suggests adding "medium space" for collaborations that blend both logics, which is challenging to manage. Martine notes:

Roundtable participants called [another coalition] a “circus” because of all the involved representatives, extensive procedures, and political rituals. Participants in [this another coalition] called the roundtable coalition a “circus” because of the multiplicity of groups and tables that all did their own thing.

Yet, both "hard" and "soft" logics are necessary for solving problems efficiently. They’re also needed to integrate efforts across different levels: within organizations, between coalitions, and across networks. Martine calls this multi-level action as "in-betweening." She suggests four ways to do this: inward, outward, softening, and hardening practices. Some examples:

• Inward Practices: Adapting external ideas to fit your organization works well, but sticking only to familiar teams and avoiding broader networking doesn’t.

• Outward Practices: Aligning your goals with those of other organizations is effective. Delaying key involvement until plans are clearer is not.

• Hardening Practices: Using past coalition outcomes to guide new ones is successful, but forcing one coalition’s approach onto another is not.

• Softening Practices: Informal, open meetings boost creativity and flexibility, while rigid routines hinder progress.

You can always reach out to Martine as a consultant to translate it to your specific situation.

Aliona's comment: how to prevent?

Martine's role was to evaluate interactions among the involved organizations, not to solve the problems. I’m sure she has many ideas on how to address these issues if you find yourself in a similar situation. I want to say a few words about preventing these time-consuming discussions.

Every collaboration manager faces the Quality vs. Acceptance dilemma: Should you invite many people and seek their input (being inclusive) or provide a clear plan of action first (being efficient)? In this case, the initiators prioritized acceptance.

If you choose this approach, you need to counterbalance it with very clear, pre-defined procedures and frameworks. For instance, recommend a meeting cadence (weekly? yearly?), specify the format of the outcome (presentation? report?), and define the decision-making procedure (consensus? secret ballot?). In other words, don’t expect participants to figure out both "what" and "how" on their own—decide on "how" in advance and help them focus on the content. Hope it helps!