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Overview/Background
The Issue: Create a step-by-step guide that provides a roadmap for organizations to foster a more collaborative mindset and organize their stakeholders more effectively.
Effective partnerships and strategic relationships are crucial for generating longstanding solutions to complex problems. For over 40 years, Keystone Policy Center has been a leader in collaborative decision-making, empowering leaders to build shared value with partners across sectors. Recognizing the power of collaboration, Keystone partnered with Dow to develop a step-by-step guide, called the Collaborative Action Toolkit. This toolkit is designed to provide a roadmap for organizations to foster a more collaborative mindset and organize their stakeholders more effectively.
The Collaborative Action Toolkit emerged from Dow’s evolving sustainability journey, which has progressed through several phases over nearly 25 years. Dow’s sustainability goals evolved from focusing on reducing operational impact (Footprint reduction) and producing sustainable products (Handprint) to a new phase known as the Blueprint Goals. These Blueprint Goals emphasize rethinking business models and collaborating across various sectors to tackle global challenges like plastic waste, climate change, and water supply sustainability. To achieve these goals, Dow recognized the need for a mindset shift from a “business as usual” approach to one that embraces purposeful and meaningful collaborations.
Our Approach
Keystone collaborated closely with Dow over a year to develop the Collaborative Action Toolkit. Keystone leveraged its extensive experience in collaborative stakeholder management while Dow provided real-world examples to create a practical and effective guide.
Initially, the toolkit, known as the “Blueprint Thinking Toolkit,” was tailored to Dow’s internal processes to help employees navigate complex, multi-stakeholder approaches to solving global challenges. Dow sought Keystone’s expertise to identify key players, conduct an initial consultation to understand where stakeholder coordination would be beneficial, identify potential barriers, and make recommendations for next steps.
Realizing the broader value of the toolkit, Dow and Keystone decided to make it available to other organizations. The Collaborative Action Toolkit was born from this collaboration. Dow’s work, including the development of the toolkit with Keystone, was shortlisted in the 2020 Think Global Forum’s Award for the manufacturing sector, highlighting its contribution to global thought leadership.
Results
The Collaborative Action Toolkit provides a comprehensive framework to navigate internal and external planning, collaboration, and communication for complex issues or projects. It is organized into three sections: project alignment, stakeholder mapping, and external engagement. Each section offers various tools to guide users through the collaboration process.
The toolkit is adaptable to different stages of a collaborative initiative, allowing users to reinforce their progress and achieve their goals effectively. It can be utilized by organizations of any size and across any sector, making it a versatile resource for fostering collaboration.
Dow and Keystone’s partnership demonstrated the power of collaboration and created a valuable resource that has been recognized internationally. The toolkit has since been used to help organizations and teams develop collaborative mindsets, establish strategic partnerships, and address global challenges in a more integrated and effective way.
Through this project, Keystone and Dow demonstrated how a collaborative approach can lead to transformational change, paving the way for other organizations to adopt similar strategies for greater impact.
