Doing “stuff,” moving from “A to B, from here to there,” is how organizations stay relevant in their defined market place or capitalize on new opportunities.

Call them projects, initiatives or transformations – they are all intended to reach a desired outcome.

Today, leaders are confronted with more moving parts than ever, and the parts move faster and faster every day. This expanding complexity results in pressure to think short term and walk away from longer, higher value projects. This is a loser’s game.

Organizations need to link their “ends and means.” Many organizations substitute activity for accomplishment, and doing so leads to waste delay and lost opportunity.

You never get “to B,” you never get “there, “ and you are on the path to Organizational Darwinism.

Humans working in a collaborative environment have a natural inclination to focus on the goals at the expense of the other components – barriers, unintended consequences and assumptions – all of which will drive action or inaction.

Yet, Collaboration is an ambiguous term and there are as many flavors of being collaborative as you have leaders – it seems we each have our own style, and high failure rates.

Effective Collaborations come from having an Architecture. An Architecture which provides a platform to collaborate in a consistent, disciplined and optimized manner to improve your outcomes.

The first step of the process is engaging a broader population of stakeholders to surface all of the pertinent opinions. The unknown is likely known by someone, however the information is not being shared. Two minds are better than one. Two hundred even better.

More is expected, in less time and with less margin for personal and organizational error.

Leaders know they must deliver value through the performance of others – through collaborations. Yet for decades collaborations have failed 70% of the to deliver on-time, on-budget, on-benefit.

Leaders need a better way, a 21st Century way to optimize their collaborations and improve their outcomes. Leaders need to deliver more benefits, more value, and “buy back” some of their time. Leaders need a way to know the stakeholders are “All In.”