LIVING WATER SMART IN BRITISH COLUMBIA: “The more you can build buzz around your work and get people energized, the more feasible it becomes. Success breeds success,” stated Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern of the University of California at Berkeley
Note to Reader:
Published by the Partnership for Water Sustainability in British Columbia, Waterbucket eNews celebrates the leadership of individuals and organizations who are guided by the Living Water Smart vision. The edition published published on February 20, 2024 featured Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern of the Haas Business School at the University of California Berkley. Her work provides the Partnership for Water Sustainability with a framework for the networked approach to collaboration that explains what we have been doing intuitively for more than two decades in the local government sector.
Instill a culture that supports champions
‘The Partnership previously featured Dr. Jane Wei-Skillern in a story published in May 2022, titled Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Four counter-intuitive guiding principles for effective collaboration. She is an ongoing source of inspiration and is a mentor for what we do,” stated Kim Stephens, Waterbucket eNews Editor and Partnership Executive Director.
‘As the hub for the Living Water Smart Network, the Partnership aligns individuals and organizations to deliver results across organizational boundaries…through a model known as collaborative leadership. This modus operandi is unencumbered by the cultural constraints and limitations usually associated with a conventional organization.”
‘The Georgia Basin Inter-Regional Education Initiative, aka “the IREI”, is the mechanism that enables and facilitates inter-regional collaboration in the southwest corner of British Columbia. At the end of the day, the hard work on the ground must be done by our IREI partners.’
“Hence, the Partnership aligns what we do to support their organizational aspirations and objectives. In that way, we can help our partners be successful. But the real key is that their organizations instill a culture that supports champions.’
How to deliver results across boundaries
“Once a network is up and running and proves itself to be effective, it becomes the primary vehicle for change, rather than the individual organizations themselves,” explains Dr. Jane.
“The leaders who work in this way are really competent in what they do. They have great people skills, they are good organizational managers, and they are good at seeing the big picture and identifying where they need to engage others and build the network to solve the problem.”
“I have been studying people who have done this well and gotten great impacts because of it; and documented the patterns and themes from their work. So, it is no surprise that other people who are working in this way are succeeding.”
“Virtually all people working in this way did not learn it from me, but rather came to this approach intuitively. The Partnership for Water Sustainability has been getting positive results working in this way long before its leaders came across my research.”
TO LEARN MORE:
To read the complete story, download a copy of Living Water Smart in British Columbia: Build the network to achieve mission impact.
