Vivien Twyford on the newest episode of Cool Collaborations
You won’t want to miss my conversation with Vivien Twyford, coming out tomorrow on the newest episode of the Cool Collaborations podcast titled: The Power of Co - A conversation with Vivien Twyford.
We had a few challenges with this episode, so it took some doing to get it all put together. What you hear in this episode is actually our second recording. We had completed our first recording and then encountered some technical issues where one half of the conversation was lost. I am immensely grateful that Vivien agreed to re-record the entire interview and I think we had an even better conversation the second time round.
Vivien has been working in public and stakeholder engagement for more than 20 years and has spent the last 10 years focusing entirely on collaboration. From our conversation, we can sense some of her frustration with clients who felt that engagement was “a commodity” and understand why she and her colleagues preferred to do things with people, rather than doing things to people.
Vivien relates a key project she worked on with the New Zealand government on a massive infrastructure project that, I think, really exemplifies the power of a different approach, a collaborative approach, to involving citizens and stakeholders. Her example and the approach she used in her New Zealand project has made me think hard about a project I’m contemplating.
We also spend some time talking about the Power of Co: The Smart Leaders’ Guide to Collaborative Governance; the book Vivien and her colleagues John Dengate, Max Hardy, and Stuart Waters published in 2011. Focusing on collaboration, the book lays out a five-step process to help us navigate collaboration from commitment through to implementation.
While Vivien has just recently stepped back from a lead role, her company Twyfords Collaboration continues to offer their systematic approach to collaboration.
Make sure you check out the new episode on Apple Podcasts, Stitcher, Spotify or wherever you get your podcast content. The conversation with Vivien Twyford was so good, we did it twice.
Happy Collaborating!
Scott Millar often works as a "peacemaker" by gathering people with different experiences and values and helping them navigate beyond their differences to tackle complex problems together. Through Collaboration Dynamics, he offers a program in High Performance Collaboration, where he guides groups to explore the nature of collaboration, inclusivity, and innovation, and acquire new abilities to create the conditions that enable groups to contribute and thrive in challenging environments.
