Lacking one budget big enough, a sponsor collects modest contributions of money, people, or time from several units that each gain something, and each contributor becomes a co-owner with a stake in success.
An example
Remote monitoring for heart failure patients after they went home would cost three times what the heart program at a three-hospital system could spend. Its director skipped the capital request and went unit by unit. Nursing would save on readmission staffing and agreed to provide two nurses for monitoring. Information technology needed a pilot for its new patient app and contributed developer time. Finance, which carried the readmission penalties, put in seventy thousand dollars. Pharmacy gave a part-time pharmacist to review medications. Each contributor got a seat on the program's steering group and a share of the reported savings. Within a year, readmissions among monitored patients were down by a quarter. When the capital committee was asked to expand the program, four department heads spoke for it.
Why it works
Without a large enough budget, a sponsor can still assemble what a project needs by asking several units for modest contributions, each in return for something it gains. The project looks better because several units back it, and approval is easier because no single budget has to carry it. Each contributor becomes a co-owner with a stake in the project's success, and together they form a coalition. Contributors must really gain something, the accounts of who put in what must be honest, and the sponsor must keep everyone informed. It fails if contributors come to feel used.
The thinking behind it
Rosabeth Moss Kanter Kanter's The Change Masters: Innovation for Productivity in the American Corporation (1983) describes corporate entrepreneurs who had to gather support, money, and information for their projects beyond their own authority, and finds that companies innovated well when their structures let people build coalitions across units. Collecting nurses, developer time, and finance money unit by unit is that coalition building, and each contributor's seat on the steering group keeps the coalition together.
When it fits
Projects that cross units and benefit several of them are the case, run by sponsors without a large budget of their own, in companies where units control modest resources. The sponsor must know what each unit gains and have the time to build the relationships.
How to use it well
Map who gains from the project and what each could contribute: money, people, time, data, equipment. Approach each unit separately, with what it gains.
- Ask for modest contributions, sized to what each can give without a fight.
- Give each contributor a role: a seat on the steering group, a share of the reported results.
- Keep careful accounts of who put in what.
- Report results to every contributor on a regular schedule.
Treat contributors as co-owners. They are the coalition that will speak for the project when it comes up for larger funding, and they will do it only if they feel it is partly theirs.
What it costs and where it backfires
Collecting contributions takes time, and each contributor will want a say. Several owners can slow decisions and start disputes about credit. If the project fails, every contributor loses something, and the sponsor's standing suffers with all of them at once. Promises to contributors have to be honest. Overstating what a unit will gain to get its share is deception, and it breaks the coalition when the gains fall short.
When it is used on you
When a peer asks you to contribute to their project, ask what you gain and what role you will have, and get it in writing. If you are deciding a larger request for a pooled project, check whether the contributors are getting what they were promised.