In the world of international development, «collaboration» gets thrown around with the same enthusiasm as “sustainability” or “resilience.” It looks great in reports, jazzes up the slide deck, and keeps everyone nodding politely in workshops. The snag? When it comes to the messy business of actually doing it, collaboration hurts more than wearing bargain-bin shoes to a wedding.

So, let’s carve it up properly: (a) how collaboration could actually work inside and across organisations, (b) why it almost never happens (and is destined to remain a unicorn), and (c) why, despite the agony, we still have to keep trying—especially in an era of angry strongmen, mental border walls, and leaders with suspiciously artificial hair.

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(a) How to make collaboration work: a slightly less impossible utopia

In theory, collaborating within one organisation should be easier than ordering a pizza. In practice, between HQ, country offices and sector silos, it feels more like staging a medieval banquet: everyone clutching their own table, their ham, and their Excel file christened FINAL_def_last_REAL_this_time.xlsx.

What actually works, say those brave enough to try, is tediously simple:

• Shared goals. So the gender team and the water team aren’t sprinting in opposite directions but measuring success with the same ruler.
• Open, living data. Not reports that get emailed into oblivion. Real-time dashboards where you can see what’s afloat and what’s sinking.
• Collective incentives. If funding and credit hinge on joint impact, people finally stop peacocking and start eye contact.
• Genuine communities of practice. Not WhatsApp groups that die after the first selfie (unless it’s “Thursday pints”), but spaces where real problems get cracked—problems nobody solves solo.

And across organisations—NGOs, bilaterals, multilaterals, agencies—the same rules apply: it’s time to end the one-upmanship game and admit that planetary problems (climate change, trafficking, grotesque inequality) don’t fit neatly into one budget line or one shiny narrative. Leadership here isn’t about being the boss with the megaphone; it’s about facilitating, listening, protecting the right to fail, and forcing everyone to sit at the same table.

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(b) Why collaboration never happens (and why it sounds like science fiction)

International cooperation is basically a soap opera without end: same plot, rotating cast, plenty of tears, precious few weddings. Why?

1. Funding Hunger Games. There’s no real market, but beauty pageants for donors abound. Result: the logo is safer than the impact.
2. Egos in hard hats. Everyone preaches teamwork, nobody wants to give up turf, logos or limelight.
3. Power asymmetries. Big aid / development actors coo about “local partners” with colonial nostalgia, then make decisions behind closed doors.
4. The cult of attribution. If I can’t stamp my brand on the final photo, I’m not showing up.

Add to that the operational tragedies: bureaucratic ladders to nowhere, calendars that never align, teams that never meet, Geneva HQs that don’t get what’s happening in Goma. Collaboration remains that mythical unicorn everyone describes, but no one’s actually spotted.

At the end of the day, collaborating means admitting we need each other. And in a world obsessed with individual KPIs, that’s as likely as persuading a teenager to log off TikTok.

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(c) Reasons for hope (and for not losing the will to live in coordination meetings)

Still—occasionally the sparks fly. When leadership hands out resources fairly (not as pity prizes), listens for real, and gives people cover to experiment without being crucified, collaboration flourishes.

Think inter-sectoral task forces, where health, education and protection collide to take on the “unspeakables,” like sexual violence in conflict. The meetings may start with yawns, but eventually shared protocols emerge, and agencies stop reinventing the same rusty wheel.

Hope, weirdly enough, lies here: in an age of authoritarian chest-thumping and closed discourse, collaboration becomes an act of resistance. It pushes back against cynicism, forces us beyond our navel-gazing, and reminds us that genuine change is never delivered by a single acronym or a lone shiny logo.

And humour? It’s the life jacket. If you can’t laugh at the aid sector’s rituals, the PowerPoint plague, and the “reply all” with 78 recipients, you’ll either end up in therapy or writing bitter memoirs. As Virginie Despentes would say: punk is a survival strategy. And Paulo Freire might add: the best antidote to solemnity is laughter.

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Conclusion: less folklore, more mechanics

Collaboration isn’t heroic. It’s mechanical: shared goals, collective incentives, open data, decent leadership, and problems too big to tackle alone. Everything else is noise, ritual, post-it theatre.

So the next time someone intones “we need to collaborate,” they’d better turn up with a 90-day plan, a live dashboard, and the promise of half-decent coffee. Because let’s face it: without coffee, no collaboration stands a chance.

References

• Rodríguez Ariza, C. (2024). Key strategies for improving inter-sectoral collaboration in development organizations. TripleAD Blog. Link
• Rodríguez Ariza, C. (2023). Why collaboration is so complex between development organizations. TripleAD Blog. Link
• Rodríguez Ariza, C. (2023). Reflections on collaboration. TripleAD Blog. Link
• Rodríguez Ariza, C. (2019). When knowledge sharing becomes collaboration. TripleAD Blog. Link
• Rodríguez Ariza, C. (2019). Leadership for collaboration. TripleAD Blog. Link