Our clients were global professional association teams in India. As the world’s second most populous nation and a leading democratic emerging market, India offers many opportunities with regard to economic development. But with all of the opportunity, come challenges, too: investor literacy, knowledge of international best practices in investment management, and the need for rapid capital market reform.

As a global leader in the investment management industry, the association recognized the (mutual) benefits of opening an office in Mumbai. Since 2005—ten years prior to the grand opening of the Mumbai office, a not for profit member association had already been established and had grown to eight volunteer driven chapters. Ahmedabad, Bengaluru, Chennai, Delhi, Hyderabad, Kolkota, Mumbai and Pune. These entities work hand-in-hand in their respective regions to develop programming, increase membership, and promote the association’s credential to businesses, institutions and regulators. The legal and regulatory landscape in India adds yet another layer of complexity.

These outside challenges were pressing our clients to get better in collaboration among full time employees set to meet goals established in the global corporate strategy and local volunteers dependant on the local context and limited resources.

What did we accomplish?

• The regional team in India and member association staff have a new willingness to collaborate.
• The environment is changing from a skeptical, untrustworthy one to a more nurturing one where all the participants feel safe to share ideas and resources.
• The mindset of the collective group shifted as they became more aware of the power and impact of working together for the greater good of all stakeholders and ultimately, the economic development of India.
• The official Collaboration Partnership Framework was implemented in September 2018.

How do we do it?

1. Understanding

We talked to most of the team members one on one to understand sentiment about the situation. The findings from those interviews were starting point for us to develop the workshop.

2. People connections

We closely managed the key stakeholders to win their trust. Since the situation was personal when the feelings were boiling we were able to facilitate the difficult conversations.

3. Sharing the knowledge

To assist the teams in creating a structured approach to collaboration, WakeMake held a design thinking workshop with local board members and member association staff from Mumbai and Hong Kong. A total of 24 participants met for the facilitated session. WakeMake created the workshop based on insights collected through research on sentiment and the needs of members in India, the local Board of Directors, and member association staff.

4. Making it real

We designed the collaboration framework based on best practices for building partnerships but supported by participant feedback. We believe that partnership and collaboration is nothing else but dynamics of the people involved in activity. If the people change, dynamics will change too, and norms need to be revisited.

There are few parts of designing the framework document that we are proud of:

1. Our framework document has a column that is called people’s voice. This is very important for complete context of the ideas presented but it is often non-existing because business tends to depersonalise activities in order to make them repeatable. We are finally seeing small windows of opportunity for change were we can portray thoughts and feelings of real people to support business strategies and activities.
2. We put together the core issues the client was facing into simple wen diagram that was resonating with the users.
3. On the survey sent out after we presented the final document the endorsment was 100% and agreement was in place few months after.