Collaborating: A Guide

Sprinkled throughout American Fathers are examples of collaboration.  In the back third of the book this SIFT Coalition collaboration is given a name.  SIFT stands for Securing Individualism and Freedom Together.  The goal is to create an environment where cooperation and free flowing exchange of ideas is encouraged.

Tools of the SIFT Coalition we have used successfully in our business include the following steps:

1. Project Name- this personalizes the specific issue/challenge you and the team are working to solve.
2. Goals- knowing where you are going and even more importantly- prioritizing your goals is vital. Being able to visualize and quantify goals gives you a feeling of ownership.  Setting time frames for each goal after prioritizing gives you a targeted timeline.  Just thinking about it will not get the job done.
3. Obstacles- each goal will usually have one or more obstacles. List them.  Decide what you have influence or control over- and write down your agreed upon solution for each obstacle.
4. Accountability- nothing gets done that is not measured.
5. Here people accept responsibility for seeing a solution to the obstacle to completion.
6. Having the responsible person define what success means is vital to having both understand and emotional buy in to the solution.
7. By date-establish you (responsible person’s) mile marker. It also gives the group a future accountability reference point.
8. Remarks- allows one to add comments

Here is a worksheet to help you on your SIFT (Securing Individualism and Freedom Together) Coalition.

Collaborating allows each of us to share our unique God given gifts, talents and insights to collectively come to worthwhile solutions.

“Remember there’s blue sky behind the darkest cloud”