Mike Smith
Cross-stakeholder ventures don’t fail for lack of talent or vision. They fail because the rules of the game aren’t set up front.
I was working with a nonprofit CEO starting up a fund to rebuild in the wake of the Los Angeles fires. With emotion, action, and policy butting heads, finding a path to rebuild was as challenging and traumatic as dealing with the fire itself. Homeowners needed support and clarity. Insurers needed financial viability. Public agencies needed trust. Funders needed confidence that dollars would turn into homes. Everyone was working at different speeds and with different goals.
Sure, the disaster recovery fund is an extreme case—trauma, policy, and economics—but the dynamics are the same in an enterprise launching a venture. You’ve likely seen it inside your company: as you plan a new business, the competing incentives of partners, channels, regulators, and internal teams can trip up progress. For a new business to grow, the solution has to benefit all involved. I often see the same failure modes:
1. Design-by-committee solutions that no one loves: when every stakeholder gets their pet feature, organizations end up with a bloated product that pleases no one and confuses customers.
2. Solutions that miss the real needs: without knowing something others don’t know about customers or stakeholders, organizations build ventures aimed at the wrong problems.
To avoid these traps, co-define the prerequisites that make the venture desirable for end users and stakeholders, then curate a simple, focused solution.
Invite Collaborators, Not Just Credentials
Don’t bring the smartest people in the room who shut down others’ contributions—or execs who freeze open discussion; you need people who know their stuff and know how to build on others. At Pixar, the Braintrust is a handpicked circle of peers chosen for candor and story sense, while executives stay out, so directors get constructive notes from collaborators rather than title-driven critiques.
Ground Everyone in Users’ Needs
Align stakeholders around what the business is really in service of. Define and share insights about what matters to people so stakeholders work toward the right outcomes. When Kaiser Permanente set out to improve care across its hospitals, teams shadowed nurses and patients and codified what they learned; that bank of insights helped them rethink systems and practices like bedside handoffs.
Document Stakeholder Needs and Contributions
It’s not enough to collect commitments; each party should know what they need to provide and what they’ll get. The U.S. Green Building Council’s LEED program spells this out up front: owners, architects, engineers, and contractors are assigned specific roles and checklists, and each credit lists the evidence required and the benefit earned. Everyone knows exactly what proof they owe and what they get for delivering it.
Curate a Focused Solution, Not a Comprehensive One
After broad input, use a small team to define a solution that’s clear and resonant to the end user. If everyone adds a feature that’s great only for them, you end up with an unlovable business. When Amazon launched Prime, it led with one sharp promise—unlimited two-day shipping for $79—then layered perks later, proving focus before breadth.
Cross-stakeholder ventures don’t fail for lack of talent or vision. They fail because the rules of the game aren’t set up front. Co-define the prerequisites that make the venture desirable for end users and stakeholders, then strip away everything that isn’t core.
In the rebuilding project, these moves paid off. We brought all the key stakeholders into the room. Homeowners led with their stories. We grounded everyone in the customer journey, naming the few needs that really mattered at each step. Ideas came from everyone, then small groups of domain experts translated them into requirements for a real solution. After the session, a small team synthesized a clear, focused offering. The CEO emailed afterward that having structured design sessions and a shared journey “was critical context for a successful session.”
In the aftermath of the fires, what unlocked progress wasn’t speed; it was alignment. Define the rules together, focus the scope, and you get something people choose to push, not tolerate. That’s the lesson for any enterprise: set shared rules, build with focus, and you’ll create ventures people want to champion.
