Why Cross-Sector Collaboratives Stall: The problem usually isn’t alignment; it’s power

I’ve spent much of my career helping people and organizations work across sectors to tackle problems that no single institution can solve alone. Children and families don’t experience their lives in the neat categories we’ve created to administer public programs. Their needs span education, health, housing, economic stability, and social services. Yet the systems designed to support them often operate independently, with different funding streams, eligibility requirements, and accountability structures.

Cross-sector collaboration is supposed to bridge those divides. And yet, even when everyone agrees on the destination, moving forward can be remarkably difficult. I’ve sat in rooms where participants share a genuine commitment to better outcomes, relationships are strong, and broad agreement exists about what needs to change. Still, months pass with limited progress, recommendations circulate, and decisions get deferred.

We often describe these moments as alignment challenges. But I’ve learned that what looks like a lack of alignment is frequently something deeper: unresolved questions about power, authority, and accountability. Until we address those questions, better facilitation and more meetings will only get us so far.

Shared goals don’t mean shared accountability.

One of the most common assumptions underlying cross-sector collaboration is that establishing a shared vision will naturally lead to coordinated action. While this is a necessary starting point, it isn’t enough to drive decision-making.

For example, education agencies, health and human services agencies, workforce partners, providers, advocates, and community representatives may all agree that families deserve a more accessible, coordinated experience. But each sector brings different responsibilities, constraints, and incentives to the table.

One agency is accountable for regulatory compliance, another oversees funding, providers may focus on operational realities and workforce capacity, and community members focus on whether the system will actually become easier to navigate.

These priorities aren’t inherently in conflict, but they aren’t automatically aligned, either. This creates a fundamental tension: We ask people to act collectively within structures that continue to reward and govern them individually; without acknowledging that tension, collaboration can become an exercise in negotiating around institutional boundaries rather than changing how the system works.

Not everyone enters the room with the same power.

We tend to talk about collaboration as though bringing people together creates an equal playing field, and the unfortunate reality is, it doesn’t.

A state agency with statutory authority, a funder controlling resources, a provider responsible for implementing services, and a parent navigating those services may all have seats at the same table, but they don’t hold the same power. Some can make binding decisions, while others can only recommend them. Some control resources, while others depend on them. And most carry the consequences of decisions they have little ability to influence.

Power also shows up in less visible ways: whose assumptions become the starting point for a conversation, whose institutional experience is treated as representative of the broader system, and who determines when a problem has been adequately addressed. Without examining those assumptions, we risk designing solutions that reinforce existing inequities instead of addressing them.

Equitable collaboration doesn’t require pretending everyone has identical authority. It requires making power visible and creating meaningful pathways for influence.

Coordination is not the same as governance.

In one statewide early childhood system transition I supported, the vision was clear: create a more coherent, family-centered system by bringing programs and services previously housed across multiple agencies into a new organizational structure.

But a shared destination didn’t resolve the decisions required to get there. Program standards, data practices, administrative responsibilities, and implementation priorities intersected across organizational boundaries. The work required more than getting the right people into a room. It required clarity about how recommendations would move through the larger transition process and who had authority to act on them.

This is where we need to distinguish between coordination and governance. Coordination helps people communicate, share information, and build relationships. Governance determines how decisions are made, who has authority, how resources and responsibilities are allocated, and how participants are held accountable.

Too often, we establish coordinating structures and expect them to solve governance problems. We create workgroups without clearly defining their decision-making role; establish advisory bodies without specifying how recommendations will influence agency action; and develop shared priorities without identifying who has the authority or resources to implement them.

Sometimes the collaborative doesn’t need another conversation. It needs a decision.