The Value of Collaboration

Mission Capital has six powerful core values that serve as the foundation of our mission and vision. These values guide how we work within our organization and in the communities we serve.

• Collaboration: We believe in the power of working together.

• Service Excellence: We go above and beyond to exceed expectations.

• Trust: We respectfully and ethically interact with each other and those we serve.

• Learning: We pursue and promote leadership and growth.

• Innovation: We relentlessly pursue creative solutions to improve our work and our community.

• Connectedness: We create opportunities to work and play together in meaningful ways.

As an organization, we constantly work to incorporate our core values in our daily interactions, our program and service delivery and measurement, our hiring process, our employee development, and our rewards and recognition practices. In this segment of our Value of Core Values series, I’ll share some thoughts on Mission Capital’s core value of collaboration.

The Value of Collaboration

At Mission Capital, 2017 has brought an abundance of coordinated, collaborative activities intended to multiply social impact in our community with the recent launch of the child welfare collaborative recruitment initiative, a community-wide effort to recruit and support healing foster families, Mission Capital is growing its Aligned Impact practice. We are committed to helping diverse community stakeholders effectively work together to amplify their efforts. Collaboration increasingly defines Mission Capital’s approach to tackling social problems in our community and beyond. As an organizational core value, we're reflecting on how we embody collaboration within our organization.

“We believe in the power of working together.”

In Mission Capital’s Team Charter, we address collaboration within our team and our nonprofit community. We have found that these two levels of practice are interdependent - we cannot have one without the other.

• We build, support and encourage collaboration across teams, organizations and sectors to solve complex community problems.

• We leverage diverse talents, perspectives and resources that challenge and push us forward as we work together on similar goals.

• We support each other, the people we serve and the people who make our work possible in order to further our collective mission.

Fostering collaboration at Mission Capital

These are three ways that we create and maintain a collaborative environment at Mission Capital:

1. Monthly Learning TimeOur departments take turns hosting this all-staff event to share a project with our team. This dedicated learning time not only increases shared knowledge and communication among our staff, but allows presenters the opportunity to gather objective feedback and valuable outside perspectives on their work. For example, the Aligned Impact team recently shared the major findings from the Foster Family Gap Analysis. After spending months “in the weeds” with this project, our department was very grateful for the fresh insight and feedback our staff provided following the presentation.

2. Collaborative culture-building We have become increasingly intentional about fostering a people-centered culture within our team. Realizing that every staff member’s voice and buy-in are necessary to achieve this goal, we’ve created a club that meets regularly to collaborate on culture-building activities. Members of the Culture Club work together to choose our core value of the month, plan celebrations, discuss organizational changes and support traditions like birthday buddies, competitive office scavenger hunts and recognizing teammates with a gift from their “Favorite Things List.” Our Culture Club proudly serves as an example of collaboration, demonstrating the value we place in supporting one another to further our mission.

3. When in doubt, refer to the DISCCollaboration can be particularly challenging with contrasting personalities and work styles. However, when these differences are understood, and better yet, articulated, diverse approaches can be leveraged as assets when working as a team. Every staff member at Mission Capital takes the TTI Success Insights DISC Assessment for behaviors and motivators. We agree to “tell all” by saving our individual results in an internal shared folder. These assessments are tremendously helpful to review when challenges arise in our team’s communication or when working with new colleagues. By understanding our DISC assessment results and our teammates' results, we better position ourselves and others for successful collaboration.

Your turn!

In the true spirit of collaboration, we'd like to ask for your input. How do you support and practice collaboration in your organization?