The Long View
Writing that brings evidence, practice and rural realities together
What we can learn from chickens about collaboration
This three-part series looks at why groups struggle, what the science shows works, and how to make change stick and spread.
Collaboration:
a water scheme shows how
Nobel Prize winner Elinor Ostrom found that successful groups built eight specific foundations proven to help them keep working together when things got tricky.
Walking towards pressure:
a Hansen game plan
When pressure builds, it's easier to avoid the hard stuff than stay with it. Steve Hansen built one of the greatest teams in history by playing the long game and helping them learn to stay with what's difficult - together. Photo: Wiki Commons. Stefano Delfrate
Blurring the boundary fences
Tropical cyclones and storms are a reminder that weather systems don’t care about individual farm boundaries. Neither do markets, regulation or community expectations.
Thirty-odd years ago, what happened on our farm was mostly our business. We worked with people we knew. Cooperation happened naturally.
Today decisions involve people and organisations well beyond our boundary fences. Much of what matters now sits between us.
Complexity lands everywhere at once. The natural response is to narrow our focus. Protect our patch and keep to ourselves. That worked before. It doesn’t stretch as far now.
Our sector is not short on knowledge, science or good initiatives. We’re clear on what matters. Viable businesses, healthy land and water, strong communities, a future the next generation can step into with confidence.
But I keep coming back to something else. What if the real challenge isn’t any of that - but how well we work together when things get hard?
When the pressure’s on, it’s rarely the technical side that slows things down. It’s the unspoken tensions, mismatched expectations and wobbly trust. Conversations that don’t happen - or don’t go far enough.
Starting change isn’t the hard part. Making it last is, and that means figuring things out together, often with people we barely know, across boundaries that didn’t used to matter.