Three major Dutch water research institutes in the Netherlands (Deltares, IMARES and Alterra) decided to cooperate more closely in order to better serve the national market and provide for a stronger international position. A simple decision made by the management team, but how to ensure that such cooperation actually takes place?

Employees suddenly had to tune in with people that were considered their competitors yesterday. “What does this cooperation mean?” “What is in it for me?” A great exploration process that could take a very long time (with many meetings and lengthy discussions) without actually moving any closer to eachother.

Chris initiated three pressure cooker teams, each consisting of members from both organisations. Each team was given a relatively easy assignment: define your own goals (within given boundaries) and produce tangible results – that could not have been reached without cooperation – in a period of 3 months. The pressure cooker approach required team members to go further than they would normally do. An exploration as mentioned above was still necessary, but could suddenly be carried out in less than a week (because the clock was ticking to come up with results).

At the moment of writing this blog post, the results of the pressure cookers are not known yet. However, it soon became clear that barriers that were thought to hamper cooperation between the insitute only existed in the mind (and where carefully nurtured there). Removing these barriers made cooperation obvious and even necessary to yield results that could never be reached alone!