Collaborative Problem Solvers

7. Massively Parallel Roles & Tasks

Collaborative problem solvers are the people who build on the efforts of those in all of the other MPP roles by helping people to identify common problems (i.e., problems that concern many people across political divides) and then work with stakeholders to pursue realistic and equitable options for effectively addressing those problems. We have found it useful to divide these problem solvers into seven major sub-categories:

Negotiators work in a wide range of settings to help their organizations find mutually beneficial ways of working through common problems.
Mediators and related professions such as facilitators and conciliators are professional (and sometimes volunteer) intermediaries who help negotiators to work through disputes that they cannot solve on their own. They help the parties convene and facilitate meetings, communicate more effectively, earn mutual trust, work through emotional issues, identify mutually beneficial possibilities, conclude agreements, and then implement those agreements.
Consensus Builders go beyond the negotiation and mediation of relatively small scale disputes to help those involved in complex, multi-party disputes develop a broad consensus on ways of handling complex clusters of interlocking issues that affect large numbers of people and involve multiple interest groups.
Peacebuilders take consensus building processes one step further by helping design and implement programs that go beyond the negotiation of agreements to broader efforts to bridge societal divides and transform hyper-polarized societies into more peaceful and, ideally, reconciled societies. In essence, they are trying to implement the agreements that mediators and consensus builders help develop.
Constructive Advocates work to defend their group's interests in ways that simultaneously respect, recognize, and help protect the legitimate interests of other groups involved in the conflict, including those on the other side(s). Unlike mediators and peacebuilders who approach conflicts from a more neutral, intermediary perspective, constructive advocates are not neutral; they are primarily focused on defending the interests of their own group.
Global NGOs focus on developing, generally with respect to some specific group of issues, solutions that help protect society as a whole. While some NGOs are highly partisan and self-serving, we are focusing here on those that make a good-faith effort to carefully analyze a problem in ways that identify (and, in many cases, develop) promising solutions that equitably balance the competing interests of key stakeholder groups. They also work to publicize and promote their recommendations with the goal of persuading the larger society and its democratic decision-makers to adopt them.
Philanthropists provide critically needed funding for a wide range of problem-solving efforts as well as the broader array of MPP-related activities.