Insights · Public Affairs · 6 min read
The Discipline of Coalition Building.
The strongest campaigns are coalitions. But coalitions collapse without discipline. Here is what separates the ones that hold.
Charles-Antoine Coypel, Fury of Achilles, 1737. Hermitage Museum, Saint Petersburg.
A coalition is a campaign's force multiplier and its greatest single point of failure. Coalitions that hold deliver outcomes no single member could achieve alone. Coalitions that drift waste every member's budget and poison the relationships inside them.
What makes coalitions collapse
Most coalitions collapse on the same three faults. The goal was never agreed in writing, only verbally. Authority over messaging was never resolved. And the exit conditions were never named, so every member stayed in too long or left too early.
The founding document
Coalitions that hold start with a short founding document every member signs. It names the outcome, the period, the contribution from each member, the decision-making process, and the exit conditions. The document is never long. It is the discipline of having it that matters, not the length of it.
Exit conditions, named early
Coalitions end. The question is whether they end well or badly. Coalitions that name their exit conditions at the start, either by date or by trigger event, end cleanly and often re-form later. Coalitions that avoid the conversation end badly and poison the re-forming.
“A coalition is not an agreement to act together. It is an agreement on what happens when you disagree.”
