There is no I in we; coalitions outlast personal brands.

principle — attributed to Edie Fraser

Fraser's stated operating principle, repeated whenever the conversation drifts toward her own résumé, is that there is no I in we. The Women Business Collaborative is a coalition of more than seventy-six organizations that have agreed to collaborate rather than compete. Building it required Fraser to repeatedly hand the visible credit to the member organizations and their leaders. The discipline is the precondition for coalitions of this scale. Founders who insist on signature visibility cannot hold together an alliance whose members each have their own brand to protect. The principle is operational, not ornamental.

For founders and leaders of multi-organization coalitions and movements. The principle is hardest to maintain when funders, press, or boards push for a single named figurehead.

alliances, collective-action, ego, movement-building