Using Co-Creation to Break Silos and Build Alignment, with Susan Bartlett

Behind the Episode

Dec 17

“What’s difficult in a modern corporate environment is not having an idea. It’s getting an idea through to implementation, through all of the corporate hoops and hurdles that have to be cleared. And so often, the reason why those hurdles are hard to clear is because the internal stakeholders don’t have the same mental model of user challenges, the patient challenges, the customer challenges, as the people who are trying to put forward the solution.”

— Susan Bartlett

Too often, she observes, stakeholders like legal, compliance, and marketing teams don’t share the same mental model of customer or patient challenges as the people proposing solutions. This gap creates delays and frustrations. “What co-creation does,” Susan continues, “is it brings so many of those stakeholders around the table to hear firsthand... and you engage with them from a genuine place of wanting to understand their experiences and their needs.” If we’re successful in this undertaking, the result of co-creation can be a stronger product, as well as empathy, trust, and alignment that ripple throguh our teams and communities.

So what, exactly, is co-creation?

I would define co-creation is the intentional process of convening diverse stakeholders in order to collaboratively shape solutions, grounded in a shared understanding of their needs and experiences. As Susan describes in our conversation, it requires careful planning, active engagement, and openness to new ideas an iterative development.

Whether you’ve described it as co-creation or not, I suspect a lot of the Storylinking audience will have had some experience with co-creative activities, either as a leader or participant. For myself as a documentary filmmaker and human storyteller working with communities, I learned pretty quickly in my work that I can’t do any of what I do alone. But creative collaboration doesn’t happen by default—it takes intentional work to bring people into the process, inviting participation as more than just a client or a story subject. When more of us have a seat at the table, we have a better chance to build something authentic and useful, together.

Bridging silos with co-creation

One of the greatest strengths of co-creation is its ability to address the challenges of organizational silos. Susan notes that the healthcare space, with its complex intersections of medical, regulatory, and marketing concerns, often struggles with internal misalignment. Co-creation helps by including all key voices earlier in the process. “You could almost see the lawyers in the room go, ‘Oh, light bulb,’” Susan recalls, describing a session where patient advocates and legal teams collaborated to reimagine drug safety information. By hearing directly from patients, the lawyers realized their traditional dense language wasn’t just ineffective—it introduced risks of its own.

"Bringing folks with that lens to the table makes a big difference too,” Susan adds, “because they're able to switch out of, ‘what are the rules and what's allowed’ and into ‘what's possible.’ What has to be true for us to deliver to these patients or these physicians or these nurses the thing that will be most useful to them?"

I’ve seen similar benefits to co-creation in my own work. When we involve other stakeholders early in the process, they see their narrative and needs built into what we create, get to enjoy participation in that innovation, and then are that much more prepared to approve and even share the stories we’re telling when the time comes.

Managing blind spots through collaboration

Even (and perhaps especially) seasoned professionals can fall into the trap of assuming they know their audience. Susan acknowledges how familiarity can create blind spots: “We spend a lot of time working in biotechs, working with patients... and it’s very easy to assume we know how best to communicate with patients because we do it all the time.” Yet, she says, bringing patients into workshops almost always uncovers new insights about their fears and priorities.

For example, Susan’s team learned from patient input that website designs should address specific anxieties to help users engage with the content more effectively. As she explains, “We brought [patients and advocacy groups] into some virtual workshops, and we learned so much from them on the particulars of what mattered. We learned about the things that made them scared and how we should therefore design things like websites to make sure that those fears were being allayed so they could could get beyond that and go further.” These insights went on to shape the final deliverables in small ways that had a tremendous impact. “There were so many things that were shaped in the final deliverables by sitting around a table with the patients and the caregivers and learning from their experience.”

For example, the Workcomics team initially used a flower garden as a metaphor in the visuals for a treatment website. However, validation testing revealed that male patients often dismissed the design out of hand, because they didn’t think it was addressing them. “In the final version, it was a fern garden that did not project pink and flowers and probably breast cancer,” she recalls. It’s a small but powerful reminder of how specific choices we make can influence whether people feel seen or excluded.

I appreciate the way that co-creation centering the voices of those we serve, ensuring that the solutions we develop address their actual (as opposed to perceived) needs and concerns. And, this feedback loop helps us to keep our existing knowledge from becoming a barrier to our own continued learning.

Storytelling as a connective force

Storytelling also plays a crucial role in the co-creative process. For Susan, patient stories often set the tone for collaboration by grounding the work in empathy and understanding. “We generally start with a whole segment just on patient storytelling,” she says. For in-person sessions, this often takes the form of an evening meal, where patients share their experiences before diving into the creative process the next day. These stories, she explains, create a shared context that fuels creative decisions. “It really fuels so much of the creative decisions, especially when you’re down in the details.”

One of my favorite conversations early on with a new collaborative group is about the story of our work. As we take turns going around the circle, we get to hear what’s brought us all to the table, and learn more about each other’s strengths and priorities moving forward. I like that this practice puts us in a narrative mindset and gives everyone the opportunity to anchor their own meaning in participation. Critically, it also ensures that each person is seen and heard by the rest of the group, including me. That’s not to say it always comes easily or feels natural (vulnerability is hard!) but it’s through this type of engagement that we begin to build trust.

As the team shares their stories, we begin to fold together. This process of co-creation transforms storytelling into a shared journey. It’s no longer about a single narrative or perspective; it’s about building a system of experiences, insights, and values that link people together. So how should we come at co-creation in a way that gives us the best chance for this type of success?

Making co-creation tangible

One of Susan’s most practical pieces of advice is to get back to basics. “It’s really important to have actual markers and paper and make sure that people put something down on paper,” she says. Even rough sketches or prototypes can make a big difference in turning abstract ideas into shared understanding.

In our conversation Susan describes an exercise called “collective lines,” where participants each contribute to drawing different parts of a boat. The activity helps groups build comfort in contributing, even when they’re unsure of the final result. “By the end, everyone has made something together, and they start to see that the process is about contribution, not perfection,” Susan explains.

For those working online, this principle still applies. Simple tools like digital whiteboards, shared documents, chat prompts, or even asking participants to hold up drawings to their camera can still help to build an important sense of engagement and ownership.

Building trust for lasting impact

At its heart, co-creation isn’t just about the deliverables; it’s about the relationships and trust you build along the way. “When you bring people together and you engage with them from a genuine place of wanting to understand their experiences and their needs,” Susan emphasizes, “it will be the case that you will come up with something that will be valuable and move you closer to your objectives.”

Further, I would testify to the ripple effect that this creates. Teams that participate in co-creative processes leading to shared wins often carry those lessons forward, becoming more empathetic and collaborative in future projects.

Try it out

If you’re curious about co-creation, Susan recommends starting small: “Bring in half a dozen people with different perspectives and pick something concrete—‘Hey, let’s talk about this and see if we can figure out a way to make this thing better.’”

If you have a community need that feels stuck, I would invite you to consider this basic exercise:

Clearly describe the challenge. What’s the problem we’re trying to solve, and what’s at stake?
Set a timer for two minutes, and write down all the groups or individuals connected to the problem that you can think of.
Circle the ones you haven’t involved yet, and brainstorm one new way to reach out and include each one of them in the next stage of your work on this problem.

Co-creation might not be the answer to every problem, but in the right context it’s a tremendous tool for developing trust, alignment, and solutions that will benefit a community.

Listen to the full episode above, or subscribe to Storylinking on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast platform for more conversations that explore the power of storytelling to build community.

Additional Resources

Workomics on Substack, at https://workomics.substack.com/
Workomics on Linkedin, at https://www.linkedin.com/company/workomics/
This article by Susan, on co-creative practice: https://workomics.com/hybrid-co-creation-pharma-biotech/

Tom Lietz