In response to the contamination of Villarrica Lake, territorial actors have demanded greater environmental protection. In response, the Chilean State established a colla-borative process to elaborate a Decontamination Plan. However, the process did not respond to their expectations, resulting in public questioning of the plan and gover-nment motivations. To reduce the gap between the design and practice of governance, we propose a methodology to analyze the collaborative governance process and recommend changes to achieve better and more legitimate results.