This paper explores the social practice through which a social innovation – a new organizing for inter-organizational collaboration – emerged through the work of two public sector strategists in a Swedish municipality. The social practice in this empirical case were constituted by five recurrent practices: planning, navigating, interacting, documenting and pacing. The pacing-practice may be understood as an practice superior to the others, used to coordinate and adapt to the rhythm of the other practices. Hence, pacing was central for driving the project forward and contributed to various activities being carried out not only in the "right" order and in the "right" time, but also in the “right” place. This practice is rather similar to other practices of public sector work, which implies that social innovation work is about common “muddling through”-type of public policy work. The paper thus de-mystifies the work of social innovation; something that may be seen as important in a time where social innovation is said to be the answer to challenges related to globalization, sustainability, demography, and when current forms of organizing, eg NPM, do not seem to work.