Building Partnerships

Partnership Defined

Partnership is a voluntary collaborative agreement between two or more parties in which all participants agree to work together to achieve a common purpose or undertake a specific task and to share risks, responsibilities, resources, competencies and benefits.

Synergy

Synergy is the power behind business partnerships. In a business partnership, two parties leverage their assets (resources, capabilities, expertise, client base etc.) for the mutual benefit of both... More

Why Partner with Others?

Meaningful partnerships are the foundation for success. Partnerships is what enables many companies to make continuous improvements. By sharing with others, you can direct your resources and capabilities to projects you consider most important.

The 80/20 Principle asserts that 80% of results come from 20% of effort. Thus, to achieve more with less, you must be selective, not exhaustive. In every important sphere, work out where 20% of effort can lead to 80% of returns. Strive for excellence in the few key areas, rather than for good performance in many.

Focus your firm's resources on what you do best and what creates sustainable competitive advantage and tap to the resources of others for the rest. To decide why, when and how to partner with others for complementary resources, weight the small amount of cost savings that doing non-core-competence tasks might bring against the distraction and investment that will be required to stay up to date over time.

Growing Role of Partnerships in the New Economy

In the new knowledge economy, the principles of business strategy are being transformed. Instead of a focus on physical assets and economies of scale, the drivers of success reside in connectivity and intangibles. Businesses increasingly need to develop and manage complex ecologies or organizations around themselves so as to succeed. The selection of strategic partners with whom to collaborate is now becoming a life or death issue for most firms.⁷

Barriers between companies, which used to be solid and absolute, are now permeable. "Iconoclasm and creativity are now the keys to success", writes Mark Stevens.¹ "For generations companies built moats between themselves and their competitors. Today the most successful companies build bridges. And that's only the beginning".

Building Trust Between Organizations

Trust – both between individuals and organizations – is at the core of today's complex and rapidly changing knowledge economy. With trust as a foundation, the companies – or teams within a company – can share their know-how to achieve synergy – results that exceed the sum or the parts. "Unlike formal contracts or rigid hierarchies, trust frees partners to respond together to the unexpected, which is essential for mutual creativity. Trust also fosters enthusiasm, ensuring the best performance from everyone."⁵... More

Negotiating

Negotiation is the  game of life and business, the lifeblood of relationships, and a positive way of structuring the communication process.  Whenever you attempt to reconcile differences, resolve disputes, manage conflict, influence others, establish or improve relationships you are negotiating... More

Strategic Alliances

In the new economy, strategic alliances enable business to gain competitive advantage through access to a partner's resources, including markets, technologies, capital and people.

Teaming up with other adds complementary resources and capabilities, enabling participants to grow and expand more quickly and efficiently. Especially fast-growing companies rely heavily on alliances to extend their technical and operational resources. In the process, they save time and boost productivity by not having to develop their own, from scratch. They are thus freed to concentrate on innovation and their core business... More

Joint Ventures

Joint ventures involve sharing the risks and rewards in an enterprise or project co-owned and operated for mutual benefit by two or more business partners. There are good business and accounting reasons to create joint venture with a company that has complementary resources, skills or assets, such as distribution channels, technology, or finance... More

New Employer-Employee Partnership

Today, people are your firm's most precious and underutilized resource. They are your firm's repository of knowledge and they are central to your company's competitive advantage. Well coached, and highly motivated people are critical to the development and execution of strategies, especially in today's faster-paced, more perplexing world, where top management alone can no longer assure your firm's competitiveness. A successful people partnership is a coherent set of people systems and processes that reflect the business environment, the enterprise strategy, and organizational values. Each one will be unique to an organization and its employees, but there are some key principles that are common to all the companies that are exploring the New People Partnerships... More

Customer Partnership

"Customer partnership is a shared journey to create a future for both parties that is better than either could have developed alone."³ The customer is the foundation of your organization's success. In today's turbulent times of rapid and chaotic change, "no force is more grounding and stabilizing than a partnership with customers."³ Creating a partnership with customers will help your organizations maintain the focus you need to make good decisions and harness the power and commitment you need to weather volatile times. Customer partnership is more than "putting customers first", or  finding mutually satisfactory solutions to shared problems, or  a dedication to excellence in every sale or service encounter. It also requires commitment to forging long-term relationships that create synergies of knowledge, security, and adaptability for both parties... More

Extended Enterprise: Virtual Integration

Through virtual integration, the walls between enterprises crumble. Companies stop being self-contained business units that produce products or services, and become integral elements in a larger system. In the new world of virtual integration, no matter who signs the check, all the people are working together for a common cause. Vertical integration performs, virtual integration innovates... More

Business Process Outsourcing (BPO)

Although the quest for cost savings inspired initial forays into offshore outsourcing, companies are now using offshore delivery to achieve significant improvements in business performance - transforming outsourcing from a tactical and technical point solution to a long-term business strategy for creating and defending competitive advantage. The decision makers are looking to leverage global sourcing to gain long-term process optimization, business-oriented measurements, and enhanced control over IT assets and activities.⁸... More