By Debbie Depp
To survive and thrive, managers need to hard-wire a new set of business rules and strategies into their thinking. Not so long ago, companies believed that building assets over the long haul guaranteed competitive advantage. In this new century, success will go to the companies that partner their way to the future.
Think about it. Managers who once fueled intense rivalries among competitors to motivate employees and assure success are now finding their fiercest competitor might also be their most important collaborator.
In the networked economy of the 21st century corporations must learn how to develop and manage an elaborate network of external relationships. That far-reaching ecosystem of suppliers, partners, and contractors will allow them to focus on their core competencies - what they do best - and farm everything else out.
Doing so will let them quickly take advantage of fleeting opportunities without having to tie up vast amounts of capital.
Of course, outsourcing and partnering are hardly new. Yet, in increasingly competitive environments, trusting relationships both within and between companies free partners to be creative and innovative in order to quickly meet the challenges that lay before them.
Many businesses form partnerships that, for one reason or another, wind up being dysfunctional at best, professionally fatal at worst. Typically, what is lacking in these partnerships is trust. Two companies share resources, joint ownership and subsequent profits, but never act as a partnership - a cooperation between groups that produces better results than can be gained from a mere legal transaction or contract agreement.
But companies in a partnership cannot merely call each other partners; they must actually function as partners. Mutual success. The glue that holds partnerships together is trust - a bond that must be initiated, sustained, and grown throughout the life of the partnership.
Partnerships are bonds created between people, not just companies. In crafting a partnership the central goal is to foster a creative spirit between the two companies in order to produce new value. You cannot document intangibles like shared understandings of each other's situation and how to manage change. Both of which will be needed to forge a successful partnership. More to the point, support cannot be easily transferred to other, uninvolved parties.
Start investing in relationships now. Interpersonal relationships are the conduits through which understandings flow in a partnership. To succeed, you must reach a level of mutual comfort and understanding such that, if trouble surfaces, you can discuss it logically and candidly.
While partnerships may fall on hard times, personal relationships should not. You must select the right people and develop an intimate understanding of the individuals and politics in each company. Personal relationships help you discuss these issues candidly, develop constructive understandings and reach practical conclusions.
Jacqueline Ganim-DeFalco, founder of PrivateLabelPeople, a firm that helps companies with new business development puts it this way, "For every product and service, there are many competing or substitute offerings in the market. Partnership programs help a company protect and enhance its place in the market and in some cases create more barriers to new entrants."
"In many ways, partner programs are underutilized outside of the technology field where they have multiplied over the last few years. It takes a certain type of company to approach this opportunity in the right spirit. It's best done in companies that have a senior team that is 'inclusive' and is willing to share in its success. Absolute exclusivity is hard to achieve and generally doesn't work. But, 'virtual exclusivity' does happen when two companies are in synch and know they have a good thing going!"
A partnership is like a foreign body that has been grafted onto separate organizations; to keep it alive, you must guard against rejection from each one. To accomplish this, you must have a solid start and be able to avoid breakdowns that can strangle a partnership. In other words, you can take nothing for granted.
Ganim-DeFalco worked with GTE Superpages, which needed to sell and produce online display ads for small businesses for the online directory. Their staff did not have the skills and their customers had limited budgets. Hundreds of local businesses had little exposure to the Web and little knowledge of the marketing potential for their businesses online. So, GTE Superpages begin the arduous process of due diligence on several small companies that had the expertise they needed to serve these local businesses. As a partner-in-waiting, from a small company perspective this was pure torture.
During this process the partner, who was ultimately selected, was running a full-court press within the GTE organization. At trade shows they networked with anyone who wore a GTE badge, trying to influence the decision from the 'inside' and accelerate the process. Because there had been no identification of roles at either company of who owned the relationship, nor an agreed-upon timeframe, expectations dissolved into frustrations.
Finally, when the project did begin, the partnership was functional but not optimal. Although the partner could have grown with GTE Superpages through joint marketing programs, their focus flagged. Over time the product became commoditized and the relationship unraveled.
Once the deal is done, implementation involves two sets of tasks.
First, you must create teams and assign managers to effect a smooth transition, mapping out inter-unit processes and determining how to best align and combine activities and accountabilities, using your shared objectives as a guide. Otherwise, you risk a lot getting lost in the translation.
Second, you must build trust into the combined organization, emphasizing relationships and shared processes and successes.
When correctly implemented, the trust and cooperation established will set you on your way to creating a profitable future together. And you won't have to go it alone! |
