Structuring Winning Partnerships – Part Three
posted in Communications, Entrepreneurship, Partnership Blueprint |
Strong Structure Makes for Winning Partnerships
Partnering creates a climate for success by building a cooperative management team dedicated supporting each other reach mutually stated goals. Members of the partnership must undergo a change in mindset and discover how it is in their best interest to cooperate.
There are three basic steps involved in establishing the Partnership relationship.
Nurture the new relationship through personal contact
Since Partnering is an attitude change aimed at building a new relationship, it is important as a first step to establish the new relationship through personal contact. Success in a Partnering arrangement depends on the personal commitment of the management team. This commitment is built through personal relationships that must be formed early and reinforced throughout the partnership.
A joint statement of goals and establishing common objectives
The second step in Partnering is crafting a joint statement of goals and establishing common objectives in specific detail for reaching the goals. Achieving these intermediate objectives will lead to success for both members of the business alliance.
Identify and establish specific communication processes
Finally, successful partnering identifies specific processes to avoid miscommunication problems, mediate disputes, evaluate performance, promote cooperation and encourage celebration.
Although these basic steps create the essential partnering relationship, teamwork is crucial to instill the Winning Partnering Sprit. Establishing cooperative processes for evaluating opportunities and solving problems is an other feature of successful partnering. Evaluation mechanisms should be specific in measuring the achievement of the objectives that will make the project a success. A system for problem solving, which will provide for expedited decisions, should be established.
Another essential feature of Winning Partnership is committed people. Successful partnershio needs champions throughout the organization who are willing to take risks, use professional judgement, and make management decisions in a new cooperative environment. Partnering is for people who believe in cooperation, rather than confrontation, as the most effective and efficient way to achieve their goals.
How Do We Know If Partnering is Working?
When Partnering is successful, old competitive patterns change and a new spirit pervades the working relationship.
This new spirit has many indicators:
- Sharing — The Partners share a common set of goals.
- Clear Expectations— Each partner’s expectations are clearly stated, up-front, and provide the basis for working together.
- Trust and Confidence— Partners actions are consistent and predictable. Trust is earned when one’s actions are consistent with one’s words. We must ALL “walk the talk”
- Commitment— Each partner must be willing to make a real commitment to participate in the partnership.
- Responsibility— Responsibility is recognizing and accepting the consequences of our choices. Partners are accountable to each other and should agree up front on measures for mutual accountability.
- Courage — Partners have the courage to forthrightly confront and resolve conflict.
- Understanding and Respect— Partners understand and respect each others responsibilities, authorities, expectations and boundaries, as well as any honest differences between them.
- Synergy — The partnership is more than the sum of the individual partners. The relationship is more powerful than any of the partners working alone because it is based on the collective resources of the partners.
- Excellence — Partners expect excellence from each other and give excellence in return.
These are the positive indicators of a successful partnering effort. If you look closely at the list again, it is clear that most of these indicators are based on the ability of the partners to communicate and solve problems.
Successful partnerships and business alliances need to create a blueprint for their new relationship, which can be summed up in a charter. The Partnering Charter defines the long-term goals and objectives for the business project or objective. This is a win-win charter. It is a collaborative effort written by all participants and therefore includes the overlapping goals of the project team. Common goals are: a quality project carried out in a timely and cost effective manner. To achieve these goals, the team must transform them into concrete objectives and action items which can be measured at follow-up sessions. If all the goals and objectives are achieved, both parties will win.
The Partnering Charter should include objectives that will provide measurable milestones for success on the project. These objectives should be specific and should be the framework for a Partnering implementation plan.
The implementation plan fills out these objectives by including measurable details. For example, the implementation plan can call for a target dollar amount of savings, or a specified cost growth percentage. These are just a few examples of how specifics can be added to the objectives to make them part of a viable plan for ensuring project success.
Minimum Standard Requirements to play the Winning Partnership Game
Do You Have Tracking Systems in Place for These Major Functions?
- Costs
- Quality Assurance
- Materials and Services
- Information Sharing and Lessons Learned
- Product and Service Procurement Requirements
- Performance
- Do Your Process Controls Coordinate with Those of Your Primary Customers
- Have You Planned for Modernization and Innovation?
- Are You Making the Best Use of Computers and Automation?
- Do You Support Working in Teams?
- How Do You Evaluate and Address Training and Safety Needs?
- How Do You Acknowledge Employees for Quality Performance?
- How Do You Document Your Efforts for Measurable Results?
- How Do You Marketing Your Successes
- Using Your Quality Partnership as a Marketing Tool
- Using Your Champion to Position You as a High Potential Quality Supplier
- Using Productivity Gains to Fund Innovation
- Using Your Expertise and Your Innovative Successes to Market Yourself as a Value-Added Partner
- Using Your Successes to Expand Your Client Base in Other Industries
Copyright © Millionaire Minds, LLC 2008
This Blog is extrapolated from, “The Quality Partnership™ Facilitating New, Effective, More Profitable Relationships, © 1993, H. Sandra Chevalier-Batik — presented at the 1993 EPA HUB Procurement Conference. All writings here are copyrighted. You may not use them without written permission but you may link to the posts or give out a link to the posts. And remember, You Have a Millionaire Mind!
