10 Essential Keys to a Successful (and Profitable)
Collaboration
Building
strong collaborations with employees, vendors, and customers is
critical to your long-term success.
In
business, we
collaborate with others all
the time. Whether its working with the members of our team, or
closing an important deal with a customer or vendor, or developing a
new product or service with a business partner, building effective
collaboration skills and
strategies is key to success in business.
According
to Felix Barber and Michael Goold, business consultants and authors
of the book, Collaboration
Strategy, "The
greatest concern for most business owners and CEOs, what keeps them
awake at night, is often not their strategy--how to create a
compelling customer offer or how to outsmart the competition--it's
how to get people to make that strategy actually happen."
Getting
people to make something happen in business is a large part of what
leadership and being
a manager is
all about. There are, however, effective ways to accomplish this
goal, and not-so-effective ways. In their book, Barber and Goold
present the following 10 keys for bringing about a successful--and
profitable—collaboration.
1.
Creates value
Any
successful collaboration creates value both for your partners, and
for you. Be sure that you know exactly what value you are providing,
and that you provide as much as you can within the available
resources.
2.
Results in competitive advantage for you
A
successful collaboration--whether with employees, vendors, customers,
or other business partners--will make your company stronger
and more competitive in
the marketplace. This is a time when 1 + 1 = 3.
3.
Takes account of your abilities
When
you collaborate with others, you have to know what you bring to the
table--the expertise, experience, and skills that your partner may
lack. At the same time, know your weaknesses. These will be the
things you look for in a good partner.
4.
Your partners are able (and self-motivated)
Just
as you must be experienced and skilled, so too must your partners be
experienced and skilled. They should be excited to partner with you
for your mutual benefit.
5.
Your partners have no awkward conflicts of interest
Close
collaborations require that conflicts of interest with other
individuals or companies don't intrude in the relationship and trust
that you are building with each other. Do thorough due diligence up
front to avoid the kind of conflicts of interest that can ruin an
otherwise successful collaboration.
6.
Your partners do not have and will not gain too much bargaining power
Ideally,
the parties in a collaboration will have roughly equal bargaining
power, that is, no one party can force the other to accept terms and
conditions that are not favorable. It's difficult to build a stable,
long-term collaboration when one party has unequal bargaining power.
7.
Set goals and constraints to measure performance
Each
party to the collaboration needs to be able to set
goals for the partnership, and
then measure their progress--and the progress of their
partner--toward meeting them. If there are going to be constraints in
the collaboration, they need to be defined in advance.
8.
Align rewards with performance
Successful
collaborations incentivize performance in ways that reward the
parties for achieving specific goals and milestones. This is true
whether you are collaborating with employees, vendors, customers, or
other business partners.
9.
Specify favorable terms
To
ensure the success of your collaboration, be
prepared to offer favorable terms to
the other party--and expect (and require) the same in return.
10.
Meet requirements from partners' perspective as well as your own
The
more of the above nine keys to collaboration you have working for
you, the better. However, in the best-case scenario, you'll meet all
nine--both from your perspective, as well as your partner's.
BY PETER
ECONOMY
http://www.inc.com/peter-economy/10-essential-keys-to-a-successful-and-profitable-collaboration.html?cid=em01016week01a
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