The Paradox of Partnerships

In business we are taught to “posture and position”, we are taught to “get leverage over others” and to “take advantage”. We are taught to “drive things home”, “put things away” and “nail down” anything in our way. To “never back down”, to “limit exposure”, to “hold the line”, “control the conversation” and to “destroy our competition”. All of this focus on winning at the cost of another, on control, on rewards over relationships and we wonder why good long term, mutually beneficial Strategic Partnerships are hard to come by. 

So why should we care about Strategic Partnerships?

The opportunity of creating large scale impact at low operational cost is indeed the lure of strategic partnerships. In fact, at a time like this, one might argue that these sorts of opportunities are more important now than ever before. 

The watch out of course is having sufficient self-awareness, purposeful intention and curiosity as an individual and a business as they are critical precursors to co-creation and mutual possibility.

So here is the challenge, the timing is perfect now for low cost, high impact paths to market, in fact, I’d argue it always is. The truth of this moment though is that partnerships in an economic crisis become more of an imperative than an option.

The problem is, at distance, people achieve very little together, relationships do not evolve, vulnerability is absent and true connection and collaboration isn’t possible.

This can and must change if businesses are going to prosper in the new normal. We must unlearn the habits that keep us at distance and learn again to allow connection in the workplace and in our commercial relationships. 

Much of what we are taught in business creates distance, at distance, humans are met with a high degree of discomfort. Some of us have become so conditioned to distance, that this way of operating has seriously impacted our mental wellbeing. In fact, studies have proven that people who live without genuine connection suffer chronic illness, the absence of connection appears to impact us at a cellular level.

Further, unfortunately, what we learn in business we take home to our families and loved ones or companions. Surviving and thriving on the front lines of commercial conquest gives rise to an ever-increasing number of people who struggle with being genuinely connected, unable to feel or express emotion, unable to admit not knowing or understanding, unable to ask for help and unable to attach to any non-material purpose.

This is not a natural state of being, this is why we are getting sicker, mentally and physically and this is importantly reducing our opportunities to grow as individuals and businesses. This is costing us commercial opportunities atop of the damage it causes us as individuals.

So what has all this “gooey stuff” got to do with business in the coming years?

With demand set to decline, given an economic recession rocket boosted by a pandemic, businesses will need to be looking for more economical ways of generating revenue. One of the most efficient ways is through strategic partnerships; working together with other companies to leverage a collective capability and make more for each other along the way. Mutual market interest, economic efficiency, ROI and scale, is a formula for success under fire.

But, the first step towards change is awareness, so we must acknowledge that partnering and collaborating with other businesses no longer occurs naturally and in fact, we have to learn how to find and build allies and unlearn the behaviours that are holding us back from genuinely doing so.

In fact, history will clearly show you the critical importance of allies when we are at war and economically we are, as at this month, officially at war. 

For those of you in doubt, strap yourselves in, with a potential wave 2 rearing its head in Melbourne this week, this is not BAU and therefore it’s time to start to think about how you will do business differently.

The fundamental commercial issue is that partnering without purposeful intent for the longer-term almost always ends in the erosion of profit.

It’s tempting in a wobbly market to anchor onto bigger, more stable businesses, which can have its merits, but without a longer-term lens can be a financial burden for numerous reasons. When we think short-term in negotiations we invariably snooker ourselves commercially over the medium to longer-term. 

When we chase immediate volume plays we can become reliant on sources of supply that will soon become the enemies of our P & L. If this isn’t yet ringing true, I’d like you to consider the dependent relationships that exist in your business today, the ones where you are the dependent for leads, sales or traffic and reflect on how the margins from those “deals” over time have been gradually or not so gradually eroded.

There are very real reasons to apply caution to strategic relationships, but if we can do them differently, with a long-term relationship genuinely in mind, the outcomes can vary significantly.

I should call out too that there are plenty of people who have made a living in start-ups collecting badges (partners) with unsustainable terms only to flip or list the entity in all of its perceptual glory, often leaving shareholders wondering. It’s been done, time and time again, but the smart money over the coming years will not be so easily fooled.

Strategic Partnerships, it’s no surprise, are best executed by the evolved. That is people and companies who are comfortable in their own skin, with who they actually are, and with clarity and self-awareness about what they are most definitely not and what their real issues are with customer acquisition and retention. 

So my call out to you all, as we relentlessly throw out hashtags of hope, is that before we can actually be #bettertogether, we must take stock of why that’s been so difficult, so far.

What do you think? How do you think business can quickly evolve and change its approach to build more valuable strategic partnerships?