Chapter 9

COLLABORATIONS, PARTNERING AND JOINT-VENTURING

The biggest source of growth and increased opportunities in today’s business climate lie in the way that individuals and companies work together.

It is becoming increasingly rare to find an individual or organization that has not yet been required to team with others. Lone rangers and sole-source providers simply cannot succeed in competitive environments and global economies. Those who benefit from collaborations, rather than become the victim of them, will log the biggest successes in business years ahead.

Just as empowerment, team building and other processes apply to formal organizational structures, then teaming of independents can likewise benefit from the concepts. There are rules of protocol that support and protect partnerships… having a direct relationship to those who profit most from teaming.

Definitions of these three terms will help to differentiate their intended objectives:

Collaborations—Parties willingly cooperating together. Working jointly with others, especially in an intellectual pursuit. Cooperation with an instrumentality with which one is not immediately connected.

Partnering—A formal relationship between two or more associates. Involves close cooperation among parties, with each having specified and joint rights and responsibilities.

Joint-Venturing—Partners come together for specific purposes or projects that may be beyond the scope of individual members. Each retains individual identity. The joint-venture itself has its own identity…reflecting favorably upon work to be done and upon the partners.

Here are some examples of Collaborations:

• •Parties and consultants involved in taking a company public work together as a team.
• •Niche specialists collectively conduct a research study or performance review.
• •Company turnaround situation requires a multi-disciplinary approach.
• •A group of consultants offer their collective talents to clients on a contract basis.
• •The client is opening new locations in new communities and asks its consultants to formulate a plan of action and oversee operating aspects.
• •Professional societies and associations.
• •Teams of health care professionals, as found in clinics and hospitals.
• •Composers and lyricists to write songs.
• •Artists of different media creating festivals, shows and museums.
• •Advocate groups for causes.
• •Communities rallying around certain causes (crime, education, drug abuse, literacy, youth activities, etc.).
• •Libraries and other repositories of information and knowledge.

Here are some examples of Partnering:

• •Non-competing disciplines create a new mousetrap, based upon their unique talents, and collectively pursue new marketplace opportunities.
• •Widget manufacturing companies team with retail management experts to open a string of widget stores.
• •A formal rollup or corporation to provide full-scope professional service to customers.
• •Non-profit organizations banning resources for programs or fund-raising.
• •Institutions providing startup or expansion capital.
• •Managing mergers, acquisitions and divestitures.
• •Procurement and purchasing capacities.
• •Corporations working with public sector and non-profit organizations to achieve mutual goals in the communities.
• •Private sector companies doing privatized work for public sector entities.
• •Organ donor banks and associations, in consortium with hospitals.
• •Vendors, trainers, computer consultants and other consultants who strategically team with clients to do business. Those who don’t help to develop the business on the front end are just vendors and subcontractors.

Here are some examples of Joint-Venturing:

• •Producers of energy create an independent drilling or marketing entity.
• •An industry alliance creates a lobbying arm or public awareness campaign.
• •Multiple companies find that doing business in a new country is easier when a consortium operates.
• •Hardware, software and component producers revolutionizing the next generation of technology.
• •Scientists, per research program.
• •Educators, in the creation and revision of curriculum materials.
• •Distribution centers and networks for retail products.
• •Aerospace contractors and subcontractors with NASA.
• •Telecommunications industry service providers.
• •Construction industry general contractors, subcontractors and service providers in major building projects.
• •Group marketing programs, such as auto dealer clusters, municipalities for economic development, travel and tourism destinations, trade association and product image upgrades.
• •International trade development, including research, marketing, relocation, negotiations and lobbying.

Situations Which Call for Teams to Collaborate

1. 1.Business Characteristics: Most industries and core business segments cannot be effectively served by one specialty. It is imperative that multiple disciplines within the core business muster their resources.
2. 2.Circumstances: People get thrown together by necessity and sometimes by accident. They are not visualized as a team and often start at cross-purposes. Few participants are taught how to best utilize each other’s respective expertise. Through osmosis, a working relationship evolves.
3. 3.Economics: In today’s downsized business environment, outsourcing, privatization and consortiums are fulfilling the work. Larger percentages of contracts are awarded each year to those who exemplify and justify their team approaches. Those who solve business problems and predict future challenges will be retained. Numerically, collaboration contracts are more likely to be renewed.
4. 4.Demands of the Marketplace: Savvy business owners know that no one supplier can “do it all.” Accomplished managers want teams that give value-added, create new ideas and work effectively. Consortiums must continually improve, in order to justify investments.
5. 5.Desire to Create New Products and Services: There are only four ways to grow one’s business: (1) sell more products-services, (2) cross-sell existing customers, (3) create new products-services and (4) joint-venture to create new opportunities. #3 and 4 cannot be accomplished without teaming with others.
6. 6.Opportunities to Be Created: Once one makes the commitment to collaborate, circumstances will define the exact teaming structures. The best opportunities are created.
7. 7.Strong Commitment Toward Partnering: Those of us who have collaborated with other professionals and organizations know the value. Once one sees the profitability and creative injections, then one aggressively advocates the teaming processes. It is difficult to work in a vacuum thereafter. Creative partnerships don’t just happen…they are creatively pursued.

This is what collaborations are NOT:

• •Shrouds to get business, where subcontractors may later be found to do the work.
• •Where one partner presents the work of others as their own.
• •Where one party misrepresents his-her capabilities…in such a way as to overshadow the promised team approach.
• •Where one partner treats others more like subcontractors or vendors.
• •Where one participant keeps other collaborators away from the client’s view.
• •Ego fiefdoms, where one participant assumes a demeanor that harms the project.
• •Where cost considerations preclude all partners from being utilized.
• •Where one partner steals business from another.
• •Where non-partners are given advantageous position over ground-floor members who paid the dues.
• •Where one or more parties are knowingly used for their knowledge and then dismissed.

Who Wants to Collaborate

• •Those who have not stopped learning and continue to acquire knowledge.
• •Those who are good and wanting to get progressively better.
• •Those who have captained other teams and, thus, know the value of being a good member of someone else’s team.
• •Those who do their best work in collaboration with others.
• •Those who appreciate creativity and new challenges.
• •Those who have been mentored and who mentor others.
• •Those who don’t want to rest upon their laurels.
• •Those who appreciate fresh ideas, especially from unexpected sources.

Who Does NOT Want to Collaborate

• •Those who have never had to collaborate, partner or joint-venture before.
• •Those who don’t believe in the concept…and usually give nebulous reasons why.
• •Those who think they’re sufficiently trained and learned to conduct business.
• •Those who want only to be the center of attention.
• •Those who fear being compared to others of stature in their own right.
• •Those who think that the marketplace may not buy the team approach.
• •Those who are afraid that their process or expertise will not stand the test when compared with others.
• •Those who had one or two bad experiences with partnering in the past…usually because they were on the periphery or really weren’t equal partners in the first place.

Characteristics of a Good Collaborator

• •Already has a sense of self-worth.
• •Has a bona fide track record on their own.
• •Have a commitment toward knowledge enhancement.
• •Walk the Talk by their interactions with others.
• •Supports collaborators in developing their own businesses, offering referrals.
• •Have been on other teams in the past…with case studies of actually collaborations.
• •Has a track record of successes and failures to their credit…with an understanding of the causal factors, outcomes and lessons learned.

Stages of Relationship Building for Business Partners

1. 1.Want to Get Business: Seeking rub-off effect, success by association. Sounds good to the marketplace. Nothing ventured, nothing gained. Why not try!
2. 2.Want to Garner Ideas: Learn more about the customer. Each team member must commit to professional development…taking the program to a higher level. Making sales calls (mandated or voluntarily) does not constitute relationship building.
3. 3.First Attempts: Conduct programs that get results, praise, requests for more. To succeed, it needs to be more than an advertising and direct marketing campaign.
4. 4.Mistakes, Successes & Lessons: Competition, marketplace changes or urgent need led the initiative to begin. Customer retention and enhancement program requires a cohesive team approach and multiple talents.
5. 5.Continued Collaborations: Collaborators truly understand teamwork and had prior successful experiences at customer service. The sophisticated ones are skilled at building and utilizing colleagues and outside experts.
6. 6.Want and advocate teamwork: Team members want to learn from each other. All share risks equally. Early successes inspire deeper activity. Business relationship building is considered an ongoing process, not a “once in awhile” action or marketing gimmick.
7. 7.Commitment to the concept and each other: Each team member realizes something of value. Customers recommend and freely refer business to the institution. What benefits one partner benefits all.

Evaluating Collective Working Relationships

I have observed the greatest successes with collaborations, partnering and joint-ventures to occur when:

• •Crisis or urgent need forced the client to hire a consortium.
• •Time deadlines and nature of the project required a cohesive team approach.
• •The work required multiple professional skills.
• •Consortium members were tops in their fields.
• •Consortium members truly understood teamwork and had prior successful experiences in joint-venturing.
• •Consortium members wanted to learn from each other.
• •Early successes spurred future collaborations.
• •Joint-venturing was considered an ongoing process, not a “once in awhile” action.
• •Each team member realized something of value.
• •The client recommended the consortium to others.

My own disappointments with previous collaborations include:

• •Failure of participants to understand—and thus utilize—each other’s talents.
• •One or more participants have had one or a few bad experiences and tend to over-generalize about the worth of consortiums.
• •One partner puts another down on the basis of academic credentials or some professional designation that sets themselves apart from other team members.
• •Participants exhibit the “Lone Ranger” syndrome…preferring the comfort of trusting the one person they have counted upon.
• •Participants exhibit the “I can do that” syndrome…thinking that they do the same exact things that other consortium members do and, thus, see no value in working together, sharing projects and referring business.
• •Junior associates of consortium members want to hoard the billing dollars in-house…to look good to their superiors, enhance their billable quotas or fulfill other objectives that they are not sophisticated enough to identify.
• •Junior associates of consortium members refuse to recognize seniority and wisdom of senior associates., tilizing the power of the budget to control creative thoughts and strategic thinking of subcontractors.

Here are the reasons to give the concepts of Collaborating, Partnering and Joint-Venturing a chance:

• •Think of the “ones that got away” …the business opportunities that a team could have created.
• •Think of contracts that were awarded to others who exhibited a team approach.
• •Learn from industries where consortiums are the rule, rather than the exception (space, energy, construction, high-tech, etc.).
• •The marketplace is continually changing.
• •Subcontractor, supplier, support talent and vendor information can be shared.
• •Consortiums are inevitable. If we don’t do it early, others will beat us to it.

The benefits for participating principals and firms include:

• •Ongoing association and professional exchange with the best in respective fields.
• •Utilize professional synergy to create opportunities that individuals could not.
• •Serve as a beacon for professionalism.
• •Provide access to experts otherwise not known to potential clients.
• •Refer and cross-sell each others’ services.
• •Through demands uncovered, develop programs and materials to meet markets.

These are the truisms of collaborations, partnering and joint-ventures:

• •Whatever measure you give will be the measure that you get back.
• •There are no free lunches in life.
• •The joy is in the journey, not in the final destination.
• •The best destinations are not pre-determined in the beginning, but they evolve out of circumstances.
• •Circumstances can be strategized, for maximum effectiveness.
• •You have got to give to get. Getting and having are not the same thing.
• •One cannot live entirely through work. One doesn’t just work to live.
• •As an integrated process of life skills, career has its place.
• •A body of work doesn’t just happen. It’s the culmination of a thoughtful, dedicated process…carefully strategized from some point forward.
• •The objective is to begin that strategizing point sooner rather than later.

Quotes on Teamwork, Collaborations and Partnering

“All for one, one for all.”

— Alexandre Dumas

“Never ask that which you are not prepared to give.”

— Apache law

“Tsze-Kung asked, saying, ‘Is there one word which may serve as a rule of practice for all one’s life?” The Master said, “Is not Reciprocity such a word? What you do not want done to yourself, do not do to others.”

— Confucius (551 BC-479 BC)

“Whose bread I eat, his song I sing.”

— German proverb

“A chain is no stronger than its weakest link. Union is strength. United we stand, divided we fall.”

— Proverbs

“It takes more than one to make a ballet.”

— Ninette de Valois, choreographer

“What I want is men who will support me when I am in the wrong.”

— Lord Melbourne, 19th Century British statesman

“There are only two forces that unite men…fear and interest.”

— Napoleon Bonaparte

“When bad men combine, the good must associate. Else they will fall, one by one, an unpitied sacrifice in a contemptible struggle.”

— Edmund Burke

“One man alone can be pretty dumb sometimes, but for real bona fide stupidity, there ain’t nothin’ can beat teamwork.”

— Edward Abbey

“The finest plans have always been spoiled by the littleness of those that should carry them out. Even emperors can’t do it all by themselves.”

— Bertolt Brecht, German dramatist