These
three stages can be broken down further in to seven workable steps,
which essentially form the partnership's lifecycle:
1.Creating
or Understanding Direction and Establishing Needs.
During
this stage, organisations create an awareness of where they are
currently, create the strategic direction and path of they want to get
to and carry out an internal assessment to determining the critical
core competencies (technologies, products, skills, markets and
customers) that they must acquire to meet their strategic goals. Having
weighed up the options e.g. Build, Buy or Partner, the last stage is to
develop the Partnership Business Case. One fundamental component of
this is evaluating your own readiness to partner. More than 50% of
partnership challenges encountered derive from internal cultures,
approaches and processes.
2.Partnership
Strategy Planning.
A
partnership broker such as Affinity Maker™ would fulfil that
role, because of its skills in developing relationships, facilitating
discussions, creating processes that assist potential partners to come
together, coaching, supporting and in some cases managing the
partnership on behalf of the partners.
Effective
partnership brokers always work on behalf of all the partners to ensure
the integrity of the process. While the partners bring the knowledge
and expertise from their own organisation, it is the partnership broker
that can more effectively manage the process so the partners can focus
on their organisation's interests as well as their day-to-day
activities.
3.Partner
Search and Selection.
Selecting
the right partner is critical. At this stage, the partner selection
process is refined and implemented to enable the organisation to find
or attract the right players. The partner selection process may involve
a tender management process or even searching for, screening and
evaluating of merger or acquisition targets. Some key selection aspects
include objective alignment, partnership stakeholder identification
& management, resource mapping, profiling potential partners for
their partnering styles and developing the partnership framework
(Governance, Processes & Behaviours). This stage usually concludes
with negotiations and agreement in the form of a Memorandum of
Understanding or Contract.
4.Making
it Work - Partnership Implementation.
Having
selected a partner, this stage focuses on bringing the partnership to
life. Partnership management and getting the partners to work together
effectively in the initial stages is critical for success and is often
not clearly planned for. This stage also involves operations planning
to work out an effective implementation plan with timetables and
deliverables, operation set-up for the nuts and bolts of how the
organisations are going to connect and work together and project
management to bring all the elements together to deliver the desired
results.
5.Maximising
the Partnership Value.
This
stage is regarded as the true value creation stage where the focus is
on maximising the partnering potential. This includes partnership
performance measurement, review and evaluation and ongoing partnership
management. Marketing and Customer Relationship Management play an
important role in this stage, as does auditing the partnering
effectiveness.
6.Dealing
with Change - Staying Together.
Partnerships
can last for a number of years. However, ongoing partnership management
plays a key role in ensuring the partners continue to work effectively
together. This stage involves the transition of key people into and out
of the partnership and capturing the learning of the partnership to
understand how things can be done better and differently. This stage
often involves developing a new strategic direction when the role of
the partnership needs to change.
7.Approaching
an Ending.
This
is the final stage of the partnering lifecycle. Before organisations
will immerse themselves in a partnership or alliance, they want to
understand the rules of disengagement. Once the exit rules are defined
this facilitates a more open and free exchange. The organisations
involved need to consider whether to finish the partnership, look at
different structures or, possible institutionalising.
Institutionalising a partnership means building appropriate structures
and mechanisms for ensure long-term commitment and continuity.
While
we use these seven stages as a progression and a way of ensuring that
key activities are followed through systematically, the most important
factor is the relationships that are being built throughout this
partnering process. As one partnership veteran reflected to us, in the
end, it is 'people that partner'!
As
you progress through the various stages you are seeking engagement of
your fellow partners, building their commitment and eventually
achieving shared ownership of the partnership arrangement. It is only
then that the partners will fully incorporate the partnership
activities into core business and action will be achieved.
In
our experience, you need to spend far more time in the early stages,
during the planning and early implementation stages, to ensure that the
fundamentals are right before moving on too quickly. Remember that
proverb: failing to plan is planning to fail.
|
