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10 tips on building strategic business partnership
Building strategic partnership is no longer a ‘choice’ but a necessity in today’s business arena. Strategic Business Partners can help you grow your business fast and more efficiently. They may even help you build better products and offer better services to your customers. They can help you free up your resources to concentrate on your core strengths and thereby make you more efficient and profitable.
Here are some tips on building strategic business partnership:
1. Have a clear objective after a SWOT analysis. <– This is necessary when you are deciding on creating a Business Partner Program.
2. Research the marketplace for players that have the potential to prosper with you and make you prosperous in return OR at-least give you room to concentrate on areas of your business that are more critical to your mission and vision.
3. Ensure that they are reputed and have a clean track-record.
4. Is it a good fit? Clearly understand what they bring on the table in terms of their technology, infrastructure, expertise, customer-base, and their Brand.
5. Identify any difference of interest and assess what you are ready to ‘give away’ as a sacrifice to ‘get more’ from the relationship.
6. Do a trial run with their services and assess their work first hand. Use this opportunity to fine-tune the identified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs).
7. Finalize your KPIs and other matrices and ensure that these are consistent across all your partners for that specific business area.
8. Once you are fully convinced that they are a good fit and the partnership would be ‘mutually beneficial’ then go ahead and finalize the contract. Make sure the contract is well thought out and written with legal’s consent. Take every possible measure to safeguard your company’s reputation and best interests. Make sure that the contract is thorough and terms and conditions are well defined and documented on paper. Remember: if its not written it doesn’t exist.
9. Have a robust Partner Ennoblement Program in place that would ensure that your partners are best equipped with knowledge and necessary assets and skills.
10. Last but not the least make sure you have a well defined exit plan for times when you or your partner decides to part ways.
4 easy steps to solving problems
When you are faced with a problem a lot of things happen and if the problem is too challenging or tasking it can lead to confusion and nervousness. Confusion and nervousness lead to anxiety, frustration and in severe cases depression and helplessness. So, here are some time tested tips for solving problems/ life challenges more effectively and efficiently. This holds good for both personal and professional life challenges for individuals and teams.
1. Recognize: there is a problem.
2. Decide: if it is worth solving at the time or there are other more urgent and important problem than this one.
3. Don’t take it personally: (Read: dont take it to your heart).
4. Step out of it: This is a very crucial step and the most important one. Step 3 was just a prelude to this 3rd step. You can do this in two ways.
a. Use your imagination: see the problem from 3rd person point of view. As if its not you who is in problem but maybe your friend.
b. If “a.” (above) us too challenging then try to ask yourself… How would this person X (who you look up to for advice or you consider is a wise person or expert in the subject) deal with this situation and then see what comes to your mind.
c. If “a” and “b” dont help or difficult to do then reach out for help from a person who you can have faith in and who is not affected by your situation. i.e. he/ she can look at your situation from outside.
If none of the above work then take a pillow and goto bed… yes forget that problem for that time and move on to something else.. maybe you are thinking too hard and need a break. Then come back to the problem after the break and apply steps 1,2,3,4 again.
Gold Nugget 1
When deciding: go with the option that may give you short term pain and give you long term gain.
Who wants to become a servant……… leader!
A servant leader for me is someone who takes initiative, who comes forward, who volunteers his service without any intention of getting anything in return. Many times a servant leader may also be a silent spectator of the activities of the people who he works for or an event that he organized but never became a part of i.e. he may/ may not be directly involved in the group activity. Therefore, a servant leader in my opinion is also a silent leader, the person who works for a group, an organization or for a person without coming in limelight.
A more advanced/ developed servant leader would be the one who has moved from the mindset of being somebody (someone who demands to be respected) to becoming nobody (someone who doesn’t demand respect) and then eventually evolve into being everybody (someone who sees his success in making others succeed). The person who sees himself in everybody will always do what’s is good for everyone, will never hate the other, will be forgiving, compassionate, loving and above all take responsibility of his actions and ease the burden on other’s miseries too. Such a person would see his misery in other’s miseries and will consider other’s problems as his own.
Its not usual to come across such people in today’s world but the very fact that this idea came in my mind means that it must have occurred to others too and since humans have been on this planet for thousands of years so must have been this idea and anything and everything that is created by human hands was at one time an idea (which is nothing but a thought).
In service industry, example: hotel, restaurant, McDonald, Pizza Hut, Call center etc. there are primarily two types of services being delivered by the company/ the organization in business;
– One, serving the customer and;
– Two, serving the people who serve the customer.
Both these services give an opportunity to the people in the organization to take lead role and practice all the attributes of an ideal servant leader; primarily:
– Have unconditional love and respect towards the people he serves through his actions.
– Show due diligence in all the projects assigned to him.
– Always think/ work one step ahead of the group/ person he serves with the sole motive of benefiting the group/ community/ person he is working for.
– Have full knowledge of the vision and mission values of themselves, their community/ organization and the vision and mission values of the people/ community/ organization he serves.
-G
Just Being Human... 