Shared Value Partnerships

As service delivery professionals we desire to do the right thing with our partners. However, in a partnership model where the entities have different core objectives to meet, it takes a little more than just the desire, to make it truly win-win. Here are some quick thought-triggers to enable a successful service delivery and a shared-value partnership.  

I like my partner to do well too, but I don’t want to come across as someone who’s too easy. How do I achieve that?

I want to trust my partner; how do I ensure I get the same from my partner?

Is collaboration possible in partnerships and which magic wands do I need to make my partnership truly collaborative?

Be Authentic-

It is extremely necessary for all the involved parties to be fully aware of the partnership’s objectives for each of them. Visibility of the desired objective (Explicit or other wise) and motivation, will bring transparency in the relation. When the goal is shared, the efforts are more aligned

Be Open-

Being open with ideas and willing to trust the partner is the key element of getting started on the right track. If you wish to say, “I don’t think your plan is going to work because …..…”, hit the pause and review if the desire to help or to push the partner to the corner.

Be Bold, yet Realistic -

Set aspirational targets but strike a balance by ensuring that they are not too away from realistic achievement based on data gathered in advance of any formal announcements or commitments. Setting unrealistic goals that are impossible to meet can lead to disillusionment and cynicism.

Be Sure-

Role of each partner in the pursuit and more importantly each partner’s core competencies, should be very clear. Complementary diverse skills and competencies, to be identified and deployed properly, to enable success.

Be a Nitpicker-

The devil is in the details-Details are essential, particularly those dealing with scope, definitions and metrics, which, if not identified up-front, can lead to challenges down the line. Internal and external proof points will be needed for each partnership but drilling down to the detail about what can be said about outcomes will help frame the metrics. Work to define the nuts and bolts of the desired outcomes and not just the activities of the partnerships.

Be Consistent with the Language-

This may be old advice, but it arises from one of the most oft-repeated challenges. The same words can have different meanings to different organizations, one way of making the case can work better for one group than another — and it is essential to work out a common language. Managers who have worked on both sides of the partnership can often serve as “translators” as they help to bridge the gaps in understanding

Begin with the Beginning-

Start with a goal or a problem and explore different strategies. If you start with a goal or a problem that needs solving, all partners feel included in the development of the solution and unexpected ideas or ways to tackle an issue may arise.

Be prepared to Pivot-

Things have a way of not going according to plan. It is important that partners work closely with one another, talk openly about challenges and find the right approach.

Be Friendly-

Find ways for people who do not usually talk to one another to come together and be in the same room. Getting multiple parts of partner organizations involved will help create buy-in and get everyone on the same page about the goals of a partnership.

Be Patient-

Partnerships — and the workflow changes they may entail — don’t always come easy and they tend to take a lot of work and time. Patience is key. Building relationships that provide the foundation for these partnerships also take a considerable amount of time.

Be Innovative-

Creating a space for innovation and growth is critical and challenging. Create space for innovation and the type of transformative off-the-wall thinking that can lead to greater impact, sustainability and scale.

Individual Performance Is Not Enough; We Need a Way to Measure Teams

Individual Performance Is Not Enough; We Need a Way to Measure Teams

Employee engagement, aligning talent and business strategies; these are perennial problems for HR professionals. How do we solve these problems?  Increasingly it has been thought that one of the best ways is to refocus on teams within our organisations. But to do that we need to make sure we’re collecting standardized data and pushing it to the right people.

* Individual Performance Is Just One Lens

One of the key ways we have all been trying to overcome our biggest challenges is by monitoring the effectiveness of individuals. Technology has given us the power to collect data on individual employees in real time. This kind of instant, fine-grained view of our organisations was not possible before. While CHROs recognise this has improved their organisations in many ways, some of the biggest problems still remain. “It has become ever-more difficult for HR professionals to identify, attract and retain the most talented team players. Those who are able to do this are worth their weight in gold,” says Doug Monro, co-founder of Adzuna, a UK job search engine. The problem is that individual performance is just one lens. It is an important one, yes, but there’s a risk that by focusing only on individuals we miss the bigger picture. While a company is made up of individuals, it’s also composed of teams: small teams, big teams, departments, and whole offices / units / manufacturing plants.

The turning point for an HR manager would be recognising that improving individual performance does not necessarily improve the performance of whole teams. Individual performance is vital, of course. Everyone must be engaged or the team will usually fail in any case. But better individuals do not necessarily lead to better teams.

This is because team performance also depends on members contributing different skills, approaches, and creating an environment where creativity can flourish. You may have 10 stellar individuals in a team, but if they’re all stars in the exactly same way, think the same way, and combative to boot, they’re unlikely to outperform a more cognitively diverse team.

This is compounded by the fact that dysfunctional teams are a problem many of us face. According to a study conducted by the University of Phoenix, 70% of respondents cite being part of a dysfunctional team. And yet well-managed work groups are on average 50% more productive and 44% more profitable than less well managed groups, according to Gallup.

*We Need Standardised Measures

As HR leaders, we have to add the “team lens” to our management repertoire. As well as monitoring individuals, we need to make sure that these individuals are coming together to create strong, well-performing teams. The problem though is that many organisations do not collect data and feedback at the team level. Companies have individual performance data, including annual reviews, going back decades; usually including feedback from subordinates, peers and managers. But this same level of data won’t exist for the new 50-person India Quality team or 10-person UK BD unit created three years ago.

*What Data Do We Collect?

But if team performance is something different, what data should we be collecting? Ideally, just like real-time feedback platforms enable employees to rate and give feedback to other employees, companies should introduce similar tools for employees to do the same for other teams within their organisations. It would make sense to collect this data from clients and other external audiences too.

To work, this needs to be an industry task because whatever we collect should be standardised. Only then will we have the tools not only to measure and rank the performance of teams within our organisations, but benchmark our company’s teams against industry averages. This will help us understand if we have a problem – or not.

*Feedback Must Get to the Team

It’s just as important to make sure this data is being pushed to the right places: the teams themselves. It’s useless if it’s only held on a server somewhere or restricted to management. Pushing this data down to employees is also one of the best ways to engage employees.

According to a survey by Clutch, millennials, now the largest demographic of Indian workforces, especially crave this kind of feedback. “Of the millennials whose managers do provide accurate and consistent feedback, 72% find their job fulfilling,” Clutch says.

This is even more important now that our organisations are becoming more dispersed. According to the latest statistics, more than half of the workforce will do at least some freelance work by 2027. Many of these people will work outside conventional workplaces. This will add strain and may make it more difficult to create cohesive, strong and supportive teams. In the face of this trend, giving teams real-time performance data may well help them feel like a single unit, and engage them to improve their performance.

There is also an argument to be made for exploring the idea of tying the performance data to pay and incentive schemes. We already do this with individual performance via annual reviews and performance bonuses, so it would make sense to trial this with team data too. Some companies already offer team-based incentive pay as a way to encourage team members to work together effectively. But by using new real-time team feedback tools, we could develop bespoke incentives to target different aspects of performance, even cultural traits such as creativity, drive or competitiveness.

For many of our companies, the business environment has never been more difficult. The average lifespan of a NASDAQ-listed company is now shorter than ever before. At the same time we have technological forces stretching our companies in new and challenging ways. We need all the tools that we can to make our companies nimble, agile, top performers. Improving the performance of our teams is surely part of that mix.

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