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Added for You - Partnership Power: A Smart New Way to Improve Your Business and Your Life
I was speaking to group in Atlanta recently and this phrase was stated to me after my speech by one of my audience members….”Culture eats strategy for lunch”.I was compelled by what this meant, especially as regards processes such as customer service. Simply put, the statement implies that companies who establish a particular culture in their business will be superior in practice than those who forsake culture for strategy or process. Culture will win every time.Take a look at the finest companies in providing service, such as LL Bean, Nordstrom, The Ritz-Carlton, Chick-fil-A and others. A close look will reflect an actual culture that permeates throughout the entire organization from top to bottom. It is not their process that sets them apart, it is the way that they deliver their product or service; it is their culture.You buy the same stuff at Nordstrom that you do anywhere else; their culture sets them apart. You get fast food at Chick-fil-A, cooked on the spot, served with a Coke, but it’s not the cooking process or the food that sets them apart; its their culture. The Ritz-Carlton checks you in, gives you a room, and feeds you just like hundreds of other hotels; their culture of service sets them apart. Note that the process and strategy of each of these companies is the same as their competition. It is their culture, their people, which separates them.The question here is “How does a company establish a culture?” The answer is the same way a culture is established in a home. Not by having a meeting with the kids and explaining that this is what the family believes in regard to spirituality, manners, religion, etc. and expecting this culture to “take”. Instead, you show by example, discuss what is going on, compassionately correct the kids when they err, and encourage them when they do things right. This creates a culture. The result is what is called “constancy of purpose”, a never-en
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during
I know what you are thinking. You’re thinking, “Wait a minute. Wouldn’t that be somewhat presumptuous if I were to ask the interviewer questions?” No. The truth of the matter is they want to see that you have enough intelligence and business sense to ask questions requiring informative answers. Most human resource professionals and hiring managers believe having an applicant ask questions is one of the most important aspects of the interview. They are able to tell more about you by the questions you ask than the answers you give in response to their questions.Most everybody expects to have an opportunity to ask questions. However, many assume the interviewer is expecting questions that consist of compensation matters and they don’t want to appear to be focused on self centered issues. Invariably, they pass up the opportunity to delve further for more information about the job.What they don’t realize is they should be asking questions regarding what will be expected of the employee and opportunities for growth in order to learn more about the job offered. Finding the right job and finding the right applicant is a two way street. The employer is looking for somebody that can and will meet their needs. You, on the other hand, are looking for a job that will fulfill your career aspirations.The interviewer will obviously get to question you and your abilities so they can decide if you will be a good fit for them. You need to ask the questions to determine if the position is the right fit for you and this stage of your career. They want to know that you are coming into the employer/employee relationship with them with a good understanding of the expectations on both sides. Posing your own questions also demonstrates your communication skills in addition to showing your ability to accurately assess matters at hand.Here is a list of five questions to ask that will show them you are someone they can count on t
But benchmarking, product imitation and reverse engineering came on the scene, and now everyone can make great products.
Then super-fast delivery appeared. Those who produced and shipped products and served their customers quicker were rewarded with growing market share and higher profits. Digital delivery, cycle-time reduction and 24-hour access (by phone and internet) all accelerated commerce – and competition. But now everyone’s got a terrific website and courier services cross the planet overnight.
To stay ahead of the competition, excellent-service mindset is coming back into vogue. Being polite, competent and concerned is once again as important as it was in your grandmother’s era. And while not every company has mastered this field, competition at the top is intense. Whether you stay at the Sheraton Towers or the Shangri-La, dine at the Rainbow Room or the Hard Rock Caf?, fly British Airways or Singapore Airlines, the service you receive today will often be quite good.
With competition so intense, winning companies are now growing in still another vital dimension. In addition to great products, rapid delivery and excellent service mindset, market leaders are building stronger partnerships with their most valuable clients, suppliers and employees.
What does it mean to build strong partnerships? Why do you need to master this vital skill? What practical steps can you take to achieve it right now?
First, let’s put partnership in perspective. There are four different styles of interaction in business (and in life) and three of them are not partnerships at all!
The One-Shot Deal
The first style of interaction is characterized by a short-term focus between the parties. Beyond completing the exchange of the moment, no lasting commitment is intended or implied. Asking someone for directions, buying goods at a close-out sale or picking up a paper from the corner newsstand are all clear examples of the ‘one-shot deal’.
Many familiar phrases are associated with this kind of brief and immediate interaction: ‘Take it or leave it’; ‘What you see is what you get’; ‘Here today, gone tomorrow.’ With no promise of future involvement between the parties, one more sentence certainly applies: ‘Caveat emptor’ in Latin. In English: ‘Let the buyer beware.’
Transaction Satisfaction
The second style of interaction takes more time than a ‘one-shot’ deal. More moments of contact are involved in these transactions, and additional effort is required to meet or exceed customer expectations.
Taking a flight from one city to another is an example that includes telephone reservations, airport check-in, on-time departure, drinks, entertainment and service onboard, timely arrival and speedy delivery of checked baggage.
If all of these perception points are well managed, then customers are usually satisfied and a state of affairs called ‘transaction satisfaction’ exists.
Although no future involvement is promised or required in these transactions, customers often return to vendors and suppliers who consistently meet their transactional needs.
Reliable Relationships
The third style of interaction extends ‘transaction satisfaction’ into the future. Consistency and dependability are essential, as customers and suppliers count on each other in more frequent business dealings. When done well, this can evolve into a ‘reliable relationship’ – and both parties benefit over time.
Examples of ‘reliable relationships’ include daily newspaper delivery, purchases of office supplies on a store credit account, maintenance contracts for essential equipment, and annual checkups with your family doctor.
Powerful Partnerships
The fourth style of interaction also extends into the future, but the value and importance of each interaction grows significantly over time. In a ‘powerful partnership’ both parties find that working well together brings new possibilities, unique opportunities and otherwise unachievable growth.
A powerful partnership does not grow unattended. Substantial effort and ongoing investments of time, creativity and resources are required to keep a powerful partnership going – and growing.
Examples of powerful partnerships may include research joint ventures, marketing, manufacturing and distribution alliances, excellent manager and secretary combinations and many successful marriages.
Key questions to consider
Which of these four styles of interaction describes your current situation with customers, suppliers, colleagues, managers and employees? Among the four, where are you right now? Where do you want to be?
Four Stages of Improvement
Leaving the ‘one-shot’ deal aside (it’s too short-term for any long-term improvement), let’s focus on how to make your transactions more satisfying, your relationships more reliable and your partnerships increasingly powerful.
In each of these styles of interaction, four stages can be identified. Each stage is fertile territory for self-assessment, competitive evaluation and focused action toward improvement. The four stages are Explore, Agree, Deliver and Assure.
Stage One: Explore
This first stage is the domain of exploration, discovery and open-minded speculation. Both parties must share a commitment to honesty, full disclosure and the desire to create new possibilities together.
Robust exploration can uncover wants, needs, concerns, good and bad past experiences, present constraints, future interests, current priorities and a wide range of competitive and collaborative considerations.
Traditionally this is the domain of marketing, research and strategic visionaries. But the ‘explore’ quadrant actually plays an essential role in launching most successful interactions, and should be engaged in vigorously by everyone.
This is the time to build rapport, develop an open dialogue and listen carefully for spoken ambitions and unspoken concerns.
Contingency planning begins here with your willingness to discuss the upside and possible downside of the future. Here is where you look together into what can go right – and what might unavoidably go wrong.
How well do you explore? Do you regularly meet with your prospects and customers ‘just to share ideas’? Or do you contact them only after they call you, or after something has broken down?
Do you survey your market? Do you conduct interviews, customer focus groups and on-site visits? Do you have a method for doing this consistently or is it an ad hoc process ‘as and when required’?
How easy is it for your customers to explore and learn about you? Is your history and philosophy conveniently presented in print and on your website? Can prospects learn quickly about your products, competencies and directions for the future? Do you share stories of how you helped other clients, offering testimonials and references upon request?
If you do not explore well, you may develop the reputation of a mere order taker – responding when required, but only fulfilling direct and straightforward requests.
When you do explore well, you can build a very different public identity: a person who listens well, is interested in the future and who cares about other people’s possibilities and concerns. This identity opens up a vast horizon for collaboration, commitment and extended agreements.
Stage Two: Agree
Robust exploration can lead to new opportunities for building the future together. Initial requests and offers become the first steps toward mutually fulfilling agreements.
In business, excellent agreements are clearly documented with a detailed list of specifications and expectations, including quantities, schedules, prices, service levels and warranties (among other things).
In a simple transaction, negotiations toward agreement may be conducted in an atmosphere that is competitive and highly charged. But when you are working toward a relationship or partnership, negotiations should be infused with a different spirit: a shared commitment to win-win agreement and mutual, long-term satisfaction.
Contingency planning is essential at this stage. By carefully thinking through what might go wrong, detailed back-up plans can be agreed to long before they are needed.
Finally, in world-class organizations, the very process of coming to an agreement is itself world-class, with easy-to-understand documentation, user-friendly procedures, around-the-clock access and flexible terms and conditions.
How smoothly and thoroughly do you forge your agreements? Do customers marvel at how easy it is to do business with you, or do they complain bitterly about your bureaucratic systems? Do they thank you for your flexibility and understanding, or are they left cold by your rigid ‘one-size-fits-all’ conditions, products and pricing?
Clear agreements enable effective delivery. Lack of clarity breeds suspicion, uncertainty and misunderstanding. Vague promises may get you started, but if things don’t turn out as expected, misunderstanding can lead to disagreement and even escalate to a legal dispute.
In a world that prizes ease of use, saving time and maximum convenience, improving the way you make agreements can give your organization a powerful step up on the competition.
Stage Three: Deliver
With agreements complete, your ‘deliver’ stage begins.
Here you take all necessary action to fulfill your promises and thoroughly execute your agreements. You serve, develop, customize, manufacture, test, ship, install, modify, upgrade, provide promised training and support.
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during t
The primary objectives of all Great Companies are as follows:• Make Money -> Create value for shareholders, grow earnings and profits• Act Responsibly -> Be a good corporate citizen, improve the lives of consumers• Minimize Risk -> Legal Risk, Financial Risk, Marketplace RiskTherefore, what Great Companies look for in the people they hire is that they have the skills and capabilities to…1. Make money for the company2. Act responsibly3. Minimize riskYour primary task in applying for a job is to convince companies that you have what it takes to do what's shown above. Every company has a set of skills and capabilities they are looking for in their management employees. Although all are slightly different, I would offer the following list that covers 90% of them all. You should spend some time reviewing this list as it should be used in developing your resume and interview outline.Skills & Capabilities all Great Companies Look ForLeadership – You direct, motivate and even inspire others to do things they could not or would not do without your influence. You set the vision for your organization and then enroll and enable to team to deliver on it. This is the single most valuable capability. If you are not a 'born leader' take time to study it and get better at it.Strategic Thinking – You understand the overall objectives/goals of your company, division, etc. and are able to develop choices for what your team will focus on to deliver against them. You then develop specific tactics to bring the strategies to life. You think in terms of fiscal years vs. day to day.Innovative Thinking – You are able to think “outside the box” and create concepts and products that go beyond the obvious. You make relevant connections between situations you or the team have encountered before.Creative Problem Solving – You are able to properly identify problems
Transaction Satisfaction
The second style of interaction takes more time than a ‘one-shot’ deal. More moments of contact are involved in these transactions, and additional effort is required to meet or exceed customer expectations.
Taking a flight from one city to another is an example that includes telephone reservations, airport check-in, on-time departure, drinks, entertainment and service onboard, timely arrival and speedy delivery of checked baggage.
If all of these perception points are well managed, then customers are usually satisfied and a state of affairs called ‘transaction satisfaction’ exists.
Although no future involvement is promised or required in these transactions, customers often return to vendors and suppliers who consistently meet their transactional needs.
Reliable Relationships
The third style of interaction extends ‘transaction satisfaction’ into the future. Consistency and dependability are essential, as customers and suppliers count on each other in more frequent business dealings. When done well, this can evolve into a ‘reliable relationship’ – and both parties benefit over time.
Examples of ‘reliable relationships’ include daily newspaper delivery, purchases of office supplies on a store credit account, maintenance contracts for essential equipment, and annual checkups with your family doctor.
Powerful Partnerships
The fourth style of interaction also extends into the future, but the value and importance of each interaction grows significantly over time. In a ‘powerful partnership’ both parties find that working well together brings new possibilities, unique opportunities and otherwise unachievable growth.
A powerful partnership does not grow unattended. Substantial effort and ongoing investments of time, creativity and resources are required to keep a powerful partnership going – and growing.
Examples of powerful partnerships may include research joint ventures, marketing, manufacturing and distribution alliances, excellent manager and secretary combinations and many successful marriages.
Key questions to consider
Which of these four styles of interaction describes your current situation with customers, suppliers, colleagues, managers and employees? Among the four, where are you right now? Where do you want to be?
Four Stages of Improvement
Leaving the ‘one-shot’ deal aside (it’s too short-term for any long-term improvement), let’s focus on how to make your transactions more satisfying, your relationships more reliable and your partnerships increasingly powerful.
In each of these styles of interaction, four stages can be identified. Each stage is fertile territory for self-assessment, competitive evaluation and focused action toward improvement. The four stages are Explore, Agree, Deliver and Assure.
Stage One: Explore
This first stage is the domain of exploration, discovery and open-minded speculation. Both parties must share a commitment to honesty, full disclosure and the desire to create new possibilities together.
Robust exploration can uncover wants, needs, concerns, good and bad past experiences, present constraints, future interests, current priorities and a wide range of competitive and collaborative considerations.
Traditionally this is the domain of marketing, research and strategic visionaries. But the ‘explore’ quadrant actually plays an essential role in launching most successful interactions, and should be engaged in vigorously by everyone.
This is the time to build rapport, develop an open dialogue and listen carefully for spoken ambitions and unspoken concerns.
Contingency planning begins here with your willingness to discuss the upside and possible downside of the future. Here is where you look together into what can go right – and what might unavoidably go wrong.
How well do you explore? Do you regularly meet with your prospects and customers ‘just to share ideas’? Or do you contact them only after they call you, or after something has broken down?
Do you survey your market? Do you conduct interviews, customer focus groups and on-site visits? Do you have a method for doing this consistently or is it an ad hoc process ‘as and when required’?
How easy is it for your customers to explore and learn about you? Is your history and philosophy conveniently presented in print and on your website? Can prospects learn quickly about your products, competencies and directions for the future? Do you share stories of how you helped other clients, offering testimonials and references upon request?
If you do not explore well, you may develop the reputation of a mere order taker – responding when required, but only fulfilling direct and straightforward requests.
When you do explore well, you can build a very different public identity: a person who listens well, is interested in the future and who cares about other people’s possibilities and concerns. This identity opens up a vast horizon for collaboration, commitment and extended agreements.
Stage Two: Agree
Robust exploration can lead to new opportunities for building the future together. Initial requests and offers become the first steps toward mutually fulfilling agreements.
In business, excellent agreements are clearly documented with a detailed list of specifications and expectations, including quantities, schedules, prices, service levels and warranties (among other things).
In a simple transaction, negotiations toward agreement may be conducted in an atmosphere that is competitive and highly charged. But when you are working toward a relationship or partnership, negotiations should be infused with a different spirit: a shared commitment to win-win agreement and mutual, long-term satisfaction.
Contingency planning is essential at this stage. By carefully thinking through what might go wrong, detailed back-up plans can be agreed to long before they are needed.
Finally, in world-class organizations, the very process of coming to an agreement is itself world-class, with easy-to-understand documentation, user-friendly procedures, around-the-clock access and flexible terms and conditions.
How smoothly and thoroughly do you forge your agreements? Do customers marvel at how easy it is to do business with you, or do they complain bitterly about your bureaucratic systems? Do they thank you for your flexibility and understanding, or are they left cold by your rigid ‘one-size-fits-all’ conditions, products and pricing?
Clear agreements enable effective delivery. Lack of clarity breeds suspicion, uncertainty and misunderstanding. Vague promises may get you started, but if things don’t turn out as expected, misunderstanding can lead to disagreement and even escalate to a legal dispute.
In a world that prizes ease of use, saving time and maximum convenience, improving the way you make agreements can give your organization a powerful step up on the competition.
Stage Three: Deliver
With agreements complete, your ‘deliver’ stage begins.
Here you take all necessary action to fulfill your promises and thoroughly execute your agreements. You serve, develop, customize, manufacture, test, ship, install, modify, upgrade, provide promised training and support.
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during
In our business lives we wear many hats. We often think of our job title as the way to describe our work. In fact, in any social situation, the question, “So what do you do?” will come up early in any conversation with a new person. How do we respond to this question? Invariably, we respond with our job title and the name of our organization. “I’m the Finance Manager at ABC Corp. Sometimes the conversation progresses beyond that, but often, that is all we have to say to describe our work.And that is often how we think about it as well. Finance Manager. Chef. Staff Pharmacist. Marketing Director. Salesperson. Clerk. Janitor. Principal. Supervisor. Welder. Seldom though is any job as simple as a job title might suggest. We play a variety of roles, and do a variety of things within the scope of that job – whatever that job is.Some people will answer that “So what do you do?” question with, “I’m a consultant.” I remember when my grandmother asked me about my new job at Chevron, and I answered with “I’m a training consultant.” Grandma wasn’t satisfied with that answer, so she probed further, “but what do you do?” she asked.After a few minutes of discussion and explanation, she said, “Oh, you teach adults!” That was, in part what I did then, and happily, nearly twelve years later that is still what I do. I am a trainer, speaker, leader, writer and more. But most of all, I am a consultant. It may seem logical that I am a consultant, but you might not realize that it is very likely that in at least part of your work, or in other areas of your life, you are too.Consulting is a big word – not in letters or syllables – but in scope. Consultants can play many valid roles, and therefore many roles that people play at work can be looked at as consulting.Some of the RolesTechnical expert Mentor Coach Lecturer Trainer Facilitator Advisor Subject Matter expert…are all rol
In each of these styles of interaction, four stages can be identified. Each stage is fertile territory for self-assessment, competitive evaluation and focused action toward improvement. The four stages are Explore, Agree, Deliver and Assure.
Stage One: Explore
This first stage is the domain of exploration, discovery and open-minded speculation. Both parties must share a commitment to honesty, full disclosure and the desire to create new possibilities together.
Robust exploration can uncover wants, needs, concerns, good and bad past experiences, present constraints, future interests, current priorities and a wide range of competitive and collaborative considerations.
Traditionally this is the domain of marketing, research and strategic visionaries. But the ‘explore’ quadrant actually plays an essential role in launching most successful interactions, and should be engaged in vigorously by everyone.
This is the time to build rapport, develop an open dialogue and listen carefully for spoken ambitions and unspoken concerns.
Contingency planning begins here with your willingness to discuss the upside and possible downside of the future. Here is where you look together into what can go right – and what might unavoidably go wrong.
How well do you explore? Do you regularly meet with your prospects and customers ‘just to share ideas’? Or do you contact them only after they call you, or after something has broken down?
Do you survey your market? Do you conduct interviews, customer focus groups and on-site visits? Do you have a method for doing this consistently or is it an ad hoc process ‘as and when required’?
How easy is it for your customers to explore and learn about you? Is your history and philosophy conveniently presented in print and on your website? Can prospects learn quickly about your products, competencies and directions for the future? Do you share stories of how you helped other clients, offering testimonials and references upon request?
If you do not explore well, you may develop the reputation of a mere order taker – responding when required, but only fulfilling direct and straightforward requests.
When you do explore well, you can build a very different public identity: a person who listens well, is interested in the future and who cares about other people’s possibilities and concerns. This identity opens up a vast horizon for collaboration, commitment and extended agreements.
Stage Two: Agree
Robust exploration can lead to new opportunities for building the future together. Initial requests and offers become the first steps toward mutually fulfilling agreements.
In business, excellent agreements are clearly documented with a detailed list of specifications and expectations, including quantities, schedules, prices, service levels and warranties (among other things).
In a simple transaction, negotiations toward agreement may be conducted in an atmosphere that is competitive and highly charged. But when you are working toward a relationship or partnership, negotiations should be infused with a different spirit: a shared commitment to win-win agreement and mutual, long-term satisfaction.
Contingency planning is essential at this stage. By carefully thinking through what might go wrong, detailed back-up plans can be agreed to long before they are needed.
Finally, in world-class organizations, the very process of coming to an agreement is itself world-class, with easy-to-understand documentation, user-friendly procedures, around-the-clock access and flexible terms and conditions.
How smoothly and thoroughly do you forge your agreements? Do customers marvel at how easy it is to do business with you, or do they complain bitterly about your bureaucratic systems? Do they thank you for your flexibility and understanding, or are they left cold by your rigid ‘one-size-fits-all’ conditions, products and pricing?
Clear agreements enable effective delivery. Lack of clarity breeds suspicion, uncertainty and misunderstanding. Vague promises may get you started, but if things don’t turn out as expected, misunderstanding can lead to disagreement and even escalate to a legal dispute.
In a world that prizes ease of use, saving time and maximum convenience, improving the way you make agreements can give your organization a powerful step up on the competition.
Stage Three: Deliver
With agreements complete, your ‘deliver’ stage begins.
Here you take all necessary action to fulfill your promises and thoroughly execute your agreements. You serve, develop, customize, manufacture, test, ship, install, modify, upgrade, provide promised training and support.
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during
Enterprise data integration is the process of combining data from various resources for obtaining certain enterprise needs. This also includes the sharing of information among various business applications. Today, enterprise data integration is a widely practiced method by all companies and business groups, irrespective of their status, for managing their company resources. For Internet-linked marketers and service providers, these practices become much more important.The advantages of enterprise data integration involves quick data delivery and data sharing; reduction in time expenditure in capturing data; elimination of data accumulation and duplicate data entry; saving of both time and capital needed for data entry, report preparing and printing; increased customer satisfaction through better customer data integration and customer contact; better product/service marketing; real time data availability; enhancement in sales force automation (SFA); and most of all simplification of all procedures.Enterprise data integration includes a range of techniques such as EAI (Enterprise Application Integration), EII (Enterprise Information Integration) and ETL (Extract-Transform-Load), MDI (Master Data Management) and CDI (Customer Data Integration). The SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) can also be considered as a data integration technology. The main processes involved in enterprise data integration are data consolidation, data federation and data propagation.Enterprise data integration solutions are data processing systems, which are capable of accessing multiple databases in tandem, providing real-time meaningful information and of producing accurate results on demand. These solutions put right information in right places like, data warehouses, data marts and consolidation repositories, with out any human help. These solutions are powered by data integration software programs and specific communication tools. public identity: a person who listens well, is interested in the future and who cares about other people’s possibilities and concerns. This identity opens up a vast horizon for collaboration, commitment and extended agreements.
Stage Two: Agree
Robust exploration can lead to new opportunities for building the future together. Initial requests and offers become the first steps toward mutually fulfilling agreements.
In business, excellent agreements are clearly documented with a detailed list of specifications and expectations, including quantities, schedules, prices, service levels and warranties (among other things).
In a simple transaction, negotiations toward agreement may be conducted in an atmosphere that is competitive and highly charged. But when you are working toward a relationship or partnership, negotiations should be infused with a different spirit: a shared commitment to win-win agreement and mutual, long-term satisfaction.
Contingency planning is essential at this stage. By carefully thinking through what might go wrong, detailed back-up plans can be agreed to long before they are needed.
Finally, in world-class organizations, the very process of coming to an agreement is itself world-class, with easy-to-understand documentation, user-friendly procedures, around-the-clock access and flexible terms and conditions.
How smoothly and thoroughly do you forge your agreements? Do customers marvel at how easy it is to do business with you, or do they complain bitterly about your bureaucratic systems? Do they thank you for your flexibility and understanding, or are they left cold by your rigid ‘one-size-fits-all’ conditions, products and pricing?
Clear agreements enable effective delivery. Lack of clarity breeds suspicion, uncertainty and misunderstanding. Vague promises may get you started, but if things don’t turn out as expected, misunderstanding can lead to disagreement and even escalate to a legal dispute.
In a world that prizes ease of use, saving time and maximum convenience, improving the way you make agreements can give your organization a powerful step up on the competition.
Stage Three: Deliver
With agreements complete, your ‘deliver’ stage begins.
Here you take all necessary action to fulfill your promises and thoroughly execute your agreements. You serve, develop, customize, manufacture, test, ship, install, modify, upgrade, provide promised training and support.
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during
Financial Data – What’s Needed?As a general rule, the more financial data that is available, the better. If your accounting system is sophisticated enough to produce internal Balance Sheets and P&L Statements, they are certainly helpful. Of course the best information to use as a basis is the Federal Tax Return, since when these are submitted to the IRS, any and all final adjustments have been made. Also, three to five years of returns will give the valuation analyst a better and more consistent track record of the firm’s history. For further insight and/or questions, lean on the valuator for guidance. Typically, the most important source of necessary data is the owner or CEO (or the CFO if a firm is large enough to support that position), who usually is very familiar with the “financial goings-on” and the specific applicable history.Present Debt - A Factor?In the context of placing a value on a business to be sold, while debt is certainly important, it generally is not something which has a direct influence on business value. Here’s why. When there is long term debt to be considered (any debt to be carried on the books for a period longer than one year), that debt is normally handled by the seller out of the proceeds of the sale. Should it work out as a part of the deal that a given amount of the owner’s long term debt will be assumed by the buyer, that arrangement is customarily a part of the buy-sell agreement as prepared by the attorneys and accountants on one or both sides.What Should A Valuation Cost?The fee or service charge for a business valuation/appraisal will vary, dependent on a number of factors. It can run from just a few hundred dollars for a simple “off the shelf” software program, to in some cases tens of thousands of dollars . . . should the project involve a mid-size or larger firm ($10MIL or more in sales), and if ordered from one of the major accounting or valua
At this stage you need people who understand what to do and who have the necessary resources to get the job done. This means your delivery team must have a crystal-clear understanding of the promises made in your agreement. It also means they must have the tools, time and training to completely and successfully deliver.
Throughout the delivery stage, it is essential to track progress and keep appropriate parties well informed. If everything goes according to plan, frequent updates can further reinforce confidence among your customers and colleagues. And if the unexpected occurs, the sooner you communicate this to others, the sooner your contingency plans can be launched and put into place.
This willingness and ability to quickly declare ‘breakdowns’ is an important area where world-class companies differentiate themselves from the rest. While some organizations try to hide bad news and discreetly ‘put out the fire’, others pride themselves on rapidly alerting all parties so that new actions can be quickly and effectively taken – even capitalizing on unexpected or unintended opportunities.
Stage Four: Assure
In many industries, the ability to deliver on budget and on time has been honed to a fine art with ‘six sigma’ quality control and cycle-time reduction. But effective delivery does not complete the cycle – not if you are interested in continuing or expanding your involvement over time.
The final stage is ‘assure’ and is one of the most fertile areas for generating new possibilities in business. In the assure quadrant, you accomplish three vital tasks:
1. Check to see if the promises made on both sides have been fulfilled. If they have, then acknowledge, recognize and reward. If they have not, immediately return to deliver and complete the job.
2. Confirm that the needs of your customer have been truly satisfied by the actions you have taken. You may discover that you have faithfully completed all the terms of the agreement, but the original concerns of your customer remain unfulfilled. This is not necessarily the fault of either party and may instead be the result of events that happened in the meantime.
When this happens, promptly initiate a new round of exploration. Work together to build a more refined set of needs and expectations. Create new agreements to satisfy these needs, and then move forward once again to deliver and assure.
3. Finally, during the assure process, find ways to work even more effectively together the next time. How could the cycle you have just completed be done more quickly or with even better results? What changes should you implement as you move forward into another round of explore, agree, deliver and assure?
Well-planned and sincerely executed assurance can be an effective way of seeking new business. Detailed follow- through often leads to new possibilities, new agreements, new opportunities to deliver.
How well do you and your team members assure? Do you consistently follow up with a proven plan of surveys, interviews and on-site customer visits? Or do you subscribe to the old school of ‘no news is good news’ and wait for disgruntled customers to contact you...if they ever do?
Taking an holistic approach
In many organizations, the four stages of improvement are handled by four different departments: exploration is the realm of marketing; agreements are completed by sales; delivery is the domain of manufacturing, operations and logistics; and assurance is provided, if required, by after-sales warranty and customer service.
Unfortunately, this approach can leave customers with a schizophrenic experience of your organization. Your customers are told one thing by the first department but hear a different story from the next. They cry out for ‘one face’ to work with rather than an ever-expanding list of business cards, e-mail addresses and telephone numbers.
Inside the organization, this fragmented and specialized approach can lead to mistrust – even outright conflict – between departments.
Fortunately, the solution to this problem can be built right into the procedures and culture of your organization.
First, connect the ‘four stages of improvement’ with frequent and detailed communication between departments.
Second, institutionalize shared understanding with cross-training, cross-functional teams, and longer-term attachments. The more your people understand what their colleagues are doing, the better your colleagues – and your customers – will be served.
Building a Foundation of Trust
Each time you successfully complete a cycle of explore, agree, deliver and assure, another level of trust is reached between the parties.
This is how humans build trust with one another. We find out what another person is concerned about: we explore. We make promises to do something on their behalf: we agree. We do what we promised to do: we deliver. And then we follow up to be sure they are truly satisfied: we assure.
Building trust starts with promises for small items, little issues, minor concerns. After you have proven yourself to be trustworthy, then people will open up to share with you and rely on you more.
Want a large order from your customer? Prove yourself with smaller jobs first. Want more responsibility from your boss? Demonstrate your skills and your commitment with a series of well-executed projects.
This makes good sense in business, but it can also apply in your personal and social life. Indeed, building trust with others is the foundation for all successful relationships. Trust is the necessary glue for the partnerships we rely on today – and those we build together for the future.
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