Relationships

How do you establish and maintain strong business partnerships that help you win in a networked world?

Businesses are increasingly reliant on an ecosystem of partners to access the capabilities they need. But good partner relationships don’t happen by chance: they take considerable thought and effort to set up correctly, to troubleshoot and mediate when needed and to evolve over time. As any seasoned businessperson knows, it is always the human dynamics that make or break partnerships – not the contract, the technology, the processes, etc. We specialize in creating, fixing and sustaining successful business relationships.

We do what lawyers can’t: we act as guardians of the whole relationship, using a holistic, long-term perspective to guide both parties into alignment. We maintain a focus on sustainable, win-win opportunities. We honed our expertise at this during the outsourcing boom and we continue to act as a relationship insurance policy for large operational partnerships of all kinds, including some of the most leading-edge technology ecosystem partnerships.

We cast partnerships in a new light and provide new perspectives – ultimately leading to greater joint success for our clients.

How is our work in relationships differentiated?

We start with the human dimension.

We believe the human element of partnerships requires as much attention as the legal, commercial and operational aspects do. Strong relationships can work through and overcome legal, commercial or operational issues, while the reverse isn’t typically true. We work with partners to create the right space and mechanisms to focus on the human interactions within and across partnerships to build healthy, resilient partnerships that last.

We create custom methodologies.

We have a strong theory of what makes business relationships successful, informed by decades of experience supporting big partnerships. We always bring this perspective to bear – and we also look at each partnership fresh and create a relationship health plan that works for the people and the challenges at hand. We draw from the best research in anthropology, social psychology, philosophy, neuroscience and economics to inform our approach to partnerships.

We ground our solutions in reality.

We study each partnership we support deeply: we get to know the people, the history, the contract, the commercials and the work being done. We use this input to create a tailored plan for managing each partnership that complements any existing governance frameworks. We work with partners to embed positive behaviours and ways of working in their daily working practices to ensure these commitments are upheld.

Read a case study on our work in relationships

How do you repair a high-stakes relationship that seems to have soured to the point of no return?

We pioneered our relationships offering nearly 20 years ago when a leading consumer goods company asked us to help resolve a conflict with their outsourcing partner. Two major transformation programmes were late, over budget and struggling with business buy-in. Both sides were blaming each other and many people in both organisations thought there was no hope left, including much of the executive leadership.

In a surprisingly short time, we managed to understand the true root causes of the conflicts. We used those insights to convince both sides to de-escalate and put in place new principles and ways of working that would allow them to resolve their current challenges and fortify the partnership going forward. It took some time, but the two organisations were able to get their programmes back to operational and financial health, and they continued to work together for many years after that to transform their business.

Results we achieved:

Rescued & stabilized transformation programmes worth over $2 billion

Realigned over 1000 staff members globally across the two partner organisations and improved employee engagement

Created a blueprint for how to run transformational partnerships that was used for at least 10 years afterwards

What were some of the unique contributions we made that led to success?

We started with the human dimension.

While there were many things wrong between the partners, ranging from processes to technology to contracts, our belief was that the most fundamental misalignment was in the partnership itself – in the cultural understanding and social capital between the organisations. We knew that if we could pinpoint where that had misfired, we could start to rebuild positive intent and even trust.

We created custom methodologies.

We used insights and approaches from literature, philosophy and the social sciences to understand the components and dynamics of good vs. bad partnerships, and devised tailored measurement methodologies to help us understand exactly where the problems were.

We grounded our solutions in reality.

Rearticulating a common vision and restoring the fundamentals of the partnership were massively important. But a lot of other things needed to happen in parallel to make these changes be accepted and sustained. We worked with both parties to embed new ways of working at all levels of their partnership, across all key geographies. We held both partners to account to uphold their commitments, from the C-level on downward. And we rolled up our sleeves and helped the two companies resolve some of their most contentious financial and operational issues through a series of mediated workshops.

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