On the importance of scenario planning, and how fortnightly meetings can save partnerships
Happy Partnership Wednesday! Here are 3 ideas from me and 1 question for you to help solve your hardest problems through partnerships this week.
3 IDEAS FROM ME
I.
It is not possible to predict the outcome of a partnership (no matter how good it looks on paper)
II.
Three scenarios matter in a partnership - the best, medium and worse case scenarios. Within each scenario you and your partner need to explicitly agree on what the outcome practically looks like and by when. For example, in the best case scenario we will achieve [insert result/milestone] by [insert date].
III.
The ‘so what?’ matters. Each scenario should be matched with a clear next step so that people who are disconnected from the partnership today but whom may be involved in the future know exactly what to do in the event of that scenario. This is about strategic clarity and as Brene Brown says, ‘clear is kind and unclear is unkind’.
1 QUESTION FOR YOU
It’s one thing to align incentives between you and your new partners in the beginning. It’s quite another to maintain that alignment throughout the partnership. Showing up to a scheduled fortnightly meeting with partners is frequent enough to build trust and see changes happening but not too frequent to be inconvenient. This tempo can also help you to catch issues before they start to threaten the health of a partnership. So, here’s my question for you:
When you do a stocktake of your partnerships, how often do you meet and should that tempo change?
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Until next week,
Phil Hayes-St Clair - Learn more about my work here.
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