Good relationships are part of the foundations of a successful independent career!

Tuesday: Return Driven Strategy FROM THE DESK OF MILES EVERSON: An independent professional’s journey doesn’t mean being completely isolated from other workers. Throughout your career as an independent, you will still need to build meaningful business relationships. This will help you develop potential partnerships that can support the competencies of your firm or organization. Read on to know the importance of partnering deliberately with other independents within your industry. CEO, MBO Partners Chairman of the Advisory Board, The I Institute

Good relationships are part of the foundations of a successful independent career! “Partner Deliberately.” According to my friend and colleague, Professor Joel Litman, and his co-author Dr. Mark L. Frigo in the book, “Driven,” this tenet is one of the supporting tenets of a return driven firm or organization. In the past few weeks, we’ve talked about the Return-Driven Strategy (RDS) framework’s “competency tenets,” or the key competencies that you and your business have to possess to achieve the higher tenets and ultimately, wealth creation. These competency tenets include: Innovate offerings Deliver offerings Brand offerings Today, we’ll move on to the next group of tenets in the framework―the “supporting tenets.” First things first. What do we mean by “supporting tenets?” These are the necessary contributors to a firm or organization’s high performance because they support the creation of offerings. There are 5 supporting tenets in the RDS framework and today, we’ll focus on the first tenet, which is “Partner Deliberately.” Partnering deliberately means identifying the importance of disciplined planning of business relationships to drive more effective innovation, branding, and delivery of offerings. This tenet includes: Considering a wide range of potential partnerships. Developing new types of relationships that can support the competencies of your firm. Deliberately choosing partners based on assessment. Developing partnership arrangements based on the level of exclusivity needed. Creating performance measures that bring incentives to your partners that support your business strategy. Valuing the monetary aspect of partner relationships based on long-term impact. Purposeful Partnerships However, there’s one thing you have to keep in mind: No matter how many partnerships you’ve made, only the right partnerships will enable your business to focus on its strengths. The strongest partnerships bring your business’ unique assets together and allow your firm to innovate, brand, and deliver need-fulfilling offerings. As stated in the book, “Driven,” your decision behind any partnering activity must be driven by the higher 6 tenets, namely: Ethically Maximize Wealth Fulfill Otherwise Unmet Customer Needs Target and Dominate Markets Innovate Offerings Deliver Offerings Brand Offerings If you don’t consider these higher tenets, you’ll only be able to form indiscriminate partnerships with other businesses. In the next few weeks, we’ll be talking about other topics under the “Partner Deliberately” tenet, such as the open and exclusive forms of partnerships and some guidelines in establishing relationships with other organizations. Hope you found this week’s insights interesting and helpful. Follow us on LinkedIn.     Stay tuned for next Tuesday’s Return Driven Strategy! Learn more about identifying the most appropriate type of partnership for your brand on xnext week’s Return Driven Strategy!