We recently read through Stephen Covey’s book, 7 Habits of Highly Effective People. The truths laid out in this book, written over 30 years ago, have transformed how we think about personal growth, company growth, and, yes, even partnerships. As we grow at CoPort, seeking to help companies grow through partnerships, we took the content in that timeless book and applied it to what we do everyday.

We're going to take the next several blogs to lay out each habit, provide inspiration, and then give practical application so you, and I, can grow as partner leaders. 

Because we know that when we get better with partnerships, our companies win.

Begin with the end in mind.

“To begin with the end in mind means to start with a clear understanding of your destination. It means to know where you’re going so that you better understand where you are now and so that the steps you take are always in the right direction. It’s incredibly easy to get caught up in an activity trap, in the busyness of life, to work harder and harder at climbing the ladder of success only to discover it’s leaning against the wrong wall. It’s possible to be busy—very busy—without being very effective.” - Stephen Covey

This second habit is the first step of building your program. Now that you’ve started, believing that building the program, or a partnership, is possible—and that you’re capable—it’s incredibly important to know your mission, to know where you’re going. It was Yogi Berra who said, “If you don’t know where you’re going, you’ll end up somewhere else.”

After listening to many conversations with partnership leaders all around the world, we all struggle with this in some way or another. We all read the results of successful partnerships, but we forget that it takes the work of building out why we build partnerships to get those results. Results are a natural consequence of doing the right work, not the reason why we do them. We constantly hear consultants ask the question, “Why do you want to get into partnerships?" Or “why did you get into partnerships in the first place?” The answer to that question is a clear indicator of how this endeavor with partnerships is going to go.

Let’s say your mission is to increase revenue for your organization through partnerships. Not a bad goal or mission. However, it can take a lot longer than expected to get the anticipated results. In our attention-deprived, short term thinking world, the work it takes to build a successful program to get those results takes time, and patience can run thin at the top.

The solve for this is build out your mission statement for your partner program. It will help you and your team, and your company, remember why the program is so important for the future growth and sustainability of your organization. While there’s a lot of resources out there for how to build out a mission statement, here are a few ideas to help you get started.

Application

• Start with your business’s mission statement. Do you know your company’s mission? Use that to build your Partnership Program Mission Statement.
• Ask other partner leaders about their mission statement. Collaborate and help each other grow.
• We will accomplish X, by Y, because of Z. This can oversimplify the process for many of us, but I like it because it gets me start with a simple framework for me and my team.
• Keep it simple. Make it memorable. Repeat it daily, weekly, monthly, quarterly. It’s easy to forget the mission, and if you forget it, how much more so will your team? Every team meeting go back to the basics, remind them where you’re all going and why you’re doing it.