Grounds for Partnership

Last night I gave the opening speech for a conference of IT Directors. My intent was to provoke some thought and discussion and maybe open the way for wider discussions today, the second day. At the risk of upsetting some friends I decided to explore the holy grail that most businesses seek which is a partnership between business and IT. My grounds were that I have been sitting in meetings discussing this topic for well over ten years, yet we seem no further forward, so maybe we are looking for the wrong thing. Indeed I think it was Confucious who said that the definition of insanity is to keep doing the same thing and expect a different result.

Cutting a long story short and not repeating the speech, it seemed to go pretty welll, quite a few wry grins and nods in the right places. Further to that around a dozen people have approached me since and said they enjoyed the speech and a number of them have asked for copies of the slides, which I have gladly dispatched.

The piece that I thought I would add here was a single slide that seems to have resonated with many and might be of use to more. It was a slide I put together as a way to check and see if a partnership exists or is viable. With a lack of originality I used the initials in the word "partner" as the key.

Briefly:-

• There is a need for a common purpose. Sort of obvious, but in many instance you find that the parties have different and diverging agendas; it is hard to build a partnership on this;
• The union should be apposite. I chose this as the definition I found was "significantly appropriate". I am not sure "good enough" is in fact good enough for partnership;
• Reward is about the balanced sharing of spoils and pain. In projects onemight see that IT bear the burden of failure while the business enjoy the success. This is not balanced and will drive non-partnership behaviours;
• Trust, well I trust (pun intended) that this is self evident;
• "n" as in a number of alternatives. If there is no alternative then it will become something like a forced marriage ie might be successful, but evidence suggests that more often than not, it is not;
• Empathy. Again I hope self evident, but a union of technologists and commerce is not an easy one, especially when the going gets tough; and lastly
• Responsibility ie each and every party sharing joint responsibility and fulfilling their own role properly.

My contention is that partnership is hard to build and sustain if even one of these is missing and certainly when two or more are absent or weak. The challenge to the audience (and the reader) was to look at the aspects of business where they think they have or need partnership and use this checklist to assess it.

The speech did cover other aspects, but this is enough for this post.