What is the secret to achieve a successful partnership between two companies? In fact, is there any secret at all? Is there something in our hands that we could do to guarantee the success in such difficult issue?
The right answer, as you could imagine, is NO. Nobody has found the magic secret to assure the success of an international partnerships and that is why many of them keep failing continuously till date. Nevertheless, from my humble opinion, there are some ''tips'' that are applicable for all kind of partnerships and they might lead your partnership to a total failure or an amazing success if you keep them seriously into consideration.
I have grouped these tips as the AAA - 3 Keys for Success of International Partnerships in order to be easily explained and very easily remembered by any of you during your involvement in any kind of partnership.
Who am I to be in a position to give you tips about this?
Definitely it´s a good question that needs to be answered. Again the rigth answer, as you could imagine, is NOBODY. I am not considered any internationally recognized guru of the business development, I am not participating in TED talks and I am not a billionaire. I am only Lucas Pastor, a Civil Engineer who has been working almost 20 years in different positions of the engineering and contracting sector and who has been the last 10 years working in project management and business development in Middle East (mostly in Saudi Arabia).
During those years, I have seen many successful partnerships and unfortunately many more unsuccessful partnerships between local and foreign companies. Based on that experience, I have managed to identify what I think are the most relevant keys to lead a partnership to the success or to the most terrible failure.
Partnership = Marriage
In order to explain you these 3 keys, I will be comparing an international partnership with the most well-known kind of partnership in our history which is the MARRIAGE.
In few words, a business partnership is the merging of two companies, willing to be together for a long period and sharing a common objective (mainly profitability).
Marriage is the merging of two persons, also willing to be together for a long period and sharing a common objective (mainly building a home, and/or a family and/or simply happiness).
ATTRACTION
If you want your marriage to be successful, there must be some kind of ATTRACTION. If you don´t find your couple attractive in some way, most probably it will not work. If you don´t find her/him nice in the beginning, she/he will probably not improve later on (sorry if I am disappointing any of you). There must be some ''spark'' that makes you feel she/he is special, that makes you think the destiny has put her/him there in a certain moment for you to meet her/him.
Between companies it happens exactly the same. If there is no attraction in the beginning there will not be attraction afterwards. If you propose a partnership to your CEO and he looks at you showing the face of ''ok....maybe....next subject?'' it means it is not attractive to him and it will not work.
A person/company may be attractive or not due to many reasons. Maybe a person does not find blond people attractive, or tall people, or whatever silly reason and there is nothing the other party can do to solve that. A company may be not attractive to another company due to its business model, its business lines or its nationality (sorry to say that) and there is nothing to solve that. The same as a blond person should not change his/her hair color just to become attractive to a person, I think a company should not change its business model just to become attractive to another company. Partnerships should work being ourselves, not the one the other party wants us to be.
Of course there are some tips to be more attractive. Nice dressing, some make-up and other usual visual tips in the personal relationships are similarly applicable to companies and this is part of the so called marketing. Good marketing may increase drastically your company attractiveness with simple measures as a renovated website, nice brochures and business cards, presence in international events and social media, etc.
Other universal way to become more attractive is just by being kind. Your physical attractiveness may be totally superseded or ruined by your kindness. This is happening between people and for sure between companies (actually I think this must be the reason of me being married...otherwise I can´t imagine what she sees on me!). Many times the way you are treated during an event, a meeting or even a phone call may increase or decrease drastically your attraction to that company.
For sure there are many other ways to increase the attractiveness and you will be able to imagine them from the easy comparison to marriage. However, don´t forget the attraction starts or may ends from the beginning of the relationship so keep it always in mind from day one.
ADDED VALUE
In any partnership there must be added value between the parties. My wife is very good in finance, controlling expenses and saving costs. She has been accountant and finance manager for more than 20 years and she is really good on that. Me, I like mainly the innovation, the strategy, the sales, the deals, etc. and I am a disaster in controlling my own finance. That is why we complement each other. There is added value between us. If both of us were exactly the same, maybe our lifes would be extremely boring or we would be extremely poor.
In companies the same principle is applicable. If the other company is doing the same as you do, most probably the partnership will not work. Many times one company has the experience, the other one the finance, or the local knowledge, or the local resources, etc. In those cases there is added value between them and that´s why their partnership can work. This looks obvious but you will see many intentions to partner around where you will ask yourself, where is the added value? If you can´t find the answer most probably they will fail.
In some cases companies are willing to partner just to share risks without real added value between them. To me that does not work. It is like deciding to marry someone just to share the house rental or the responsibility over ''some children''.
If there is added value between two parties, they need each other. If they need each other, when there is a problem, both parties do their utmost efforts to solve it because they need to continue together. In partnerships, same as in marriages, problems may happen and you must be willing to fight to solve them.
ACTUAL TRUST
Why do I call it ACTUAL trust? Why not only TRUST? You are probably asking this question to yourself.
You might think it is only a way to get the letter ''A'' in the beginning of the word so my 3 keys can be named ''AAA'' and you can easily remember it. You might be right.
Other reason might be because I want to emphasize about the importance of the trust being actual (not pretended). If I can be working 4000km away from my home during most of my time away from my wife is because I trust her completely and she trusts me too. Otherwise our relationship would not work.
In many partnerships one party is continuously thinking the other party will try to cheat him in some point. Although they drink coffee together, share dinners together, enjoy time together, somewhere inside they are suspicious about the real intentions of the partner. That is the difference between ''trust'' and ''actual trust''. Actual trust is the one of the kid in my picture who is jumping to his father. He is jumping because he is sure his father will take him. He has no doubts about the intention and capability of his father. That kind of trust must happen between the companies to partner successfully.
There is a big difference between this key and the other two keys described before. While Attraction may start from day one and the Added Value may be found after a short business due diligence, the Actual Trust will be gained gradually along the relationship. You may convey some trust in the beginning of your partnership but the ''actual trust'' will be obtained after a long time of testing between the parties. Actual trust takes long time to be gained and it may take very short time to be lost.
I hope these 3 Keys (the A A A) will be helpful in your partnerships during your work experience and also during your life experience. As I told you before, there is no magic secret to assure the success of partnerships but I can guarantee you that these 3 keys will define a high percentage of probability for them to end up as failure or as successful and wonderful experience.
Lucas Pastor - March 2018